Thoughts about Humanist Manifesto II

IT is 40 years since Humanist Manifesto I (1933) appeared. Events since then make that earlier statement seem far too optimistic.” So, with refreshing candor, runs the opening sentence of Humanist Manifesto II, a statement of conviction edited by Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson and signed by scores of literary and academic illuminati, including Isaac Asimov, A. J. Ayer, John Ciardi, Dr. Francis Crick, Sidney Hook, Sir Julian Huxley, Zhores Medvedev, Gunnar Myrdal, Andrei Sakharov, and (of course) B. F. Skinner. And yet, was Manifesto I discredited by “events” or because of its own basic theoretical misconceptions? And if the latter, what is to prevent the more recent version from similarly calling forth the need for revised Manifestos III, IV, V, etc. at ever narrowing intervals, given the accelerating pace of “social change” a la Toffler and other “future shock” sociologists, in a vain attempt to accomplish in action what was misconceived in thought?

The same theoretical errors are indeed committed in Manifesto II that we find in Manifesto I, which had been primarily the work of the late John Dewey. They may be summarized as follows: 1) dogmatic anti-theism; 2) the zeal for an impossible total solution to “the problem of human living”; 3) an hubristic anthropology which presumes man capable of self-salvation; 4) an excessive reliance on science and technology verging at times on messianic “scientism”; 5) a contradictory image of man which at once portrays him as the shaper of his culture and as “molded” by it; and 6) an immanentist world view which leaves man symbolically impoverished, cut off from the deeper levels of meaning found in premodern (and, ergo, ipso facto “outmoded” and “reactionary”) linguistic forms and rituals.

DG

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Dante Germino

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IT is 40 years since Humanist Manifesto I (1933) appeared. Events since then make that earlier statement seem far too optimistic.” So, with refreshing candor, runs the opening sentence of Humanist Manifesto II, a statement of conviction edited by Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson and signed by scores of literary and academic illuminati, including Isaac Asimov, A. J. Ayer, John Ciardi, Dr. Francis Crick, Sidney Hook, Sir Julian Huxley, Zhores Medvedev, Gunnar Myrdal, Andrei Sakharov, and (of course) B. F. Skinner. And yet, was Manifesto I discredited by “events” or because of its own basic theoretical misconceptions? And if the latter, what is to prevent the more recent version from similarly calling forth the need for revised Manifestos III, IV, V, etc. at ever narrowing intervals, given the accelerating pace of “social change” a la Toffler and other “future shock” sociologists, in a vain attempt to accomplish in action what was misconceived in thought?

The same theoretical errors are indeed committed in Manifesto II that we find in Manifesto I, which had been primarily the work of the late John Dewey. They may be summarized as follows: 1) dogmatic anti-theism; 2) the zeal for an impossible total solution to “the problem of human living”; 3) an hubristic anthropology which presumes man capable of self-salvation; 4) an excessive reliance on science and technology verging at times on messianic “scientism”; 5) a contradictory image of man which at once portrays him as the shaper of his culture and as “molded” by it; and 6) an immanentist world view which leaves man symbolically impoverished, cut off from the deeper levels of meaning found in premodern (and, ergo, ipso facto “outmoded” and “reactionary”) linguistic forms and rituals.