Humanism and Superhumanism

My claim to speak on this subject is my dissatisfaction with both positions. I am neither a contented humanist nor a confident superhumanist.

What is Humanism? The dictionary says: "Devotion to human interests; a system concerned with human rather than divine interests, or with the human race rather than the individual."

Let me define it more precisely as an attitude of mind, a policy, a way of living according to which "the proper study of mankind is man," and the proper object of all devotion is humanity. Two claims follow: first, nothing less than humanity is worthy of devotion—we do not worship stones or animals. Second, nothing more than humanity is knowable by human minds—we cannot have reliable knowledge of gods or cosmic purposes.

Therefore all service, all loyalty, all praise and worship is due to the awakening spirit of humanity itself.

The humanist believes that service of humanity should be the dominant motive in an individual's life and the dominant principle of politics. But what does this service consist in?

It means helping to fulfill the capacities of human beings—their vital and mental capacities. It means helping others to be as fully human as possible, to realize in themselves the ideal form of human nature. And it means working to create a society favorable to such fulfillment.

This is noble. Who could quarrel with it? Yet I find it incomplete.

Superhumanism is an attitude according to which humanism is not enough. The positive side of humanism is sound and essential—we must serve humanity. But the denial of the superhuman is an error.

Superhumanism begins either with a vague feeling that humanity alone is insufficient—a persistent dissatisfaction with purely human concerns—or with some positive experience of worship directed toward a nonhuman Other.

This Other may be conceived in many ways: as gods, as Fate, as God, as Nature, as a Principle of Order, as the Whole. The variety of conceptions should not obscure the underlying commonality of experience.

Doctrinal elaboration is not essential to superhumanism, but it is almost inevitable—because the Object of devotion is excessively obscure from the intellectual point of view, even when vivid in experience. We struggle to articulate what we have glimpsed.

Importantly, superhumanism is not merely passive recognition of "God." It issues in practice as a regulative principle, making a difference to life and conduct—as in the Christian doctrine of salvation, which transforms how one lives.

The form humanism takes depends on the humanist's mental type. We may distinguish low-brow from high-brow humanism—or, if you prefer, simple from sophisticated, primitive from mature.

Low-brow humanism—and one might ask whether it deserves the name at all—starts with a sense of obligation toward fellow humans. Its goal is to fulfill people's actual felt needs as they arise, taking people at their face-value, as they seem to themselves, and giving them a happy life.

This is essentially Utilitarianism: the greatest happiness of the greatest number, where happiness means pleasant hours. Since the greatest number are average, simple folk, the emphasis falls on average, simple needs: safety, food, comfort, free movement, and "amusements."

There is no compulsion toward "difficult living," no suggestion that people should strive to rise above their actual state, no demand that they realize a finer potentiality. As Bentham notoriously said, pushpin is as good as poetry—if it produces equal pleasure. This view takes human beings exactly as it finds them and asks only how to satisfy their existing desires.

To the low-brow humanist, the high-brow humanist appears to suffer from a delusion. The cultural ideal is superfluous, he says, because practical fulfillment gives as much pleasure as any "higher" pursuit.

And this delusion, he argues, is due to the high-brow's divorce from actual life. Having lost touch with the concrete, the high-brow craves the sophisticated merely as compensation for what he lacks.

Consider the case of Communism, which is generally a form of naive humanism. Proletarian communists are mostly low-brow humanists—their goal is the fulfillment of simple needs. Cultural needs are incidental, and sophisticated needs are suspect.

This attitude is natural to the wage-slave who has unfulfilled material needs and no apprehension of the more subtle needs. How can you speak to him of poetry when he is hungry?

The communist intelligentsia, by contrast, tend toward high-brow humanism—but shame-facedly, as if embarrassed by their own cultural aspirations.

Communist theory seems to allow two stages: first, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, with its urgency of reorganization for fulfilling primitive needs; then, Triumphant Communism, which opens up new capacities and permits full humanism—though subject to popular sanction.

Note that the intuitive basis of low-brow humanism is the sense of obligation toward others. This is simply felt—felt as obligation, as "I ought"—and not derivable from self-regard.

That is to say, Utilitarianism is not derived from individualism but from social impulses, from an intuitive "oneness" with others. We feel their needs as making claims upon us.

Similarly, the values of individualism itself are intuitive. Why do we prefer the greater future pleasure to the lesser present pleasure? Why do we prefer the enduring personality to passing impulse? These valuations cannot be derived from anything more fundamental—they are simply seen to be right.

High-brow humanism accepts the low-brow kind as a sine qua non—we must first meet basic needs—but it goes further.

The goal is the fulfilling of human capacity, including not only needs actually felt but also dormant capacities for more difficult living. This means recognizing a precious potentiality in humanity: something in us is better than something else; pleasures are not all of equal worth.

The contrast between human and animal reveals what is essentially human in us, and the possibility of further growth. The goal is development of full humanity in human individuals—development of persons toward more complete personality, toward more conscious activity (ie of knowing, feeling, striving).

Let me dwell on this development of knowing, feeling, and striving—for each involves the others.

Knowing means to be aware of, to cognize, to apprehend objects of every kind—as truly as possible, as comprehensively as possible, as dispassionately as possible. "Objects" here includes the sensible world, the world of scientific concepts and metaphysical principles, the world of human personalities in all their diversity, the world of social enterprise, the objects of art, and the objects of religious consciousness.

Feeling undergoes a corresponding development: emotional reactions become more appropriate to their objects, more discriminate, more graded and varied. We learn to feel rightly.

Striving develops through subordinating lesser to major ends—through emancipation from the obsession of the familiar, easy, primitive impulse, for the sake of the new, more difficult, and more developed. Advance means finer adjustment to reality.

Such is the goal of humanism at its best. Call it the development of distinctively human capacity; call it the development of sensibility (external and internal), intelligence (practical and theoretical), and imagination.

The sanction, the basis, the justification of this aim is intuitive—we simply feel it to be right. We have a vision of the worthwhileness of these activities. They need no demonstration; they are not derived from something more basic.

Consider an analogy: the starving man craves food as a great good, for it is his nature to eat and his nature is unfulfilled. But he may not have the strength or resolution to go in search of food.

Similarly, the mentally starving person sees the humanistic goal as good—if they have it in them to apprehend it. But they may lack strength or resolution, or be sidetracked by easier goods. The difficulty is not in seeing the goal but in pursuing it.

The humanistic ideal raises difficult questions. Chief among them: Aristocracy or Democracy?

Should the aim be to give all people equal opportunity for fulfillment, even if this involves low personal attainment for everyone? Or should we secure the highest possible attainment for a few, even if this involves slavery for most?

Put differently: is the goal finally the fulfilling of particular individuals, or is it the achievement of a form of mind by means of individuals? Are people ends in themselves, or instruments toward some higher realization?

There is also a practical question. In the pre-machine age, it was impossible to afford fullness to all—someone had to do the drudgery. But machinery and mechanization might enable all to attain fullness, each up to the limit of their capacity. A well-ordered mechanized world should make the best possible of everyone.

Though mechanization may solve the practical dilemma, the theoretical dilemma remains. Is the ideally awakened world good because it is implied in actual human beings? Or is it good in itself, absolutely—and are individuals merely instrumental?

Consider four hypothetical worlds:

First: A world of mediocre beings exercising their mediocre powers fully. Second: A world of many abject slaves and a few splendidly fulfilled people attaining a high degree of humanity. Third: A brotherhood of equal supermen. Fourth: A world of many subordinates fulfilling their powers, with a few attaining higher humanity.

Examining these brings out important facts. The mediocre world we condemn as failure—mere contentment is not enough. The aristocratic slave-world we condemn as violating human brotherhood and the sense of obligation to others. The brotherhood of supermen is impossible, since capacities genuinely vary in rank. But the fourth—a world of hierarchical free exercise of powers—neither violates social obligation nor abandons the ideal.

What is the upshot of this discussion? First, satisfaction of felt need is not enough—we condemn the mediocre world. Second, perfection of the few at the expense of the many is equally condemned, because it violates love and justice, and because the few cannot truly accept it and be perfect—their perfection would be tainted.

Yet finally we judge in relation to the humanistic ideal: approximation toward the ideal form of humanity.

And for ourselves, each as an individual: we recognize that when we are most vital—at our most human, most spiritually awakened—we are ready to be sacrificed for the humanistic ideal. If by being sacrificed I could contribute, then I ought to be sacrificed; I ought willingly to sacrifice myself. And so ought all people.

Yet there is this crucial caveat: none may sacrifice another against their will. Self-sacrifice is noble; imposed sacrifice is tyranny.

But now we must face sceptical doubts about this ideal of human fulfillment. What is the justification of this sense of obligation? Is it not sheer prejudice? Why not simply eat, drink, and be merry?

These high-flown intuitions are suspect. Psychoanalysis claims to explain them away, finding their primitive unconscious sources. Often when we prize something, the cause of our valuing is some trivial association with infantile craving no longer accessible to consciousness.

Consider: worship of the Virgin may be based on infantile sexual and filial craving. Worship of a personal God may derive from the infantile need of a Father. Applying this to our present subject: perhaps the humanistic ideal owes its power merely to infantile conditioning.

How shall we answer this attack from unconscious motivation? First, psychoanalysis is very salutary and enlightening—it should make us sceptical of our own motives. But second, its principles are still uncertain and vague, and its method can be turned against itself. The analyst's trust in his theory might itself be due to infantile conditioning—perhaps revulsion against parental sanctity!

Third, reduction to primitive motives is illicit abstraction. A thing is not identical with its origins. And fourth, there is a genuine qualitative difference between infantile craving and mature recognition of the human ideal.

In spite of all critics, we cannot but accept the humanistic ideal as the goal for individual and society. All other goals are either incomplete—like the naive utilitarian goal—or positively false—like the goal of national power.

But from another point of view—from the superhumanist side—while the humanistic goal is necessary, it is not enough.

We must orient ourselves to something beyond humanity, even beyond human perfection. The humanist, in making humanity ultimate, has made an idol of the human.

Let me first state the case for humanism and against superhumanism as strongly as possible—using the arguments the humanist deploys.

Superhumanism is a dangerous drug, the humanist says. It is "habit-forming"—it gets hold of you. It makes all else seem worthless, insipid. It incapacitates one for useful life. It undermines the intellect by blurring all concepts and giving a bias to all reasoning.

The appeal of superhumanism, he continues, is to the infantile in us—to the desire for a fairy-land universe where all wishes are fulfilled glamorously, mysteriously, unintelligibly. Its peculiar power derives from infantile awe of the parent. Its seductive experiences are mere hallucinations, due to unconscious cravings for safety, peace, omnipotence.

In short, superhumanism is the supreme flight from reality.

The humanist points to the disastrous effects of superhuman religions in the past. They have withdrawn people from the battle of life to monastic seclusion, ritual activities, doctrinal disputation. They have withdrawn interest from this world—and from the call to make a better world—for the sake of "another" world, and soul-saving, and mortification.

They have established dominance by priests—a class privileged to "know" and to keep others from knowing. They have tyrannized by fear of divine wrath and hellfire. They have turned wealth to unproductive expense, building temples instead of improving the lot of the poor. They have resisted all advance in knowledge and morality.

And they have produced orgies of persecution and religious wars. The historical record is damning.

The humanist also argues from the limitations of the human mind. Our intellect is a practical instrument, formed by natural selection for the struggle for existence. It is not suited to metaphysics.

Consider this analogy: a spear is serviceable for hunting quarry but futile when thrown at the moon. So too our minds: evolved to deal with practical problems, they cannot grasp the superhuman. So why worry about it?

Moreover, human desire is an expression of human needs. When the stomach lacks nutriment, we desire food. Even our most developed desires are desires for human fulfillment—not for something beyond the human.

After all this, the humanist concludes, superhumanism is merely an expression of biological cravings—especially suppressed infantile cravings with glamorous feeling tone—and a tissue of biased reasoning whose illusory cogency is due to illegitimate use of practical concepts.

There is also the argument from world-confusion. Even if superhumanism were right in some sense, today—all hands to the pumps! Civilization is falling to pieces. What we want is a new human loyalty, a vivid realization of what the world might be, what might be made of humanity.

In times of crisis, superhumanism is pernicious because it distracts from the urgent task.

The Communist argument goes further: superhumanism is capitalist dope, calculated to sidetrack the proletariat. Fascism is merely the new version of it—with its mystical Race deity.

I should say in response: it is not calculated, but it does have the distracting effect—consider Roman Catholic influence. Superhumanism is an expression partly of crushed workers' yearning for a better world (the Fairyland motive), and partly of worldly capitalists' yearning for otherworldliness to salve their consciences.

Some of these humanist arguments strike home with great force. They have the common sense appeal; they seem reasonable and practical. Humanism is a clear, serene light to guide us, while superhumanism appears a will-o'-the-wisp leading us over a precipice. Once we follow it, we are lost—we flounder in folly, superstition, religious mania.

Yet humanism is not enough—for me. My sympathy is entirely with the humanist. I crave sanity, reasonableness, precision, rationality, science, practical bearing.

Then why reject humanism? Or why demand more? What more is needed? And if there is a more, what practical bearing could it have?

It is impossible to give a clear answer, though a clear answer is desperately needed. This is the most difficult of all questions—it stretches the mind to its limits.

Let me be as clear as I can about my reasons for demanding more than humanism. They may be summarized under four heads:

(a) A felt lack or insufficiency in humanism itself.
(b) A felt acquaintance with a positive Something which supplies that lack.
(c) A number of rational considerations—true rationalists, I believe, should be superhumanists.
(d) I live better, more humanly, through keeping sensitive to the Superhuman.

Let me take each in turn.

(a) Felt insufficiency of humanism. Naive humanism—utilitarianism—is felt to be insufficient by the full humanist. But developed humanism satisfies only insofar as it is implicitly superhumanist—that is, insofar as it sets humanity a goal which is good intrinsically, independently of opinion.

But even so, the best kind of humanism is not enough. For it turns humanity into a mutual improvement and admiration society. Its goal is no better than self-improvement—compare record-breaking, or learning fresh accomplishments for their own sake.

Humanism does not really make the best of humanity, because it leaves out our true function. And what is that function? That is what superhumanism tries to articulate.

(b) Felt acquaintance with a positive Something which fills the lack. This is extremely difficult to speak about accurately. Indeed the experience is indescribable save by emotive words which indicate the special, appropriate emotion but do not describe the thing itself.

Those who already know will understand; others will not. How dangerous to say this—it sounds like mere mystification. But I must say it nonetheless.

Call it a sense of the numinous, of the holy. The words that approximate it are: mystery, majesty, formidableness, horror, weirdness, eeriness—and also: exquisiteness, sweetness, excellence, beauty. All of these together, and yet none of them quite captures it.

It is possible to find this numinous quality in every kind of object: in pure sensation; in perceptual objects small and great (not merely aesthetic delight, but something more); in human persons and lives and dramas; in introspected mental activities; in personal relations—love and hate; in communities and the World Community; in History and Evolution; in scientific objects—atoms, stars; in mathematical principles; in objects of Art.

Normally these things seem just themselves—good, bad, or indifferent in relation to our needs; beautiful or ugly.

But sometimes they strike us differently. They come alive. Or rather, we come alive, we awake, and see them better, realize them fully. And we recognize in all of them—even the bad ones—a common character, a numinous significance. Something shines through.

And when, in solitude, we try to "feel existence whole"—concentrating on the actual passage of time and mentally embracing all experience, all that has ever come our way—we may have a vivid sense of... what?

Of the Mighty Other: weird, holy, dread. A "presence"—but not a personal presence. To call it personal would be to belittle it. The Mysterium Tremendum.

Youth perhaps is most sensitive to the numinous in particulars—Wordsworth said so—but I am not sure. As we mature we may respond more deeply to the numinous aspect of our whole experience.

Such is the solitary felt-acquaintance with the Great Other.

For some, the felt acquaintance comes best in company with others. Hence communal worship in all religions.

But we must distinguish two things. First, mere herd feeling: the sense of the crowd's presence, the lust of gregariousness, exulting in special stimuli—the perceived herd, herd noises, collective emotion. This is not worship; this is regression.

Second, community in the presence of the Other. "Together we face God." I, as part of the congregation, face the Other. I, as individual, bow—not to the herd—but to God. I, as congregation, worship: I subject myself to the Other in self-oblivious devotion.

The difference is crucial. In the first, we lose ourselves in the crowd. In the second, we find ourselves—together—before something greater than all of us.

(c) Rational considerations supporting superhumanism. We must distinguish two sorts of rationalism: the pettyfogging and the larger.

Pettyfogging rationalism is dogmatic. It craves certainty and slick interpretation. It accepts human reason uncritically, and current science as final. It tends to deny what it cannot cope with.

The larger rationalism is sceptical. Its spirit is "reasonableness" rather than "rationality." It does not mistake probability for certainty, nor slight possibility for impossibility.

Regarding human experience in this spirit of larger rationalism, we find sheer humanism unsatisfying. For it shuts the windows, draws the blinds, and seeks artificial elegance—oblivious of the outer night and the stars.

Instead, we boldly go out into the darkness. And we find the superhuman everywhere.

Consider what science itself reveals. The magnitudes of astronomy: aeons of time, expanding space, gigantic inconceivables, Relativity, star-dust. The minutiae of subatomic physics: the basic physical mystery of electrons and quanta. An overwhelming sense of the Vast Inhuman—and the recognition that all our knowledge of it is merely mythical, approximate, provisional.

We find also the story of the evolution of life: its immense length, its wastefulness, its precariousness and chanciness, its progressive release of potentiality, its ultimate incomprehensibility—and ourselves as brief moments within it.

We find the significance of the distinctively human as an achievement of evolution, with the conviction that humanity is transitional—scarcely a beginning, even. But are we doomed? That remains unclear.

The Great Other includes humanity. We ourselves constitute the chief mystery for ourselves: the sheer fact of our awareness; our implication in the physical; our desiring this rather than that; our urging toward awakeness; our beginning and ending; our relationships together; our intelligence and imagination.

And this mystery has a significance that reaches beyond the human sphere—our striving toward spirituality points beyond itself.

Bearing all this in mind—and also the present growing humility of science, which no longer claims final knowledge—is it reasonable to blinker oneself with humanism? Is not concern with the superhuman the way of life? Though it is, admittedly, a dangerous way.

But though the larger rationalism points beyond sheer humanism, it should also restrain us from all doctrine—through realization of the Other's vastness, the limitations of our thought, and the snares of wish-fulfillment.

We may be tempted to say: "Surely then there must be a God—a personal God, and benevolent. And therefore all is well, immortality is assured," and so forth.

But we must not. We must outgrow the craving for security and the desire to have salvation guaranteed.

We may say only this: I am aware of an unspeakable Beauty and Majesty, which I salute though it destroy me. I can say no more about it—only about its effects on me.

I am aware also of the claims of altruism and of the humanistic ideal. These remain the objects of practical loyalty. I ought to serve them unswervingly.

Yet—if fate goes against them; if I suffer; if my beloved suffer; if all people are tortured; even if the human race is destroyed—I must salute the Supreme Beauty which I see.

The humanistic ideals find their final justification in humanity's function as worshipper—as the being capable of apprehending and saluting what is greater than itself.

(d) Pragmatic considerations—the practical effects of sensitivity to the superhuman. Note that this is not the crude pragmatic reason for belief in God, namely "comfort." Something deeper is at stake.

We must first recognize the practical dangers of superhumanism: the tendency to withdraw from actual life; to live in a dream world peopled with abstractions and doctrines; the tendency to dogmatize, to persecute, to disparage reason and science, to lose the critical faculty, to obsess over individual soul-saving, to succumb to mob hysteria.

These dangers must be guarded against, not run away from. The solution is not to avoid the superhuman but to approach it rightly.

What are the practical effects of humanism and superhumanism at their best? (Note that some humanists are more than humanists—implicitly superhumanist.)

Humanism may give generosity, refinement, fortitude. But it risks aridity, complacency, lack of detachment—and lack of humor, from taking humanity too seriously.

Superhumanism of the undoctrinal sort may give selfishness and withdrawal—but this is a perversion. Rightly understood, it should give and can give a heightened temper of the will, improved muscular tone of the spirit, which makes a subtle difference in conduct day by day, minute by minute.

What is the psychology of this heightened temper?

First, it presupposes a degree of sensibility—the spirit's eyes must be open. Second, what is revealed awakens the spirit further—as when, in sleep, we are sensitive to sound, but the bell actually wakes us.

The final result: conduct is raised to a new plane, a finer adjustment to circumstances. Compare the effects of coffee on thought processes—a sharpening, a quickening. We become more able to live with style instead of sloppily. We get the best out of ourselves. Everything seems more worthwhile.

There is a sense of the Presented Other, a Presence—Reality terrible and beautiful—and participation in It, in the Real.

The result is at once more energy and more detachment. More strength for serving the Human Ideal. And more detachment—in success and in failure alike.

This detachment extends not only from self but from humanity as a whole. We feel humanity to be so small, and to be finally instrumental. Instrumental to what? To worship—to apprehending and enjoying the universe, and thus contributing a distinctive beauty to existence.

And out of this humility comes a new dignity—a dignity the sheer humanist must lack. It is the dignity that comes from free subordination of oneself to something more admirable than oneself.

The humanist subordinates himself to the human ideal, but cannot subordinate humanity itself to anything higher—and therefore, ultimately, cannot subordinate even himself. There is no final check on human pride.

But "humanity is instrumental to worship." The mind sensitive to the superhuman has thus a humility, a dignity, and a peace which is unshakable—and which underlies even the dread of the holy, the vision of the horror of existence.

This person has also a deep "felt-scepticism" of human thought. They feel its superficiality, its minute scope, its merely mythical character. And therefore they feel the presence of that which utterly transcends it.

This should make the superhumanist, in the long run, a better thinker than the pure humanist—more sensitive, supple, and cautious. They will not take fashionable principles too seriously: not 19th-century materialism, nor 20th-century mentalism, nor psychoanalysis, nor even "the Scientific attitude" as final truth.

But equally, they must beware of taking theology seriously. They must avoid all doctrine; welcome all hypothesis.

Scepticism about human reason need not lead to irrationalism. The superhumanist may still accept objective rationality. The Other they worship is irrational to them—freakish, terrible, grisly. But it may yet be in itself systematic.

The universe may be intelligible—though not to humanity. And even humanity may progressively understand, and must try to do so.

This is not a comfortable position. But comfort is not what philosophy promises.