Christopher Rush

I am excited to see directly what Babbitt and Co. wrote that helped shaped the generation of thinkers I have read so much over the years.  My understanding of humanism as effectively “living the human life fully and well,” tempered by Christian doctrines of sin and salvation of course, will certainly be improved by these primary sources.

Such is where I began this exploration of a humanist – I was aware of some humanists, including Babbitt, Erasmus, Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, and Russell Kirk, but beyond knowing differences between “Christian humanists” and “secular humanists” existed, I could not identify any specific philosophical distinctions besides religious faith.  Thanks to this course, I have a much better understanding of the positive incarnations of what a “humanist” is over the years, an understanding that will, I hope, improve my life and teaching for the foreseeable future.

I was intrigued throughout the course that Babbitt’s conception of “humanist” was not in contrast to “secular humanist” but against “humanitarian” and Rousseau’s romanticism.  At the beginning of Literature and the American College, which I read for my paper, Babbitt says, “The humanist, then, as opposed to the humanitarian, is interested in the perfecting of the individual rather than in schemes for the elevation of mankind as a whole; and although he allows largely for sympathy, he insists that it be disciplined and tempered by judgment.”  I encountered this at an interesting time, as I was simultaneously reading a Kempis’s Imitation of Christ with some students and discovered how individualistic his emphasis was as well, that we must focus on improving ourselves before we can make the aggregate better.  The humanitarian’s efforts at improving the world is effectively nothing more than “white washing tombs,” Tom Sawyer-style, doing “good deeds” as if that truly improved people’s intellectual and spiritual lives (Professor Ryn’s equating humanitarianism with the “virtue signaling” of our day was especially helpful).  While detractors may consider this self-centeredness, the humanist, taking the position that right thinking will then translate into right action, does not advocate stopping at improving oneself.

The humanist is also humble.  Babbitt perhaps implies this more than declares it, but such an idea is present in his frequent references to the need to restrain oneself, especially one’s passions, to the “higher will” – while indicating too much restraint could be just as bad as not enough.  “The humanist is equally on his guard against the excess of sympathy and the excess of selection, against the excess of liberty and the excess of restraint … [and] must at least do inner obeisance to something higher than his ordinary self, whether he calls this something God, or, … calls it his higher Self….”  Paul Elmer More treats on this idea in “The Humility of Common Sense” in the changing (at the time) fields of art and science, noting that the loss of such restraint and humility was not doing art and science any favors: “The submergence of the humanistic conception of man as a responsible creature of free will has been accompanied by an emergence of the romantic glorification of uncontrollable temperament….”  In no field of human endeavor (art, science, politics, ad infinitum), can the rejection of the humanist’s call for restraint and humility lead to the wellbeing of man, only unbridled excess, chaos, destruction, and Duchamp.

I saw this emphasis on humility in some helpful readings for my paper, from the more overtly Christian side of humanism.  Vigen Guroian says of the Renaissance Christian humanists, “they especially valued humility in personal conduct and magnanimity in public life,” which is certainly true of the twentieth-century Christian humanists.  Guroian says this in the context of the Renaissance humanists’ freedom to combine classical truths with medieval faith, and man’s sin nature and his redeemed nature.  Man is not a gnat’s wing above being the scum of reality – created in the image of God, incalculably dignified by the Incarnation of Christ, humanity is worth what was paid for it, the blood of Christ.  The humanist is able to know this with humility.  A “humanist” is not necessarily one who rejects God or elevates man as the center of reality; a humanist knows she is created by God and will be sensorily and bodily experiencing reality eternally as a human being, and there is nothing shameful about that.  While I did know that intellectually from a distance, in a sense, this course and these readings have brought that truth much nearer and much more palpably to me.

As my time in this course with the New Humanists draws to a close, I see my initial vague “living the human life fully and well” idea has been refined quite well.  In my paper I focused on intellectual inquiry, moderation, and imagination, but I have absorbed other humanist emphases as well, such as “the one and the many” and an improved view of humanitarianism.  Though I gave this topic short shrift in my paper, the most memorable thing I have learned from this course has been the humanist emphasis on humility.  We read before the course started Babbitt’s “Humanism: An Essay at Definition,” in which he says, “Humanism gains greatly by having a religious background….”  I quoted above Babbitt equating the “higher Self” with “God” (at least the concept), which Professor Ryn corroborated in his talk, reminding us all that Christians then (and now) get too hung up on Babbitt’s diction and almost wilfully miss the truth of his arguments.  Even though I was not bothered by Babbitt’s attitudes during the course, I appreciated Professor Ryn’s chastisement, since I realized I was probably a bit harsh on Babbitt in my paper.  I, too, needed this course’s reminder on being humble.  Humility is not a barrier to erudition; erudition is not an excuse for abjuring humility.  I pray I remember that long after I complete this doctoral program as I try to live a full human life well to the glory of God.

References

Babbitt, Irving. “Humanism: An Essay at Definition.” In Humanism and America. N.d. Course handout. 

———. “Two Types of Humanitarians: Bacon and Rousseau.” In Literature and the American College. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1908. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/literatureandam02babbgoog/page/n36/mode/2up.

———. “What is Humanism?” In Literature and the American College. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1908. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/literatureandam02babbgoog/page/n36/mode/2up.

Guroian, Vigen. Rallying the Really Human Things: The Moral Imagination in Politics, Literature, and Everyday Life. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005.

More, Paul Elmer. “The Humility of Common Sense.” In Humanism in America. N.d. Course handout.