Spring Break
Us and Our Minds: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
An Essay
Stanley Sultan, Clark University
Issue date: 6/1/08 Section: Spring 2008
When I was young, I believed one could tell a person's intelligence from her or his eyes. This essay is about some of the ways I was mistaken. Put more elegantly, it is about the relation between human development and the Western tradition named for us that began in Italy some six centuries ago.
Humanism, the English general form of its name, became current only during the nineteenth century; but Humanist goes back to the (belated) advent in England of the Renaissance. Today it is usually denied the capital letter, and its most common meaning is "a scholar and/or teacher in the humanities," with the humanities generally defined negatively as "academic disciplines that study neither natural nor social phenomena." But that meaning of humanist shares the family tree whose roots have spread through and branches over six centuries with two very different meanings now current: the radical Right one of religious reactionaries- "atheist subversive"; and the radical-chic one of some literary theorists-"foolish believer that either language or life can be more-or-less understood." As different as the latter two meanings are from each other as well as from the common academic meaning, both designate more or less the same people, including a socialist-which is to say, radical Left-academic humanist like me.
My thesis, a radical one, concerns not my academic, but all our, humanity; still, the pun is essential to it. It comprises a sequence of four propositions. Humanism initially altered a few individuals' understandings of what humans are. Then over centuries-with Thomas Jefferson the crucial bridge-the Humanist tradition instituted for most humans in Western societies an altered relation to our minds. In the United States today, that relation-the essence of human development-is in trouble. Finally, the Humanist tradition both shows us how to respond, and indicates for the future a new and radical (to the root) altered relation to our minds, one which has subversive social consequences: hypostatizing the intellectual equality of almost all humans. As the initial sentences betoken, this argument for my thesis employs personal testimony.
Humanism, the English general form of its name, became current only during the nineteenth century; but Humanist goes back to the (belated) advent in England of the Renaissance. Today it is usually denied the capital letter, and its most common meaning is "a scholar and/or teacher in the humanities," with the humanities generally defined negatively as "academic disciplines that study neither natural nor social phenomena." But that meaning of humanist shares the family tree whose roots have spread through and branches over six centuries with two very different meanings now current: the radical Right one of religious reactionaries- "atheist subversive"; and the radical-chic one of some literary theorists-"foolish believer that either language or life can be more-or-less understood." As different as the latter two meanings are from each other as well as from the common academic meaning, both designate more or less the same people, including a socialist-which is to say, radical Left-academic humanist like me.
My thesis, a radical one, concerns not my academic, but all our, humanity; still, the pun is essential to it. It comprises a sequence of four propositions. Humanism initially altered a few individuals' understandings of what humans are. Then over centuries-with Thomas Jefferson the crucial bridge-the Humanist tradition instituted for most humans in Western societies an altered relation to our minds. In the United States today, that relation-the essence of human development-is in trouble. Finally, the Humanist tradition both shows us how to respond, and indicates for the future a new and radical (to the root) altered relation to our minds, one which has subversive social consequences: hypostatizing the intellectual equality of almost all humans. As the initial sentences betoken, this argument for my thesis employs personal testimony.
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Monica Ackers
posted 3/21/09 @ 1:46 PM EST
Nice review! Thanks!
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