Introduction

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Introduction

1 Humanistic Texts brings together extracts from written and oral sources around the world to show how man gradually frees himself from local prejudices and myth in developing an understanding of the human condition. The texts contain extracts from the wit and wisdom of individuals from many different cultures, at sufficient length to give some familiarity with their unique contributions. Book references and links to Internet textual sources open the way to reading the individual works in greater detail. The site contains chapters for the period from earliest times up to the Twentieth Century.

2 Such extracts from the oral and written traditions of the world are of value to us, because the summary they provide can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves and of the challenges we face in a rapidly changing multicultural world. Obviously, we will encounter situations that thinkers in the past did not meet. But we can learn from the way they break out of stereotyped thinking and see the world in a new light; and we can experience the pleasure of being in the presence of enquiring and creative minds. Furthermore, they often reveal a view of the human condition that, although reached long ago, is still relevant to us.

Timeliness

3 A multicultural understanding of what it is to be human is timely. In the Twentieth Century the universality of humanistic concerns found global expression for the first time, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of kinship [brotherhood in the original].

4 Unfortunately a review of our past shows that our most human characteristic is to form conspiracies, gangs, or armies to murder other members of our species, treating them as mere objects in the way of our desires. Animals do not do this. In humans, aggressive war appears in the pre-history of China, Sumer, and Greece, and stalks throughout subsequent history to ravage every continent. In the Twentieth Century some 100 million people were killed, as humanity indulged in bloody wars, revolutions and massacres in Africa, Armenia, India, China, the Soviet Union, the Chinese Peoples Republic, the Middle East, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo, as well as globally in two world conflicts.

5 Atrocities and genocide are carried out by cultures that treat other communities as if they were merely insensate objects. This absence of respect and compassion stems from a failure to understand and respond to the humanity of others. Of course, venal and doctrinal motives generally are at work in preventing understanding of the humanity of other cultures. However, even when such powerful forces are absent, cultural traditions can act in a similar way. There is the peculiar viewpoint that only the West has a tradition of rationality, liberty, and tolerance. Conversely, there is abroad the contention that "Asian" or "African" values somehow have a monopoly of successful authoritarian or mystical traditions. Both views are refuted by the records of past civilizations. These show, in fact, that the important values for achieving understanding—such as mutual respect, rationality, tolerance, and sympathy—have emerged in many different cultures. And it is important to make this clear in seeking to encourage understanding throughout the world.

6 We live in an age when the need to act in a spirit of kinship is particularly urgent, as our destructive powers in war have become so great. The Twenty First Century may possibly see some reduction in species murder amongst mankind, because aggressors themselves have less expectation of escaping destruction. There is also the hope that video communications will allow the horrors of war to be brought home as never before; so that enthusiasm for war may perhaps wane. However, the essential ingredient of a spirit of kinship is direct understanding of each other, free from culturally imposed stereotypes. And in this respect the most hopeful advance in the Twenty First Century might possibly be the greatly enlarged capacity people have to communicate directly with each other. This new capability has been achieved by development of the Internet and the World Wide Web—a revolution comparable to the development of the printing press. For this reason, Humanistic Texts is presented at an Internet web site, humanistictexts.org.

7 The experiences of the past century and the opportunities of the new century make this an opportune time to seek improved understanding between cultures and to move towards a spirit of kinship.

Selection of Texts

8 It is with the goal of fostering greater understanding among diverse cultures and nations that Humanistic Texts focuses on the creative, cooperative, and contemplative aspects of humankind that gradually emerge in the world’s verbal traditions. For the first time we are able not only to put together the broad outlines of such an account but to make it freely accessible to people throughout the world.

9 As this collection is intended to foster mutual respect, tolerance, and sympathy among all cultures, it cannot include arguments that claim particular fragments of the human race to be different and in some way superior to others. Similarly, as a collection of humanistic texts, it cannot include dogmas that describe all other viewpoints as being in error, reserving the prospect of happiness for their followers alone. Nor can it include philosophical systems claiming mastery of one race or group over others, or offering guidance from idealistic worlds to a privileged few.

10 The texts can include accounts of basic human experiences and concerns found throughout the world. Extracts are therefore drawn from works in many different cultures in a way that illuminates the underlying creative and compassionate human values we all share. Values that derive from the basic experiences of being human—birth, growth, pain, love, the family, death, community, government, work, art, science, and play.

11 The Oxford English Dictionary (1971 edition) presents as one definition of humanism, "Any system of thought or action which is concerned with merely human interests (as distinct from divine)." Merely human interests involve the survival of our planet. The ever-present and immediate dangers are war, poverty, disease, hunger, and degradation of the environment. Underlying causes are underdevelopment, unemployment, ignorance, and greed. These threaten to destroy the ecology of our planet and thus extinguish the biosphere and ourselves. Humanism seeks to remove these dangers and their causes, by promoting rational and compassionate behavior. The extracts presented here show that the seeds for such behavior exist. The literature of the merely human is quite splendid, containing much that is admirable in human experience.

Alternatives and Choices

12 This collection of writings from the past does not provide a comforting set of moral absolutes. There are many viewpoints represented and there is often no resolution of such long-standing questions as how to balance the demands of one’s family with those of society at large, how to assess the danger of a risk against the value of a reward, how to reconcile passionate love with common sense, or how to decide between the active and the contemplative life. What is presented are arguments made for and against alternatives. Confucius emphasizes love for one’s family, Jesus of Nazareth emphasizes love for one’s neighbor. In other cases the viewpoints are presented in imaginative literature by authors who illustrate the triumphs and tragedies of choices made by representative human types—Gilgamesh, Achilles, Sancho Panza, Falstaff, for example.

13 Rather than offering moral certainties, these extracts record moral conflicts and show how people in specific situations have tried to resolve them. It is the skill of past authors in portraying the feelings aroused in such conflicts and the effects of particular resolutions that prepare us for seeking resolution of our own concerns. To paraphrase Matthew Arnold’s words, these authors, by opening our minds to the past of our own and other cultures, cause us to turn a fresh and free stream of thought upon our stock notions and habits, and to become restless with the stereotypes of the present and skeptical of superficial answers.

The Emergence of Knowledge

14 The selection uses the original words of the authors as much as the paraphrase of translation allows. The creative, compassionate, cooperative aspect of humanity gradually emerges in spite of being immersed in a morass of exploitive, divisive, murderous antisocial activity. Clearly, one cannot reject humanistic ideas because they may appear in societies that have facets that are less than ideally human. On this basis one would have to reject ideas themselves, and their expression in language, for these concepts and techniques emerged in proto-human societies that socially were very uncouth indeed.

15 Recognition of truth is a slow process. The history of medicine, for example, shows a gradual emergence of an understanding of the human body and a falling away of mistaken ideas. The extracts have therefore been put into a sequence that gives some sense of how our understanding of the human condition has evolved, even though this sometimes includes the presentation of mistaken ideas.

16 What becomes clear in reading through this sequence, is that the emergence of rational thought and enquiry does much to provide a basis for cooperation and tolerance. Rational investigation of the facts of a situation under dispute provides a basis for reaching agreement.. This viewpoint finds expression in the fifth century BCE, when the Greek philosopher Democritus advised, "Believe not everything, but only what is proven". In China, a little earlier, Confucius described how rulers sought to improve their kingdoms: "Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things." An understanding of the limits of factual knowledge provides a basis for understanding how beliefs different to one’s own arise, and so opens the way for tolerance—an agreement to disagree peaceably when the relevant facts are not known

17 Some of our oldest ideas of what it is to be human are, in fact, very modern in the context of the whole of human history. And sometimes they may be found preserved in recent oral traditions rather than in ancient texts. For example, Alex Saluskin, a Yakima Indian, gave an account in the second half of the Twentieth Century of learning from his grandparents how to hunt. Although modern, his words take us back tens of thousands of years, maybe longer, as they describe the tradition of passing on information from generation to generation. For this reason, the initial chapters contain extracts from oral traditions such as this.

18 The extracts then turn to written records from the ancient civilizations of Sumer, Babylon, and Egypt before passing on to those of China, India, and Greece. Subsequent extracts are made from an collections of oral traditions and texts from around the world. The extracts tend to group in a way that reflects the emergence of new centers of intellectual activity. The focus shifts from the oral tradition to Sumer, Babylon and Egypt, to Greece and Rome, then to the Arab empire, and finally to Renaissance Europe, while there is continuous Chinese and Indian intellectual activity throughout the whole period, with new ideas emerging in the latter part in Japan and Korea. At the end of the period, ideas from the Americas appear.

The Authors

19 The extracts deal with the perplexities of the human condition and with its celebration. Included are the words of people who have thought deeply and analytically, of those who have through experience, perhaps brief, much wisdom to pass on, and of those who have celebrated the human condition through creative literature or song. All these approaches to understanding are important. We are intensely interested in what it is to be human, what experiences our fellow human beings have, how they respond to them. In the chapters presented, the authors cited include philosophers, doctors, poets, lawyers, scribes, dramatists, politicians, scientists, novelists, and ordinary folk.

20 Thus, we can read and compare the words of Sumerians and Chinese on the devastation of war, of Africans and Bedouins on pride in livestock, of Eskimos and Mongols on the experience and injustice of savage weather, of Indians and Koreans on the philosophical puzzles of human psychology, of Chinese and Judeans on how society might be ordered, and the words of practically everybody on love, parenthood, and death. In short, what it is to be human.

21 The authors also include thinkers with religious convictions in those cases where they have turned their thoughts to merely human concerns. And some texts include terms that might be thought to refer to the supernatural rather than the human—for example, reference to "the heavens" as a source of man’s nature (Chinese), or personification of hunger and poverty (Native American), or references to poetry being born in the bosom of a god (Italian). Examples such as these can be viewed as metaphors when they are a small part of a true account of the human condition. A text is limited to the words and concepts available in society at a particular time. If the only name for ultimate reality is the heavens or some supernatural concept—and the society prohibits alternative forms of expression—that will generally be the term an author uses.

22 A possible way of dealing with ideas attributed to local deities is use of an alternative attribution such as "the unvarying way" or "the way things are". This form of expression is not tied to a particular culture. It has been well developed in China, India, and Greece. By making use of a unifying concept of this type one becomes aware of underground rivers of humanistic thought that gradually emerge into the daylight of general recognition.

The Translations

23 Since many of the extracts presented are from non-English texts, extensive use has been made of translations. Unfortunately, in every translation much that is distinctive in an author’s style is lost. As this is a summary of our growing understanding of what it is to be human, rather than an anthology of literature as a fine art, the loss of literary qualities is not so serious, although regrettable.

24 Often old translations have been adapted into a more contemporary style. After the passage of a century, the words of the Confucius and Mencius in James Legge’s translations of the Chinese classics, for example, become more accessible if expressed in modern English. Such an adaptation is in the spirit of the recommendation of Gautama Buddha: "[My teaching] is a living reality. The words used to transmit it should be the words used daily by the people. I do not want the teaching to be transmitted in a language that can be understood by only a few scholars". As the extracts presented are short in comparison with the original works, references are provided at the end of each chapter to enable readers to look into the rich and voluminous works that are its source.

25 What is preserved in oral and written records is only a partial selection of the full range of human thought; and what is translated is only a small portion of that. The translations available are understandably biased toward the interests and concerns of the people who produce translations, and they predominantly have literary and religious interests specific to their own culture. As a result, there are many areas where the words of original authors are unavailable in translation. It is difficult to find, for example, translations of the thoughts of an Indian mathematician, or of a writer in the Eastern European Renaissance. The present compilation is inevitably biased towards translations that are readily available. Perhaps this initial effort will encourage a broader, more ambitious work.

Different Paths

26 The journey of the human spirit is central to the success of humanity, by whatever measure one uses. The steps along the way are not the monopoly of any particular region or time. There are similarities among the thoughts of people at different times on different continents. There are common concerns about humanity and common steps towards enlightenment, which I hope will become evident in the following chapters. There is a unity that links the different ways or paths for understanding of what it is to be human: from different directions they approach the same destination.

Sources

Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Available from the United Nations, New York.

Matthew Arnold: The Works of Matthew Arnold, edited by G. W. E. Russell. Oxford, 1905.

Guatama Buddha: Old Path White Clouds, by Thich Nhat Hanh. Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, 1991.

Confucius: The Chinese Classics, Volume I, The Works of Confucius, translated by James Legge. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1893.

Democritus: Ancilla to The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, translated by Kathleen Freeman. Basil Blackwell, Oxford,1948.

Alex Saluskin: Can the Red Man Help the White Man?, edited by S. M. Morey. The Myrin Institute, New York, 1970.

For an illuminating discussion of the fallacy of believing that tolerance, liberty and mutual respect are traditions found only in the West, see "East and West: The Reach of Reason", by Amartya Sen. The New York Review of Books, July 20, 2000, pp 33-38.