I

The humanistic tradition is something exceedingly complex and intricate. It originates in Greek and Latin antiquity; second, in Christianity, particularly the Christian cultural developments which took place in the Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries; third, in the rupture of Christian disciplines, the rehabilitation of the creature, and the revelation of Man and Reason which are characteristic of the Renaissance. And the subsequent centuries have enriched or altered this tradition in manifold ways. With such historical complexity, I wonder whether it is possible to enumerate and classify the elements of the humanistic tradition in a complete and unquestionable manner. I shall be satisfied in pointing out, perhaps according to criteria somehow arbitrarily, nine elements which seem to me, from a philosophical viewpoint, to be chiefly significant in this tradition:

First, the respect for the creature and the affirmation of its own dignity. And, accordingly, the notion of the value of the individual person, I mean of the basically equal value and the basically equal rights of all human persons.

Second, the consciousness of the value of introspection and subjectivity.

Third, the development of scientific thought, as a means of assuring the mastery of man over matter and nature.

Fourth, the recognition of the primacy of justice and law as essential norm and preserver of human society and human common life.

Fifth, the longing for emancipation from any state of servitude and for the conquest or achievement of freedom.

Sixth, the awareness of the superiority of internal over external forces, and of the invincibleness of the inner world of man confronting material pressure or coercion.

Seventh, the sense of the universality of reason.

Eighth, the sense of the sacred character of truth, which is to be loved for itself and which liberates man by its own virtue.

And ninth, the sense of the superiority of delectation or delightfulness (bonum delectabile) over usefulness (bonum utile), -- of wisdom over science, information or power, -- and of the immanence of contemplation (with regard to knowledge, art and poetry as well as spiritual life) over the transitory nature of action.

II

The points I should like to make are as follows:

1. These nine elements are permanent in the humanistic tradition as such, and the rejection or ignoring of any of them impairs this tradition, but the permanency of the humanistic tradition is not necessarily warranted by human history.

2. In the present state of our civilization, the first five elements are still recognized, even emphasized, but are seriously threatened.

3. The last four elements are either disregarded or flatly thrown aside.

4. If the century ahead is to preserve the humanistic tradition, a hard spiritual struggle must be waged to strengthen or revive all of these elements. In such a struggle we must appeal to reason, and to the very power and inner resources of reason to heal the wounds that reason itself has suffered for three centuries. But reason alone is not enough, it has to be quickened by love, I means love for man, love for the people, and love for God.

I am aware of the fact that too many diverse views are encompassed in my summary, and that a long time would be necessary to develop and clarify them.

For the sake of brevity, I should like only to emphasize some of the points I made.

All of the nine elements which I have pointed out in the humanistic tradition can be related both to the inspiration of Christian faith working in the depths of human consciousness and to the progressive unfolding of the powers of reason, to the progressive crise de pouvoir of reason in Western culture.

Christianity and reason, or, if you prefer, Christianity and rationalism.

But reason and rationalism can be meant in two quite different senses, or furthered and cultivated in two quite different directions.

Either they are considered in continuity with faith, and as improved, liberated and established in their own realm and dignity under the quickening influence of faith itself. Humanism of St. Thomas, Theocentric humanism.

Or they are considered in opposition to faith and as freeing themselves from faith and religion tradition and finally rejecting them. Realm of pure reason. Humanism of the rationalistic tradition in its strictest sense. From Descartes to Kant, Comte, Hegel. Anthropocentric humanism.

I need not lay stress upon the misunderstandings which took place in this regard in the XVIth century, at the very beginning of our modern culture.

As a matter of fact, these two interpretations were intimately intermingled in the vital forces which made up our humanistic tradition, though, on the part of the philosophers and the intellectual leadership of our civilization, the second interpretation was to take the upper hand more and more.

(I observe, by parenthesis, that marxism and communistic atheism are in the line of anthropocentric humanism and rationalism. The ultimate point of evolution, -- the catastrophe of it.

Profound difference with nazism. They are in.)

To come back to my considerations, the mixture of these two opposite trends, their natural struggle and conflict were an element of tension and progress in modern history, but at the same time an element of tragic ambivalence and a hidden principle of rupture.

Now the humanistic tradition is at stake.

1. The permanency of the humanistic tradition is not necessarily warranted by human history. It is not automatically certain that this tradition will survive and prevail.

• Terrible "growth crisis". Industrial revolution. Technological age. Risk of technocracy. Mass civilization. Displacement of populations. Recapting of basic concepts. Freedom . . .
• Depends on human freedom and man's spiritual energies.

2. The nine elements are permanent in the humanistic tradition as such. Matter of observation. Teaching of history. All of them have outstanding representations in this tradition. Matter of reason. Logical connection.

• If we accept the following definition of humanism: Humanism essentially tends to render man more truly human and to make his original greatness manifest by causing him to participate in all that can enrich him in nature and history (by "concentrating the world in man" as scholar put it, and by "dilating man to the world").

  It at once demands that man make use of all the potentialities he holds wihtin him, his creative powers and the life of reason, and labour to make the powers of the physical world the instruments of his freedom.

• We see that the nine elements in question are rooted together in the essence of humanism.
  • I) The respect for the creature and the affirmation of its own dignity: the very basis of humanism and the humanistic tradition.

    Immediate corollaries of this principle:

    • The value of the individual person. The self who is the human creature in its fundamental reality and the reason of humanity.

    • The basically equal rights of all human persons.
      Members of the same species
      Have the same essential destiny
      Share the same essential dignity.

  • II) Then we have the progressive revelation and development of the main characteristic power of the individual person. I mean
    • 2) The value of reflexivity, introspection and subjectivity

    • 3) The scientific thought as a mean of assuring the mastery of man over matter and nature.

  • III) Then the basic requirement of the social life of these individual persons and their deepest claim and aspiration in the evolution of human society:
    • 4) The recognition of the primacy of justice and law as essential norm and preserver of human society and human common life.

    • 5) The longing for emancipation from the state of servitude and for the conquest or achievement of freedom.

  • IV) Finally, the highest conditions of humanism, which are of a spiritual nature, and which relate on the one hand to the specific power and the fundamental property of the spiritual element in man, on the other hand to the fact that truth is the very life and freedom of the intellect and of man and that man is fully human only by grasping and loving realities which are better than himself. Hence our four last elements of the humanistic tradition:
    • 6) The awareness of the superiority of internal over external forces, and of the invincibleness of the inner world of man confronting material pressure or coercion;

    • 7) The sense of the universality of reason;

    • 8) The sense of the sacred character of truth, which is to be loved for itself and which liberates men by its own virtue;

    • and 9) The sense of the superiority of delectation or delightfulness (bonum delectabile) over usefulness (bonum utile), -- of wisdom over science, information or power, -- and of the immanence of contemplation (with regard to knowledge, art and poetry as well as spiritual life) over the transitivity of action.

    Contemplation is but the self-perfection and fruitful achievement of our spiritual powers.

    Wisdom is fruitful and savoury knowledge, sapida scientia. Experience of the flavour of being.

    I don't preach hedonism, I know that pleasure or delight is not our supreme end, this supreme end is good itself, what is in itself worthy of supreme love.

    But I insist that what is good in itself possesses its own flavour and delight, and that, as a matter of fact, we cannot penetrate into the goods of the spirit without being delighted in them. The longing for such delight is but one with the longing for truth, beauty and heroism.

    The sense of spiritual pleasure or delectation, and of its superiority over usefulness, is both an innermost incentive and the flower of humanism, and the humanistic tradition cannot do without it.

• 3. In the present state of our civilization, the first five elements -- that is, those which relate to the very basis of humanism, to the humanistic requirements of social life, -- are still recognized

  The war we are emerging from was waged for the sake of these elements.

  But they are seriously threatened.

  • 1) By the general factors that I pointed out a moment ago.

  • 2) By the increasing indeological power of one of the main trends in modern humanistic tradition, I mean the anthropocentric and materialistic trend.

    Unable to find any rational justification for the truths we have been fighting for.

  • 3) By the mental and moral poisoning that the world is still suffering from the appearance and bursting of Nazi abcess, which itself was but a monstrous symptom of a general process of barbarization.

    Men are losing faith in man.

  Yet some of these five elements are emphasized today, at least theoretically, by every spiritual or political group:

  • The first one (respect for the creature)

    Though its corollaries (value of the individual person, -- human equality) are disregarded in fact by many.

  • The third, (Development of scientific thought as a mean of assuring the mastery of men over matter), -- Though more scientific progress, if it is separated from wisdom, shifts more and more obviously to assuring the mastery of matter over man.

  • The fifth, (Longing for emancipation from servitude). -- Though the longing for emancipation, if we try to fulfil it by wrong ways and on the basis of a false philosophy of life, runs the risk of bringing about new forms of servitude.

  • And the two others (the second, -- value of reflexivity, introspection and subjectivity, and the fourth, -- primacy of justice and law) continue to receive a lip-homage, though, as a matter of fact, they are rejected or despised in practice by a number of our contemporaries.
    • Atomization of human life. Press. Radio.
    • Movies.
    • Realpolitik.

• 4. On the contrary, the last four elements, which relate to the highest, spiritual condition of humanism, are either disregarded or flatly thrown aside.
  • Man crushed by external forces. And resigned to undergo coercion.

  • We are losing the sense of the universality of reason.
    I mean not only . . . replaced by adjustment to environment or circumstances. Oversocialization. Atomization of the effort of knowledge.

    I mean . . . people are despairing of reason. Irrationalistic trends. Existentialism as a symptom. Suppression of natures. Man delivered to techniques and despairing of reason.

  • We are losing the sense of truth. Replaced by a search after efficacy. Truth at the service of man. In social and national matters. That is true which serves best the action or the class.

    In spiritual matters. Instead of a search after truth, we are confronted with a search after action to be exercised on man in accordance with his particular present needs, -- after such or, such result to be obtained such or such tdrend to be developed in our fellow men, by patting and gratifying the aspirations of their subjectivity.

    Liberation sought not in truth, but in power.

  • We are losing the sense of the superiority of delectation over usefulness, wisdom over science or power, contemplation or immanent activity over transitive activity.

    In other terms, we are losing the sense of spiritual joy or delight.

    Now, as St. Thomas Aquinas put it, following Aristotle, no man can stay long without pleasure or delight . . . That's why those who cannot enjoy the delights of the spirit, go over to the fleshly ones.

    • S. Th. II-II, 35, 4, ad 2
    • Ethic., VIII, 5 et 6; X, 6

    Here we have the most acute diagnosis for the sensuous exacerbation of our time.

• 5. If the century ahead is to preserve the humanistic tradition, a hard spiritual struggle must be waged to strengthen or revive all of the elements inherent in this tradition, especially those elements which pertain to a spiritual and transcendent order and the destruction of which manifests its consequences only in a slow, but in an inescapable manner, because they relate to supra-sensuous and supra-empirical realities to which human life is appendent.

  In such a struggle we must appeal to reason, and to the very power and inner resources of reason to heal the wounds that reason itself has suffered for three centuries, -- Revival of metaphysics and moral philosophy. Reconciliation of science and wisdom.

  But reason alone is not enough. The diseases that the human mind is now suffering are of an affective origin. Egocentrism, Narcissism. Introverted instincts and affects cause repercussion throughout the very life of the intellect and impair what can be called the intellectual generosity of reason, its power of recognizing the primacy of truth. Only by giving himself to a being he loves man can be saved from narcissism and his reason can find again full and generous adhesion to reality. That's why reason has to be quickened by love, I mean love for man -- for the very essence and nature of mankind; -- love for the people, -- for the concrete, individual persons and not only for an aristocratic elite of the mind (humanism of scholars or dandies) but for the whole people, walking and suffering; -- and love for God, the only Person to whom we can totally give ourselves all the while giving ourselves to all other persons and loving all that exists.