Sarah Bakewell won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her biography of Montaigne, How to Live. Her new history of Humanism and Humanists, Humanly Possible, is a bit like National Geographic: you may never have wondered about the honey hunters of Borneo – or the story of Humanism – but if you start reading, you will be hooked.
The simple question, What is a Humanist, is the gateway to a whole world of quirky people – some famous, some not so.
Bakewell is a fine storyteller, sprinkling her deeply researched history with quips and anecdotes. If you’re expecting a book on the history of Humanism to be dusty, humorless, monochromatic, and boring – you should prepare for much more fun. Humanists are more Epicurean than Stoic, more Oscar Wilde than Mr. Spock.
There is a cliff hanger. A literal cliff hanger. Like an actual guy hanging from a cliff.
Jeremy Bentham once wrote an essay titled Nonsense on Stilts, and who wouldn’t want to read about that?
There are double agents, like the French government censor who helped Diderot hide and distribute some of his works.
There are Judas-like traitors to scholarship, like the printer who would erase passages of an encyclopedia that he did not like before going to press, and destroy the original entries so they could not be recovered.
There were monks who erased old manuscripts to reuse the parchments for Christian writing – and monks who became, as copiers of old books, the sole sources of some ancient manuscripts.
This is also the story of the revolutions of print, paper, fonts, and bindings, leading to mass production, leading to the observation, “…thus proving that underwear is not just for making manuscripts.”
And then there is the discovery of the clitoris by Italian physician Realdo Colombo. (Which was, like America, always there, of course. But someone needed to put it on the map to make it official. Dr. Colombo wondered, Why did this take so long?)
So. . . what is a Humanist? According to 19th century Humanist Robert Ingersoll, a Humanist is someone who is guided by the following principles:
Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now.
The place to be happy is here.
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Seems straightforward. Uncontroversial. Common sensical. How could people who embrace that get into so much trouble over the centuries?
People, especially people in power, don’t like to be told that they’re wrong, or at least have been unconvincing.
Malesherbes was guillotined, along with his entire family, for opposing the execution of King Louis XVI.
Olympe de Gouges advocated for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery, and also opposed the execution of Louis XVI. Also guillotined.
Nicolas de Condorcet was arrested after likewise advocating for women’s equality. He’d supported the French Revolution, but condemned the subsequent violence. (Clearly a Revolutionary In Name Only.) He was imprisoned – and found dead in his cell the next day.
Thomas Paine was also imprisoned for opposing the king’s execution, but his release was secured by James Monroe. Paine’s statement of Humanist principles was,
I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
Clearly these people are trouble.
While Bakewell self-identifies as a Humanist, that doesn’t mean she is blind to their vices and shortcomings. She clearly adores David Hume – as his contemporaries did – but gives him no slack for his appalling racism. Many early Humanists would have dithered over the correct answer to (novelist and Dante translator) Dorothy Sayers’ pointed question, “Are Women Human?”
Humanists may at times be accused of hero worship, as early Humanists idolized Cicero. But icons are made to be broken. Knowledge grows and evolves. PBS ought to enlist her to do for Humanism what Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers did for mythology and Neil deGrasse Tyson did for the Cosmos. There are dozens of instructive and/or amusing stories here.
One warning: Humanly Possible is a dangerous book if the greatest threat to your household budget is an unquenchable need for books. Bakewell introduces dozens of authors whose works and lives are tempting. Most are available iin translation. And bookstores take special orders. Caveat lector.