Ideas and Challenges
13
unsurpassably important and real causal force, an agent. Theism is an orientation in life in which reality is defined by the interaction of human and non-human agents. Humanism, by contrast, holds that the right orientation of human life is the creative exercise of power to shape one’s
existence and to seek f lourishing. As an outlook this means that the reality is constituted by non-agential forces (e.g., laws of nature or social systems) amid which human agents act and live.Humanism, like theism, has taken different forms, depending on how
the idea of “man” or “humanity” was conceived. Humanism in its various types (scientific, secular, religious) presents different outlooks and orienta-tions on life.possess intrinsic worth. The most basic difference among humanists, as (^6) What every humanist agrees upon is that human beings
Tony Davies notes, is whether “ ‘Man’ denotes an essential as epochal and never-to-be-completed process.”or ... a end provide related but starkly different orientations in life and also out-destination, less a given set of intrinsic qualities than the goal of an (^7) “Man” as originstarting point and “man” ...
looks on existence. Does one live out from one’s humanity or does one struggle to bring one’s humanity into being?detail. Now, we can introduce some other basic ideas to this book. They The next two chapters will explore humanism and theism in more
are, perhaps, awkward terms, but they are coined in order to identify f laws in traditional humanism and classical theism and therefore to name the challenges now posed to the human future.
To be human is to be engaged constantly in the task of world-making, culture creation. We are profoundly social creatures and also beings that Overhumanization and Hypertheism
must, come what may, make sense of our lives. Outside of the bonds of society, existence would be meaningless and wretched. Human beings imagine the struggles and vulnerabilities of existence within meaningful forms in order to buttress, console, and inspire their lives. We unavoidably
seek to “humanize” reality, make it our own, in order to share it with others.human power more and more intervenes to direct the dynamics of life on this planet. Régis Debray writes that increasingly people in advanced There is a downside to the work of culture creation. In the current age,
nations live within “transistorized, fiber-optically cabled, air-conditioned, video-surveilled surroundings.” Night and day are awash in man-made light. Little seems outside the human realm in which spirit can live and