The Shape of Theological Humanism
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the norm for attaining rational tranquility in doing one’s duties. The emperor Marcus Aurelius and the slave Epictetus, both Stoics, agreed on that maxim.philosopher Benedictus Spinoza railed against the inability of persons to In a similar way, the radical Jew, excommunicated Christian, and chastised 15
grasp a purely rational and disinterested vision of life and the working of reality. God alone is “substance,” and so real. Everything else is actually a mode of God’s being. Human beings, as modes of God, can know this truth and by rational insight increase their power of being, their conatus, i n
which is to be found human well-being. “The world was not created with a view toward human well-being.”should adjust themselves to reality and thereby find some measure of rational happiness. (^16) Human beings, as rational creatures,
Arthur Schopenhauer looks not to inspiration from ancient India, he argued that a non-conceptual and non-perceptual awareness of the dynamics of living and growing means that will In a way opposite to Spinoza’s or Stoic criticisms of a humanistic attitude, apatheia or rationality but to will. Drawing
is basic. Will as the unsurpassable metaphysical reality can become operative in human beings even while will follows the laws of nature. Reality from a human perspective seems divided against itself: the will to live always strug-gles against the will to live. Existence is conflict and evil and suffering. We
cannot escape this reality. Pessimism is a realistic and truthful outlook on life. What little joy there is comes from the contemplation of ideas in the form of beauty even if there is no escape from the blind will to exist. One must extinguish the will to live in oneself and thereby escape bondage to the will
to live. “Finally, with the destruction of experience and thought and self-consciousness, the Will to Live, also, deprived of its expressions, would be laid to rest.”Stoics, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer reject the basic ideals of humanism. 17
They set the human adventure within a cosmic reality whose purpose, order, or goodness do not aim at human flourishing. In an odd way, they can be seen as proposing hypertheistic criticisms of humanism insofar as Nature or Substance or Will is the supreme causal “agent” in reality and supremely
important as well, a “god.” Another criticism of humanism root and branch is hardly metaphysical or broadly theistic in nature. It is hostile to specula-tive thought and aims merely to relieve the suffering of sentient beings. Associated with the animal rights movement, its leading advocate is Peter
Singer, the widely read philosopher.tify human life” in order to that human Singer holds that Western religious and philosophical thought teaches life ought to be the object of reverenceescape conceptual ambiguity and. For him, we must entrenched “unsanc-