The Shape of Theological Humanism
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‘You’re right,’ said Pangloss, ‘for when man was placed in the garden of Eden, he was placed there that man was not born to rest ...’ ‘That is well put,’ replied Candide, ‘but we must cultivate our own garden.’ ”ut operaretur eum (^28) Voltaire retrieves a longstanding image of – that he might work – which proves
human life in the world in order to complete the story of Candide.commentaries it has spawned, but also among the ancient Epicureans and, later, Michel de Montaigne. The aim of life on this account is self-cultivation. One The image of life in the garden is found in the Book of Genesis and the
must have an honest, if not always appreciative, awareness of the limits placed on human existence. Within those limits, the human task is to cultivate a character befitting one’s own judgment and one’s relations with others. Valuing friend-ship and sociality, the garden image has nonetheless given rise to the praise
of solitude. As Montaigne would put it, “As much as I can, I employ myself entirely home, don’t go social cares that too easily and too often preoccupy us with matters of penul-upon myself.” Again, in the away.” (^29) True freedom is self-labor removed from the tangle of Essays, “You have quite enough to do at
timate importance. We must cultivate our gardens, that is, our personal lives.surround it, obviously entail a different conception of human freedom and the orientation of life than the theatre. Self-cultivation means that within the The image of the garden, and metaphors of growth and cultivation that
limits of mortal existence, the bonds of affection, love, and desire, a good human life must be nurtured and developed. Humanists of this type focus on the development of virtues and the refinement of taste and sentiment. Civility and friendship are important to a measured good life. The “human-
izing of human nature consists in the gradual organization of instincts or impulses or original tendencies in harmony with the growing conception of individual and social worth, i.e., in harmony with a community of inter-ests.” (^30) There are natural impulses and desires in human life that must be
oriented toward their proper ends. The work of cultivation is soul-work; it is the formation of the personal and social virtues.have led to other forms of current neohumanism. These criticisms come in In this light we can understand other criticisms of classical humanism that
two forms. In one, the idea that the purpose of life is to “cultivate self ” has fallen to the critique of totality famously made by Emmanuel Levinas. Any system of thought that begins with the “I” enfolds the “other” into “totality,” into the same. (^31) Totality is similar to what we have called overhumaniza-
tion: self. Despite this criticism, Levinas is a kind of neohumanist; he writes of a humanism of the other, and, as we will see later, his thought harkens towards theological humanism.the project of enfolding and encoding of the other in the realm of the 32