tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post2265231715357070463..comments2024-03-28T14:16:42.371+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Solzhenitsyn on humanismBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-12915687617396506412016-03-02T00:16:21.720+00:002016-03-02T00:16:21.720+00:00"If humanism were right in declaring that man..."If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die."<br /><br />This is a pretty one-liner, but it is not true. Murray's view of humanism is much closer to the truth.<br /><br />So you are proposing a different version of humanism than Solzhenitsyn's. This does not make this sentence false. <br /><br />Even more, Solzhenitsyn's definition is closer to how humanism is lived. Most secular people think the goal of life is to be happy (see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_therapeutic_deism - belief 3). Only some intellectuals disagree but they live their life with happiness as their supreme goal, thus contradicting their intellectual claims.<br /><br />Imnobodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-33508966927455945752010-07-17T21:44:20.277+01:002010-07-17T21:44:20.277+01:00If humanism were right in declaring that man is bo...<i> If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. </i><br /><br />This is a pretty one-liner, but it is not true. Murray's view of humanism is much closer to the truth. For them, man is not born "to" anything. His existence lacks all objective meaning. His existence is the culmination of random chance and impersonal processes, less than the tick of a machine in significance.<br /><br />In tension with this, however, is the humanist belief in immanentizing the eschaton. The belief in creating a self-actualizing, self-defining, transcending superman and that all other goals should fall before this one. Transhumanism is only the most demented manifestation of this thrust --- you can see it in Hollywood, where restraints on self-creating expression are everywhere excoriated (c.f. "Footloose") It exists in medicine (or, I suppose more properly, medical ethics) where a "life worth living" is one in which the self-creation can occur and a life not worth living is one in which the self-creation cannot.Billnoreply@blogger.com