IHUMANISM – a guide to the philosophical background

This guide to the philosophical background to Humanism, is intended as a basic guide for busy teachers. It tries to avoid some of the murky backwaters sometimes found in philosophy and includes a bibliography for those of you who may wish to read further.

To begin at the beginning. It is conventionally agreed that the attitude of mind generally thought of as 'philosophising' began, as far as the west is concerned, with what is generally known as the period of classical Greek thought just before the time of Christ. Among many Greek writers at the time, three stand out as being particularly important, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates is known as the moral philosopher who famously said "The unconsidered life is not worth living". Plato is the mystical philosopher who believed that ultimate reality lay beyond the realm of the senses. Reality was transcendent and he called it "The World of Ideas". Aristotle, on the other hand, believed that the realm of our senses was real and could be known by sense experience, by observation and experiment.

It has been said that everyone today is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. In these broad terms, Humanists are Aristotelians, religionists are Platonists. From these beginnings humanism continued to develop as a philosophy until the present day. The Eighteenth century period of European philosophy known as the Enlightenment is particularly important to Humanists, Of this period Humanist philosopher A.C. Grayling (Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck College) in his recent book What Is Good writes "Anyone interested in the Humanist spirit as understood here, the spirit common to classical antiquity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment … would most likely nominate individual liberty, the pursuit of knowledge, the cultivation of pleasures that do not harm others, the satisfaction of art, personal relationships, and a sense of belonging to the human community, as the elements of the good life."

The Nineteenth Century saw the arrival of atheist writers Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, and saw the publication (1859) of Charles Darwin's great work The Evolution of Species by Natural Selection. For humanists, a key aspect of this seminal theory is that, unlike religion, it sees human kind as part of the natural order.

Other 19th and 20th century philosophical influences that have contributed to the decline in the status of religious belief:

• 19th C – utilitarianism as an alternative to religious teaching on making moral judgements,
• 20th C– positivism, the attack on religious language led by A.J Ayer, Bertrand Russell and others.

More recently – humanist writers such as Lewis Wolpert and the American philosopher Daniel Dennett, have begun the attempt to account for religious belief as a natural phenomenon explainable in scientific terms.

Modern humanists, following these influences, tend to support scientific thinking rather than religious dogma, support secularism (keeping religion out of the state/politics), democracy and liberal values.

Almost all humanists are atheists (there is no God) and materialists (the world of matter – the realm of our senses, is the only reality).

Humanists believe that humanity evolved as part of the natural world, unlike religionists who believe that God created man separately (somewhere between the animals and the angels).

It follows that humanists do not believe in the power of prayer and do not believe in souls. Religious faith is not a virtue but a limitation on our minds that we would be better off without. We have only one life. We are responsible for it and for our own destiny. Many humanists think that history, including recent history, teaches us that religious belief is often bound up with human conflict and the repression of progressive ideas.

Further reading

• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. Bantam Press, 2006.
• Humanist Philosophers Group, What is Humanism? British Humanist Association, 2002.
• British Humanist Association website, What is Humanism?
• Stephen Law, The War for Children's Minds. Routledge, 2006.
• A.C. Grayling, What is Good?: The Search for the Best Way to Live. Phoenix, 2004.
• Lewis Wolpert, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief. Faber and Faber, 2006.
• Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Penguin Books, 2007.
• Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. Free Press, 2006.

About this page

This is our first attempt at a support paper for teachers. Our writer is a retired teacher of religious education, trained in Exeter with, later, a degree in religion and philosophy from the University of Lancaster. We hope you can excuse any clumsiness in style, inappropriate or patronising presumptions on our part and trust it is our intention to get better in learning our support role for teachers.

Put our website on your 'favourites' list to facilitate further consultations. It would help us to help you if you would kindly let us know two things: As per the Agreed Syllabus, which religions do you choose to study in Key Stage 4 ? Which exam board do you use ?

Feel free to send any suggestions or requests via the schools Contact us page of our website.