The Hub’s resident book reviewer Patrick Luciani tackles Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell, published by Knopf Canada in 2023. Watch for Patrick’s book reviews every two weeks at thehub.ca.
In the 2023 World Happiness Report, the Nordic countries take five of the ten happiest places in the world, with Finland coming in the top spot even though it shares a long border with one of the world’s unhappier and most dangerous countries; Russia ranks 70th on the list.
The report ranks countries on a few factors: economic wealth, decent wealth distribution between rich and poor, generous social welfare programs, and low government corruption enforced by the rule of law. There is another common factor generally shared in “happy” countries. Aside from the general characteristics that most happy countries are small, rich, cold, and democratic—and here I include Canada—they also share a decline in Christianity and a belief in God. Atheism and agnosticism are rising in rich Western countries.
One possible reason is the rise of humanism, a philosophy that people can be good without God. Christianity has lost its appeal as a moral force. In her latest book, Humanly Possible, Sarah Bakewell traces the development of humanism as a philosophy over seven centuries that centres the world around human bonds that connect us. We are part of nature and not separate from it. Humanism doesn’t view this life as something to be endured but to understand and appreciate what we have here and now. Our obligation is to this existence even if another is waiting, though we have no knowledge of one.
Bakewell looks back to Cicero, admiring the human accomplishments and excellence that have emerged since antiquity, and follows that thread through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, when reason freed humans from superstitions and irrational fears. Here, she traces the great humanists from the Catholic theologian Erasmus to Bertrand Russell. The turning against religion was slow but persistent, from the skepticism of David Hume to Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man, when he admitted in his private diaries that he had no remaining belief. His life and work determined his agnosticism. The humanism of existentialism followed, providing the philosophy that we are radically free and responsible for our actions. But the central message of humanism was clear: human decency doesn’t depend on religion. It precedes it.
Bakewell never sees religion as utterly separate from humanism. As an atheist, she is sympathetic to the instincts of those with faith. However, she doesn’t go as far as Christopher Hitchens attacking all religions as a mental delusion and the greatest enemy of morality. Hitchens would agree with Voltaire that “every honourable man must hold the Christian sect in horror.” She puts herself firmly on the side of science and reason—and a child of the Enlightenment—as the only way to truth. She takes her inspiration from the 19th-century American humanist Robert G. Ingersoll that “happiness is the only good, [and] the time to be happy is now.” Bakewell puts the individual at the centre of her world and takes spiritual satisfaction in the wonderment of reality, a 13.8 billion-year-old universe, and the realization that we can comprehend and experience profound happiness and awe from looking at the night sky. Peering through a Hubble telescope increases the pleasure immeasurably. Existence is reason enough to be happy.
But for all its virtue and admiration for humanity’s accomplishments and appeal to reason and the goodness innate in the human spirit, humanism has always suffered from its naiveness about the tragedy of life. Humanism’s banner of virtues (reason and compassion) has always been easily swept aside whenever malignant political forces arise. Humanism appeals in times of peace and prosperity but doesn’t do well in times of stress and conflict. Even now, humanism is defenceless in the accusation that it is a Eurocentric ideology.
There is something vital and true about Nietzsche’s argument that humanism through concepts such as “human rights” was just a means for the weak to constrain the strong. Even the word happiness carries a flimsy desire for human striving. We haven’t evolved to be happy but to endure and survive. As philosopher Sam Harris reminds us, there is no off-ramp to the daily anxieties of life, and to say we should not worry and be happy is a mean slight to the hardships of life. Even the most successful among us are usually in a state of remorse, regret, and failure. This may be too harsh, for there are moments of joy and appreciation of a good life, but much of that is in the realm of chance or luck and not choice.
To completely put aside spiritual or formal religion also impedes understanding. Religion, for all its critics, does provide deep solace and meaning to many. Taking that away will only bring more misery, despite John Lennon’s utopian dream to see all countries and religions vanish in his song “Imagine.” We know from studies that the “happiest” among us are followers of religion. Humanists may want to push religion and Christianity into the background of life, but Christianity has made the world safe for humanism, and, indeed, the Enlightenment itself.
The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig believed profoundly in humanism’s capacity to better the world but ended his life when it became apparent after the Second World War that no such thing was on the horizon. The historian Tom Holland reminds us that even Voltaire was more influenced by “biblical ethics” than he cared to admit. Christian ethics are founded on the demand that we lessen the suffering of others, that the individual human soul is paramount, and that every human life is of equal value. We may not realize it, but we live and prosper in a world founded on Christian values.
