New book on humanism: a review

By David Warden

What is Humanism For? by Richard Norman will be published on 24th June 2025 by Bristol University Press. David offers a sympathetic yet critical review.

Richard Norman is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kent, where he spent most of his career, and a patron of Humanists UK. He is one of the authors of Understanding Humanism (2022) and the author of On Humanism (2013).

“What is Humanism For?” seems a peculiar title for a book. It reminds me of a school pupil who once asked me, after I had given a presentation about humanism, “What’s the point of humanism?” Perhaps I had not done a very good job in making this clear. However, the explanation for the title of Richard Norman’s latest book is that it belongs to a series of around thirty titles including “What is Truth For?” and “What is Music For?”

Part of Bristol University Press's "What is it for?" series of books

What sort of thing is humanism?

Richard’s book, as expected, is superbly well-written – a model of clarity and conciseness. Coming in at just 138 pages, and costing £8.99 in paperback, it’s also accessible and affordable. In the opening chapter, Richard relates humanism to our existential needs as human beings. Unlike other animals, we cannot simply live by our instincts. We are condemned to think, to make decisions, and to try to make sense of the world around us. Human beings have, of course, used many devices for this “sense-making” activity, including a great variety of religions and philosophies. Humanism belongs to this sense-making category of things. It has been called many things including a “life stance” and a “non-religious worldview”. Richard hangs his new book on a phrase suggested by the German-American humanistic psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1900-1980). Humanism, he suggests, is “a frame of orientation and devotion” (page 2). This is similar to the description of humanism as “a meaning frame” suggested by Peter Derkx in The Future of Humanism (chapter 21 in The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism, 2015). I have sometimes described humanism as an “operating system” or even a kind of “satnav”. All such metaphors can help to explain what humanism is and what it is for, and they help to illuminate the idea that humanism, unlike many religions, is not a fixed set of doctrines.

But in what way is humanism a “frame of devotion” as well as a “frame of orientation”? What are humanists supposed to be devoted to? Erich Fromm is quoted as saying that “the need for devotion itself is a primary existential need” (page 3). To most humanist ears, this will sound like religion. Christians, for example, may be devoted to God, Jesus, Mary, or to a favourite saint. The clearest answer to my question “what are humanists supposed to be devoted to?” comes in Chapter 3 on meaning. Humanism is a framework not only for our theoretical beliefs about the nature of reality, but also to help us answer questions about how we should live and what we should live for. Richard seems to be suggesting in this chapter that what we should live for, what gives meaning to the life of a humanist, will be determined by the individual through personal choice.

This is not to say that anything goes. Richard outlines a number of general features that are distinctive of a humanist answer to the question of what will make my life meaningful. He starts with “authenticity” – a meaningful life must be one which is my life, not a life of feeling alienated from my authentic choices. Secondly, he highlights the importance of creativity whether this be gardening, cooking, painting, or writing poetry and so forth. Thirdly, he emphasises the relevance of social connections including intergenerational links, communities we belong to, and caring for the whole of humanity. And fourthly, he expresses the significance of our relationship with the natural world. Drawing these strands together, he explains that each individual human life is a unique story with a beginning and an end. Humanist funerals usually include the story of a human life, presented as a coherent and meaningful whole. None of this is controversial, but it is difficult to see how this account of humanist “devotion” – to my purposes in life, to my social connections, and to the natural world – differs in any distinctive way from any secular account of what it means to live a meaningful life. I can’t help feeling that the pupil who asked me, “What is the point of humanism?” would still be struggling at this point.

I hesitate to mention Auguste Comte whose mid-19th century “Religion of Humanity” is given short shrift by Richard on page 92 but, despite Comte’s crazy scheme for an elaborate secular religion, his core idea is one which resonates with me. Comte is routinely misunderstood as having called for the “worship of humanity”. A more accurate interpretation of Comte’s secular religion is that it was devoted to human progress. His three-part slogan for the Religion of Humanity was “Love as our principle, Order as our basis, Progress as our end”. We may part company with Comte over his conceptualisation of “Humanity” as a “goddess”, but his arguments are intriguing. He observed that every human being alive is indebted to the collective efforts of previous generations of humans and that we should recognise that we are the beneficiaries of humanity’s “Providence” far in excess of anything we can hope to repay in a lifetime. We have a moral obligation, therefore, to work for the present and future good of this “Humanity” of which we are a living member. We are to become the servants of “Humanity”. We often hear the phrase “People of all faiths and none” and humanism is routinely placed in the “no faith” category. I always challenge this. To me, humanism means, among other things, faith in humanity. Humanists can of course find meaning in their individual lives through gardening, cooking, painting, nature, communities, political action and so forth. But so can everyone else. What’s distinctive about humanism for me is its “devotion to humanity” – to the betterment of the human project and the human story. This distinctive and perhaps central aspect of humanism seems rather underplayed in Richard’s account of humanist “devotion” although I recognise that Richard himself is very active in Humanist Climate Action. The notion of “humanity” has of course taken a severe battering since Comte's day and perhaps modern-day humanists are uncomfortable with the idea of being devoted to “humanity” – even as an abstract ideal. The ghost of Comte may, however, be present in the contemporary political idea of “progressivism” – an amalgam of liberal-left ideas which attracts criticism from the political right for its utopianism and intolerance.

Happily, there is an alternative and less besmirched object of devotion for humanists: the classical ideal of the good. Richard refers to this value numerous times throughout the book, for example in his discussion of Epicurus. Humanists are, or should be, devoted to the ideal of living good lives and creating good societies. We can, of course, deliberate on what makes for a good life and a good society and there may never be a wholly definitive answer. But this elusiveness is perhaps what makes the ideal of the good so tantalising. Humanists are enjoined to “live good lives without God” but this phrase assumes a naïve realism. God, in some accounts, is best understood as a personification of goodness, or “the good”. Analogously, no one believes that Britannia, the mythical personification of Britain, literally exists or that she literally “rules the waves”. Understanding myth and metaphor can help us to engage more sympathetically with people who are “devoted to God”. On this account, all that separates theism and humanism is an additional letter “o”. It's an important distinction because treating God as a literally existing being is, in my book, a dangerous form of idolatry. But nevertheless, a more sophisticated understanding of theology can inform our attempts at dialogue with “people of faith”.

History of humanism

As expected, Richard traces the history of humanism back to ancient Greece, to the emergence of a naturalistic view of the world by reference to purely physical causes, and the grounding of ethical values in human needs. Fast forwarding to the 15th century, he writes that Renaissance humanists contributed “an important resource for modern humanism but were not ‘humanists’ in the modern sense. The thinkers we are looking at in the humanist tradition were variously called, and called themselves, ‘free-thinkers’ and ‘deists’, and later ‘secularists’ and ‘rationalists’, and the word ‘humanist’ only came to the fore in the 20th century”. I think this can be described as the orthodox or received version of humanist history. It’s rarely contested but in my view it's a partial and somewhat flawed account of humanist historiography.

Richard’s history of humanism fails to mention Francesco Petrarca – known as Petrarch – the so-called “Father of Humanism” who died in 1374. Petrarch was a scholar, writer and poet who was instrumental in the revival of interest in ancient Greek and Roman literature. He travelled extensively across Europe, searching for forgotten manuscripts, and he’s credited with rediscovering the works of authors such as the Roman philosopher Cicero. Petrarch was devoted to studying the humanities—grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy—as a means to cultivate virtue and wisdom. His collection of letters emphasises individual experience and self-reflection which marked a departure from a Christian tradition focused on religious understanding. Likewise, Renaissance humanism more generally was an intellectual movement which emphasised the study of classical antiquity focusing on human potential and human achievement in contrast with Christianity which attended to “saving your soul”. In this way, I believe that Renaissance humanism is more significant than merely “an important resource for modern humanism”. To me it represents the absolute essence of humanism. It continued to flourish during the German Enlightenment via thinkers such as Goethe and Humboldt, who emphasised holistic education and the idea of developing your full potential. At the beginning of the 19th century, this is what the word “humanism” referred to: an education in the humanities as an aid to the development of your character and potential. Skipping over Renaissance humanism as merely a “resource” for modern humanists while elevating “free-thinkers”, “deists”, “secularists”, “rationalists” helps to explain why modern-day humanism often appears constrained by an oppositional anticlerical tradition with niche appeal, rather than an expansive human potential movement with broad appeal.

Politics

On page 105, Richard writes that “commitments to human rights, to free thought and free expression and to democratic government are unquestionably at the heart of any humanist approach to politics”. He states that humanism does not align neatly with one or another of the conventional political stances of left and right, but the story he relates grounds humanist politics in the radical and liberal left tradition of Paine, Wollstonecraft, Carlile, Mill and Bradlaugh. This, again, can be described as the orthodox or received version of humanist history. It’s understandable, but it helps to explain why modern-day humanism often appears constrained by this tradition and broadly antithetical to any kind of conservative humanism which appeals to tradition, family, communitarianism and civic nationalism. As a result, humanism may be criticised for being too biased in favour of liberal individualism and utopian universalism and under-appreciative of, or even hostile towards, political thought which recognises the values of place, belonging and social cohesion.    

Identity and belonging

On page 25, Richard writes that “You do not have to be a member of a humanist organization to be a humanist”.  Of course this is true. Millions of humanists in the UK and elsewhere do not belong to any humanist organization. But this is like saying that you can be a Christian without belonging to a church, or a Muslim without going to a mosque, or a football fan without ever attending a match, or a musician without ever playing in an orchestra or band. When humanists say: “You do not have to be a member of a humanist organization to be a humanist”, they are contributing to the invisibility of humanism and the triumph of atomised individualism. Being a humanist on your own cuts you off from the potential of growing as a humanist with other humanists. Maybe this is what millions of humanists prefer and Richard notes that there are innumerable kinds of community to which people belong, including families, sports clubs, political parties and so on. But such communities are not places where specifically humanist values, such as freedom of thought, are deliberately cultivated. Indeed, political parties are liable to suppress such freedom in favour of conformity to ideology.

Richard asks whether there is something irreplaceable in the nature of religious communities and the needs which they meet (page 90). He notes that “humanist organizations at local, national and international level[s] do provide communities of support for humanists” (page 95) and yet, in an apparent change of mind, he concludes that “humanism does not seek to replace communities with new kinds of communities” (page 103). To my mind, this ambivalence about humanist organizations is one reason why organized humanism “on the ground” is critically endangered. If humanism truly is “a frame of orientation and devotion” then the most natural thing in the world would be for humanists to form humanist communities in order to cultivate a sense of meaning, belonging, and identity around this frame of reference. There are risks of course, as there are in any organized community. But the risks can be mitigated by the nature of humanism itself, which is not a dogmatic creed but a cultural space in which individuals can flourish together, drawing inspiration from the great tradition of humanist thought going back as far as ancient Greece.

There's a smidgen of potential support for my view in the latest issue of New Humanist (Summer 2025). Lois Lee, senior lecturer in secular studies at the University of Kent, writes that “the decline of institutions dedicated to existential meaning-making”, such as churches, makes “contemporary existential outlooks [such as humanism] much less visible in society”. This can result in “widespread illiteracy in non-religious existential culture”. She observes that “The religious... benefit from recognition of their worldviews, as well as extensive dedicated resources for their existential development... The majority of people living in Britain are now non-religious, yet they lack dedicated institutions that encourage and support existential reflection”. This is not true of those who are within striking distance of successful humanist groups which have been encouraging and supporting humanist existential reflection for many decades. But such groups need more recognition and support from the centre. Maybe New Humanist magazine itself, now that it is being published by Humanists UK, will re-engage with local humanist communities.

More emphatic support for the view I have been outlining comes from an article written by Vir Narain some years ago and published on Humanists UK's Humanist Life website. In Rethinking aims and strategies (a link to this article is provided below), Vir observes that “Over the last few years it has become increasingly clear that the objective of providing an alternative to traditional religions has lost its salience for the Humanist Movement...Humanism has to see itself as a successor to traditional religions, not as an enemy.” Vir is Chairman of the Indian Humanist Union and we are publishing an article by him in this issue of Humanistically Speaking.

Conclusion

As I said at the outset, Richard’s new book is superbly well-written and an accessible primer on “received humanism”. Therein lies both its strength and its weakness. There’s another humanist story to be told. I would like Richard and other humanist philosophers to think outside the standard humanist box so that we can build a humanism fit for the 21st century and beyond.

Further reading

• ‘Humanism as a Worldview and a Way of Being’ (Chapter 19) by David Warden in Spiritual Consciousness as Evolutionary Learning – a symposium edited by Maureen Ellis and published by Routledge on 16th May 2025. David tells the story of his journey from Christianity to humanism and outlines what humanism means today.

• ‘Rethinking aims and strategies’ by Vir Narain, Humanist Life, Humanists UK. A longer version of this article is here: Rethinking Our Objectives and Strategies (2017) by Vir Narain in Humanist Perspectives, issue 202, Autumn 2017

• Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity (2001) by Andrew Wernick, Cambridge University Press.