A frequent topic that recurs in discussions of Islam and Western Civilization is Samuel P. Huntington's book, The Clash of Civilizations. But this is somewhat of a misnomer because the friction between Islam and the West is really only the same age-old conflict between civilization and barbarianism, or as the classical scholars put it in Latin, humanitas versus barbaritas. Muslims in the comments sections get offended when I put it this way, or if I say they are barbarians or savages. So I thought it might be useful to provide a definition of the terms in order to clarify the conversation.
Barbarianism is just the absence of, or the opposite of, humanism, so I am here presenting a small article from the work of Dr. L.H. Peer on humanism. As an internationally recognized scholar published in peer-reviewed academic journals, his definition is authoritative, but I would like to add some caveats because there are some differences between technical academic terms and the way they are used in popular speech, and also between the standards applicable to academic rigor and those applicable to the general public.
For example, Dr. Peer insists that no one has a right to make a comment about a topic if he has not read everything that has been published on the subject (and in the original language at that), and cites the example that even though your specialty might be Shakespearean literature, you don't know if an article published in a peer-reviewed academic journal in, say, Czechoslovakia might change the entire premise of the paper you intend to write. While it is appropriate to insist that a scholar review all the thousand or whatever documents before critiquing somebody else's conclusions in his review of the thousand or so documents on a topic, for the general public's general knowledge, it is not practical to insist that the layman do so as well. That is why we have scholars, peer-reviewed academic journals, scholarly standards, and academic rigor. We trust those who have expertise in subjects to publish the take-away information from the voluminous topics in the books they write. Then we as laymen in the subjects can read the book that is recognized as the authoritative state of the art in a topic, and maybe another one or two for a second and third opinion, and feel that we are adequately informed on the topic at hand.
Additionally, in modern speech we take humanism to be a secular view, but that is not the technical academic meaning of the term, so Dr. Peer talks at length about the correct definition of humanism. I am not saying that people should not use humanism in a secular way since that is the way people use the term. That is a matter of the difference between prescriptive and descriptive linguistics. What I am saying is that an informed person should know the difference between the usages.
So without further ado, I present:
Humanitas in the Scriptures; or, How to Be a Humanist and Really Like It
Dr. L. H. Peer
I
There is always a chance that when a person speaks of a matter he may not get it straight. It depends on how many skills one has and how many texts one has actually read. Sometimes, in other words, people don't have all the facts in mind. The story is told about the little nun who was in the hospital and saw a man in the waiting room. He was pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and she felt she should comfort him a bit, and so she went up to him and said, "Sir I can tell just from looking at you what your problem is and all about you." And she said, "Can you sister?" She said, "For example, I can tell that your wife is here and that she is having a baby." He said, "Yes, you're right." And she said, "It's your first baby." He said, "No sister, as a matter of fact, this is our twelth baby." "Oh," she said. "You must be a fine Catholic family." "No, as a matter of fact," he said, "we're Mormon." This froze her, and she started off down the hall. Meeting another nurse, she said, "Be careful when you pass that waiting room. There's a sex maniac in there." You see, it's all in the point of view, which point of view depends on how much knowledge one has of the actual situation.
The same is true of the so-called "problem of humanism" and the humanities in the Church. The English language concept of humanism and the humanities themselves is based upon the Latin term, humanitas. The populatiry of this term is the result of Renaissance thinking and is a reflection of a certain attitude of mind attaching prime importance to establishing higher spiritual values in the world, for freeing Christianity from superstition, and for giving the Christian soul the human virtues without which no progress on the road toward perfection is possible.[1] Humanism is the name of this attitude.
The use of the term actually is traceable to a circle around the younger Scipio, with Cicero its belated yet most explicit spokesman. Cicero used the term to mean that quality which distinguishes men, not only from animals, but also, and even more so, from him who belongs to the species homo but who is a barbarian, a vulgar technocrat or professional who lacks pietes, that is, respect for moral and spiritual values as paramount in human existence.
The establishment of the attitude named "humanism" is traceable to the fourteenth-century Italian Petrarch,[2] whose scholarly honesty and enthusiam for what the vital componants of any Christian life were led to his belief that the study of certain types of subject matter were keys to, as we would put it, bearing intelligent testimony on the gospel. All spirituality, according to humanism, is based upon the antithesis between humanitas and barbaritas, or between man in his godliness and man in his natural state. One attains spirituality through constant and intelligent mental and behavioral effort, rooted in the study of texts which give perspective and which keep us from provincialism. For Petrarch this effort became centered on the classical authors of Greece and Rome, the most available texts in his time. Thus, the study of Classical texts became a cornerstone of what in the Renaissance were called the humanities, since they helped prepare the way for a Christian mentality. Humanism is the conviction that man in his spiritual maturity has dignity and worth and that he attains spiritual maturity by study and by faith.
Of course, in the Middle Ages (perhaps as a result of the apostasy from the primitive church) an underground movement began which viewed man as incapable of attaining spiritual maturity. This medieval version of modern-day anti-humanism has had its followers own through the ages, and humanism has been attacked from time to time. Most recently in the camp of the barbarians are those who deny human values: the determinists of all colors, whether they believe in divine, physical, or social predestination, and the scientific-technical authoritarians.
One basic fact should be fully acknowledged, and this is that currently held views about the humanism of the Renaissance which link the study of classical literature to the beginnings of scientific naturalism and the spread of a secular vision of the world have no historical basis whatsoever. This has been demonstrated many times in scholarly works of the past century; in our own time, most particularly by the great Neapolitan scholar, Toffanin.[3] Humanism, by definition, is linked to a Christian as opposed to pagan sense of things. The idea that humanism and humanities represent a secular view of the world and something anti-religious is the result of opinions set forth in the 16th century by the Protestant Reformation for propaganda purposes.[4] For Luther, as is known, every aspect of the Italian Renaissance spelled paganism and corruption of the Christian faith. And, as with almost everything, he homogenized this distrust of the Italian Renaissance in such a way as to include a total misunderstanding of the concept of humanism. This misunderstanding has come down into the Protestant cultural traditions of our own day, for example, in that of the United States. It is because of the Protestant mentality that the words "humanism" and "humanities" have become synonymous with secularism and rejection of the basic tenets of Christian faith. This is, of course, not the only egregious and frightening error perpetuated by the Protestant mentality, which mentality to some extent exists among large numbers of the Church today.
The truth of the matter is that humanism and the humanities are not the study of classical antiquity per se, nor are they representative of a secular point of view about the world. To repeat, humanism is an attitude about reality. Petrarch used the texts of classical antiquity to buttress this attitude. He and other humanists could have and would have used any important texts to buttress the attitude. It just happened that classical texts were the most available. The attitude is that all human values have to be rooted in essential religious truths; that man's relationship to God is the key to all existence; that man has absolute free will which he must exercise in order to earn his freedom; and that the metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic standards of man have to have some innate connection with spiritual realities in order to be valid.
So we see that the tendency in recent years to use the term humanism to refer to value systems that emphasize the personal worth of each individual but that do not include a belief in God is just plain backwards. This kind of definition of humanism is adhered to by those who have never studied the issue and who consciously or ignorantly pander contemporary cliches to the unwary public. Of course, this problem is not limited to the definition and understanding of humanism and the humanities. It is a basic difficulty of all unthinking and unlearned people in all times and in all places. It is the difficulty of speaking without having studied the issue out in one's mind. It is unfortunate, however, that the misunderstanding represents such a broadly based issue and therefore tends to lead astray large numbers of people than some other kinds of misunderstandings which are current.
II
The great irony in all this is that the scriptures all but force us to take a humanistic attitude towards man and his products. That is, it is directly in the scriptures that we find the ultimate justification for the definition of humanism and the humanities and the study of the humanities which was originally attached to the word when it came into Western civilization. The first and most obvious point that the scriptures make which is a perfectly humanistic attitude is that we human beings must have a special attitude towards the great texts. You might say that the scriptures insist upon texts being our main buttress as we seek to keep our testimonies alive. To put it another way, the scriptures often insist that we study good books in order to buttress and further our testimonies of religious truth. This is exactly what Petrarch said about the term, "humanities". There are, of course, many statements by the presiding authorities and in the scriptures concerning this matter. Everyone knows this one from the Doctrine and Covenants -- notice carefully exactly what it says -- "And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom. Yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom. Seek learning even by study and also by faith." (D&C 18:118)
This is that passage which is subjected to much convenient surgery. What usually remains in any quotation from it is "Seek ye out of the best books", which then becomes justification for subscriptions to so-called Great Books Clubs, memberships in so-called cultural groups, quoting from irrelevant and usually irreverent world authors in church talks (once I even heard a quote from Norman Mailer), preparing volumes of sodden sentimentality which passes off as so-called good work, and a variety of other things extraneous to the scriptural context. Without too much elaboration at this point, it is necessary to note that the point of this passage is faith, not rhapsodic excursions into the authors of every book ever printed. The point is the exact same one that Petrarch made about the humanities; that is, we must teach one another words of wisdom from the best books because we know what words of wisdom are through the spirit of the Holy Ghost. The humanities were the first and remained the center of discipline in insisting that the reading of books is not by study alone but also by faith. And one who has this attitude is called a "humanist".
The issue here is far-reaching and central to the purposes of mortality. Man is the only animal to leave records behind him, for he is the only animal whose products recall to mind an idea distinct from their material existence. Other animals use signs and contrive structures, but they are signs without perceiving, as Jacques Maritain[5] would put it, the relation of signification. To perceive the relation of signification is to separate the idea of the concept to be expressed from the means of expression. And to perceive the relation of construction is to separate the idea of the function to be filled from the means of fulfilling it. A dog announces the approach of a stranger by a bark quite different from that by which he makes known his wish to go out. But he will not use this particular bark to convey the idea that a stranger has called during the master's absence. Beavers build dams, but they are unable, so far as we know, to create the very complicated actions involved from a premeditated plan which is laid down in a drawing and abstracted into an aesthetic object; they just materialize an actual idea. Man's signs and structures are records because they express ideas separated from the processes of signaling and building. These records have therefore the quality of emerging from the stream of time, and it is precisely in this respect that they are studied by the humanist. The scientist, too, deals with human records, but not as something to be investigated, rather as something which helps him to investigate. He is interested in records not in so far as they emerge from time, but in so far as they are absorbed into it. If a scientist studies the works of Newton and Leonardo in the original, he does so not as a scientist but as a humanist, as one interested in the history of science through scientific texts which have autonomous meanings and lasting value.
Thus, the scriptural attitude towards books and records is precisely a humanistic one; that is, it is not interested in transforming the chaotic variety of natural phenomena into a cosmos of nature (as science does), but is insistent upon transforming the chaotic variety of human records into a cosmos of culture (as a humanist does), specifically a godly culture.
Another scripture on books is in the Old Testament. "Of making books there is no end and much study is just a weariness of the flesh". (Ecclesiastes 12:12) I have the feeling this is the attitude most congenial to most university students and some professors. Anyway, it is in just such a scriptural passage as this that we are made aware that is it possible to read too many books to no avail. What is necessary is an essential Christian and religious attitude. This reminds me of an introduction to a volume on 18th century English literature I have used in some courses.
Part of the composure of educated men in the 18th century came from their powers still to digest what was known, but since then men have become plagued with mental dyspepsia. Perhaps our posterity may one day wonder as much at the excess of the superfluities we cram into our heads as we wonder now at the excess of superfluities our ancestors crammed into their bellies. Many of them overate. Many of us over-read. Few moderns are mental economists. Given the limited capacity of human memory, the limited length of human life, it becomes ever more vital to select and define the principle of selection. For today, more than ever, any person of sense must constantly cry out like the wise old cynic at the fair, "Immortal gods, what a mass of things that Diogenes does not need to know!" Knowledge, too, includes a large and crowded Vanity Fair. It seems to me mere common sense never to undertake a piece of work or to read a book without asking, "Is it worth the amount of life it will cost?" Never pursue any kind of knowledge without demanding, "Will it make life more vivid, more intelligent, more complete, more real?"
The point here is that the humanities has always been the one discipline that has insisted that any kind of knowledge is only good insofar as it makes life more vivid, more intelligent, more complete, and more real. The humanities has been the central discipline that has always insisted that one does not obtain knowledge in order to train for a job or in order to go out in the world and serve mammon, or to put it another way, to make money.
This function of a university, centering a spiritual, liberal arts, humanistic education in the humanities (which, of course, is the central function of a university by definition), was pointed out by President Kimball in his Second Century Address (October 10, 1975). "Learn everything that the children of men know, and be prepared for the most refined society upon the face of the earth, then improve on this until we are all prepared and permitted to enter the society of the blessed..." This could have been uttered by Petrarch, Ficino, or Pomponazzi; in fact, it could serve as almost a word-for-word translation of several passages in Ficino's commentary on Plato's Symposium. Furthermore, President Kimball insisted, "we do not want BYU to ever become an educational factory. It must concern itself with not only the dispensing of facts, but with the preparation of its students to take their place in society as thinking, thoughtful, and sensitive individuals who ... come here dedicated to the love of God, pursuit of truth, and service to mankind." Notice that like the humanists' statements, this one does not mention vocational, technical, or professional training as the business of the university.
In a hard-hitting sermon concerning the same subject, President Taylor urged the nineteenth-century saints to grow up in their attitudes towards education. "... education which but amounts to outward appearance and applies to conveniences of this life is very far short of that education and intelligence which immortal beings ought to be in possesion of" (Journal of Discourses, V. 259). Again, a statement which could have been taken right from Petrarch or any other humanist.
Orson Hyde decried the tendency of some members of the Church to take the fact of inspiration as superceding the necessity of studying languages, literature, the arts, and history (Journal of Discourses, VII, 68). Speaking of the study of language, he said that it "requires much mental labor. The lazy and inactive mind cannot penetrate far into the intricacies of language...", which might account for the fact that so many of our students and so-called learned men do not deal with things in the original. But, back to this point in a moment.
Here is a third scripture -- note that it is given as a commandment. "Set in order the churches and study and learn and become acquainted with all good books and with languages, tongues, and people. And this shall be your business and mission in all your lives -- to preside in council and set in order all the affairs of this church and kingdom." (D&C 90) Again a scriptural passage that speaks in the exact same language and says the precise same things as the humanities have insisted upon since their inception. Namely, that the study of texts, that skill in several languages, that an understanding of human history and philosophy is central, not only to our own spiritual welfare, but in order to set in proper place the affairs of the Church and the kingdom. This is incredible some will murmur. Okay, it is incredible, but we are explicitly told to become acquainted with all things in the humanities; that this indeed is our very mission in life so we can have the affairs of the Church in order and also ourselves and our dominions. A key here -- one which Petrarch would have fully appreciated -- is that we have to know languages. This is obvious since most of the great and good books are not written in English, and of course a translation will never do. This represents another curiosity in the Church today -- there are people who settle for translations. They are like the man who says he doesn't have to read the conference talks in the Ensign because the conference will be reported in Time magazine which he does read. Translation, like a news broadcast, is only an opinion. Of all the people in the world, we Latter-day Saints do not settle for translations; that is, we don't settle for them if we have a testimony of the gospel. Put in another way, we would say that we just don't accept a substitute for the real thing. If Joseph Smith had the attitude of some so-called LDS scholars about translations, he would have never cared to get the real thing and would have become a good solid Methodist or Presbyterian.
The remainder of this scriptural passage is a real grabber. "Be not ashamed, neither confounded by this commandment. Be admonished with this commandment in your pride. Set in order your houses." Well here it is again. This is what the humanities have always said. Have you ever wondered why some families in the Church are broken, relationships are confused, children loud-mouthed and undisciplined, 18-year-old kids coming to the university who aren't ready to study yet, people who come to the age of 17 or 18 without foreign languages or without a knowledge of music? It is because these families do not have a humanistic, scriptural, Christian attitude. Some of the families probably do not have any good books, indeed, they probably think that reading newspapers and magazines, watching TV and going to the garden club, and attending Relief Society every week will fill the bill. What these scriptures say is that we must have a humanistic attitude. To not do so is at the very peril of our membership and standing in the Church.
III
There are several implications for what has been said. I'll just pick a random sample.
The first is that being a humanist is being the kind of person who knows why the gospel of Jesus Christ is true.
The second is that the humanistic attitude keeps members of the Church from making ridiculous, simple-minded statements about the gospel. In addition, it protects them from homogenizing their attitudes and the complexity of concepts which the Church and kingdom represent.
The third implication is that a Latter-day Saint must have the same high sense of standards that was propounded originally by the humanists of the Renaissance. Such statements include the refusal to talk about something that has not been completely studied out in the light of all the documents that exist. They also include a refusal to talk about documents which have not been read (this refusal would go a long way to relieving the problem we have in university classrooms of people talking about authors, philosophers, historians, scientists, and so on, who can't read the languages in which these great thinkers of the world have written their documents.
A fourth implication would be that for the LDS scholar teaching at Brigham Young University a firm attitude of excellence in the classroom would prevail. In my capacity as a Branch President on campus I have received phone calls from mothers and fathers of the students in my branch, all of which center around the same concern, namely that their son or daughter is not getting enough social life and is lonely or unhappy at the university. I sympathize with this. But usually, the most appropriate comment to make to these parents is that the son or daughter that they are worried about is, after all, a student at a university. You see, if the student is not emotionally and intellectually prepared to come to BYU and spend the vast majority of his time studying everthing he can get his hands on, gladly going from daylight to dark digging through the great books, the son or daughter is not ready to come to Provo, Utah. If the son or daughter wants a fine social experience, or wants to avoid being lonely, or wants to make sure he has plenty of dating experiences, he better go to some other place. What we have in Provo, Utah is a university. There are those in the Church who, to this day, refuse to understand that a university demands a high level of emotional stability and intellectual excellence and, most particularly, highly developed skills in languages and mathematics, in music and reading. This attitude about higher learning is, of course, implicit in what the scriptures say and explicit in the definition of humanism.
In conclusion, there are four points about humanitas in the scriptures that it would help to know:
1. An honest person, a person who really has a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ, does not say something about something until he has read everything that has been said about it before, has studied it completely through, and has the necessary skills that qualify him to talk about it. This is a matter of just plain intellectual honesty to say nothing of spiritual honesty.
2. Humanism is an attitude that insists upon Christian principles as the basis of all reality, the attitude that there is a crucial difference between godly man (humanitas) and natural man (barbaritas) in humanism.
3. The corruption of the idea of humanism was due to the homogenizing simple-mindedness of the Protestant mentality which mentality still exists today, even in the Church.
4. Humanism and the study of the humanities (literature, comparative arts, languages, history, and philosophy) is absolutely essential for one's spiritual development.
So humanitas is central to us as members of the Church. We can be humanists and really like it if we are good members of the Church and really like it.
TERMINAL NOTES
1. A small sampling of studies that have proved this point beyond doubt are:
Rocco Montano, Dante e il Rinascimento (Naples, 1942).
Rocco Monatano, "Estetica nel pensiero cristiano", in Grande Antologia Filosofica, V, Pt. 2, Sect. 2, No. 2 (Milan, 1959).
Paul O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought (New York, 1964).
Giuseppe Gentile, Studi sul Rinascimento (Florence, 1936).
Paul O. Kristeller, "Humanism and Scholasticism in the Italian Renaissance", Byzantion, XVII (1944-45), 346-74.
P. Monnier, Le Quattrocentro, (Paris, 1901).
A. Riekel, Die Philosophie der Renaissance (Munich, 1925).
G. Scitta, Il Pensiero Italiano nell'Umanesimo e nel Rinascimento (Bologna, 1949).
2. As pointed out by hundreds of scholars including a good one-book study, P. Nohac, Petrarque et l'humanisme (Paris, 1907). Some of the primary texts are Petrarch's Epistolae de rebus familiaribus, VI, 2, ed. F. Fracassetti (Florence, 1859) and Le Familiari, ed. V. Rossi (Florence, 1933-42).
3. Giuseppi Toffanin, Storia dell'Umanesimo (Bologna, 1952)
4. G. W. Forell, Active in Love: An Investigation of the Principles Underlying Luther's Social Ethics (New York, 1954). Rocco Mantano, "Humanistic Positions", Italian Quarterly, XIII, 50, (Fall, 1969), 3-31.
5. Jacques Maritain, "Sign and Symbol", Journal of the Warburg Institute, I (1937), pp. 1 ff.
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