Humanism Versus Sentientism
3. What Does 'Humanism' Mean?
In this section, I want to delve more into what the label 'humanism' means in its historical and contemporary context. Back in 2018, when Woodhouse started his advocacy, his complaint then was not that the philosophy of humanism only recognized the moral status of humans. In his essay of that year, Is Humanism Good Enough? [Woodhouse 2018a], the worry he expressed was over the word 'humanism':
The central reason I decided to go ahead was the term humanism itself. While many humanists do extend their circles of concern more widely, the term humanism implies and encourages a focus on one species and gives us all excuses for cognitive dissonance (not that we need any).
In that early essay, Woodhouse readily conceded that 'Humanists UK references sentient non-human animals in its definition'. (The definition states that a humanist makes ethical decisions based on 'a concern for human beings and other sentient animals'.) Pointing to one humanist campaign against animal suffering, he is annoyed, however, that this campaign 'seems just as motivated by wanting to avoid privileging supernatural views'. Surveying the meaning of 'humanism', I hope, will dispel that uneasiness.
The idea that humanism is focused exclusively on the human species can arise quite naturally as the word 'human' forms the first part of the term used for this philosophy. As Woodhouse points out, those unfamiliar with humanism easily fall into the trap of thinking that 'humanism' is 'human-centric' in the sense of promoting human-exceptionalism at the cost of other sentient creatures. Humanists UK [2021] puts this common misunderstanding succinctly:
Sometimes people think that because humanists are called humanists that they are unduly or narrowly concerned with the rights and welfare of human beings. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the word 'humanism': most humanists are strong supporters of animal welfare and recognise the necessity of sensible policy that respects and acknowledges animal sentience and their capacity to suffer. Humanists are called humanists because as human beings we try to make ethical decisions on the basis of our human capacity to reason, rather than looking to sources outside of human experience for guidance about what is right and wrong (in this sense, humanism contrasts with theism).
So, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that humanism puts human beings at the centre of moral concern, akin to how racists elevate the moral importance of a certain race and how sexists put on a pedestal a certain sex. Attending to the history of humanism and how the term came about ought to dispel any fears that humanists promote this kind of human-exceptionalism. (Yuval Noah Harari spreads his own misconceptions about the term 'humanism' in his book, Sapiens. Humanists UK [2023c] responds comprehensively to Harari's mistakes, so I won't say more about them here. See also his exchange with humanist philosopher, A. P. Norman [Harari and Norman 2018].)
The use of the English word 'humanist' first appeared in the late 16th Century as a retrospective description of certain scholars during the Renaissance who worked to resurrect and study the ancient texts in their own language. Studying the holy texts as part of this endeavour, these scholars eschewed strict dogmatic theological interpretations to study them in their cultural context as human creations. The label 'humanist' for these scholars derives from the Italian 'umanista', a term we associate today with the 'humanities'—studies in philosophy, literature and history. Humanities scholars still use the term 'humanist' today to refer to these Renaissance students of language and society. However, this is not how the term is used by modern humanists to refer to themselves.
During the period of the European Enlightenment from the 17th to the early 19th Centuries, what is today called 'humanism' evolved significantly. This period witnessed a surge in intellectual and philosophical exploration, emphasizing human reason, experimental science and individual freedom. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, David Hume, Denis Diderot, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine advocated for humanistic values such as rational thinking, human rights and the alleviation of misery and suffering for all. This era saw a progressive shift away both from supernatural explanations for natural phenomena and theological justifications for controlling individual and social behaviour.
Starting in the 19th Century and increasingly in the early 20th Century, the term 'humanism' was applied to this enlightened non-religious and non-theistic approach to life that decoupled human reason and morality from supposed divine revelation and the wishes of an imagined divine being. Incorporating the word 'human' in 'humanism' signified this reliance on human reason and our moral capacity for empathy to ascertain what is true and what is good and right independently of the old religious dogmas. What is important to note here is that with this earliest appellation of the word to this kind of outlook, incorporating the term 'human' did not signify an anti-animal or anti-environmental intent. (Andrew Copson covers the historical meanings of the term 'humanism' and what it means today in his book chapter titled What Is Humanism? published in The Wiley Blackwell Handbook on Humanism [Copson and Grayling, eds, 2015].)
From the mid-20th Century, societies of individuals started self-identifying with the 'humanism' label. In the U.S., the American Humanist Association (AHA) was formed in 1941. Internationalising the movement got started in 1946 when the World Union of Freethinkers held a conference in London on The Challenge of Humanism. In 1950, a Humanist Council was formed to bring together various secularist and Humanist organisations. The global movement of Humanism coalesced when in 1952, five Humanist organizations got together to form the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) (now named Humanists International). In a further move, in 1956 the Literary Guide was renamed to The Humanist (now named New Humanist). Then in 1967, the Ethical Union became the British Humanist Association (now named Humanists UK). From the early 1960s, Humanist societies were formed in the various states in my home country of Australia. (For more on the history of humanism, see Tribe [1967], Dahlitz [1994], American Humanist Association [2021], Humanists UK [2023d] and Wikipedia [2024a].)
All of these modern Humanist organizations, and the many others I have not mentioned, continue the legacy of those earlier Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment pioneers who advocated for the use of human reason and the development of an ethic based on the human values of compassion and fairness. These ideas were promulgated as a more fruitful approach compared with the dogmatic and repressive religious creeds of the day.
Once we recognize the initial impetus and continuing raison d'être of the Humanist movement in providing a positive alternative to the religious view of life, humanists highlighting and pushing back against 'privileging supernatural views' should come as no surprise. Historically, the various Humanist movements have had no aspirations of becoming predominantly animal rights organizations. There are already many specialist organizations acting in that strategic space.
For Woodhouse to try and mould humanism into sentientism is to seriously misunderstand humanism's focus historically and in this modern period. I would much prefer Woodhouse to be using his energies in dispelling these misconceptions of humanism instead of further propagating them. Humanism is not a disabled form of Sentientism that requires an 'upgrade'. It has its own unique place in history and serves a vital function in today's world of dangerous conspiracy theories, rising religious nationalism and persecution of free thinkers. I will have more to say on this in the next section.
