THE HUMANIST INSTITUTE
Class XIII

1. Introduction To Humanist Philosophy (December 2004)

A discussion of the various "Humanisms" which are extant today, and an exploration of personal humanist philosophy.

• Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not A Christian
• John Dewey, A Common Faith
• Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism
• Ed Wilson, Genesis of a Humanist Manifesto
• William Schulz, Making the Manifesto
• Humanist Manifesto, I, II and III
• Paul Kurtz, Humanist Manifesto 2000
• Paul Kurtz, The Humanist Alternative
• Howard Radest, The Devil & Secular Humanism
• A. C. Gaylor, Women Without Superstition (as a general reference book to be used throughout the class)

This was a 3-day session, meeting in Washington, DC. Fred Edwords and Howard Radest met with us for an afternoon and evening, respectively, to present different views.

2. Humanist Histories And Organizations (April 2005)

A look at the main sources of modern humanism, and how some of the current humanist/atheist organizations function and believe.

• Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
• David Robinson, The Unitarians and the Universalists
• Howard Radest, Toward Common Ground
• Sherwin Wine, Judaism Beyond God
• James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America
• Gerald Larue, Freethought Across the Centuries
• Robert Ingersoll, On the Gods and Other Essays

This was also a three-day session, where we mostly talked about the various books. Each student presented one book and related questions to the class. As guests, we had Charles DeBrovner talk about AEU one afternoon, and Joseph Ben-David one evening to discuss history and international humanism.

3 Beliefs And Ideologies, Humanist And Non-Humanist

To learn about other "religions," and how they relate to and affect humanism, with special emphasis on Islam in the current climate.

• Robert Solomon, Spirituality for the Skeptic
• Paul Kurtz, Transcendental Temptation
• Sam Harris, The End of Faith
• William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
• Peter Gay, The Enlightenment
• Jim Wallis, God's Politics
• Daniel Pals, Seven Theories of Religion

On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, we again had class members report on one of the above books, and discussed them. On Thursday afternoon we all visited the Rubin museum, and had a personal tour by the educational director. This was a wonderful introduction to eastern religions. On Friday, David Schafer met with us all day, discussing Eastern religions and especially Islam. Saturday, except for a break to attend the Class 12 graduation, Bob Tapp helped us explore Indian religions and try to bring all of this together. Both Bob and David emailed the students before class to help them prepare. For these topics, we used as resources:

• Ninian Smart & Richard Hecht, eds, Sacred Texts of the World: A Universal Anthology
• The Koran

4 Ethical Issues

To examine ethical issues, past and present, and determine the uniquely humanistic elements of ethical issues, laws, and cultures.

• James Guinlock, Ed., The Moral Writings of John Dewey
• Jan Narveson, Moral Matters
• William Frankena, Ethics
• Judith A. Boss, Perspectives on Ethics
• Arthur Dobrin, Ethics for Everyone: How to increase your moral intelligence
• Kwame Anthony Appia, The Ethics of Identity
• Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

The Guinlock book is a kind of compilation of Dewey's writings on moral philosophy, with wonderful questions by the editor - takes the place of several other Dewey books from previous lists. Narveson's book introduces 11 current moral issues - suicide, euthenasia, punishment, war, animal rights, feeding the hungry, population, abortion, sexual ethics, pornography and affirmative action and discusses them from a libertarian perspective. The Boss book is a basic text - selected writings from all the big names in moral philosophy and ethical questions. And the Appiah book is a wonderful look at how our ethics are affected by our racial, cultural, religious, etc. identities. His writing is almost poetic, and his points excellent! Good to get an African-American perspective. (Appiah was raised in Africa, and is now a professor at Princeton)

For this session, we had no outside presenters or activities. Instead, we alternated among three projects, drawing on the readings as background. First, each student presented a ten-minute talk on humanist ethics to an audience of their choosing. Secondly, I broought in a number of newspaper clippings taken from the last couple of months which raised ethical issues, and each student chose one to present to the class, define the issue(s), recommend how to deal with the problem, and determine how it would affect everyone involved and whether some type of ethical "rule" could be derived to apply to the situation. Thirdly, throughout the weekend we tried to devise a "Humanist Ethality" (we couldn't agree whether to call it ethics or morality!) To guide this, I presented 20 questions, and we also used things that arose during the other aspects. Our Humanist Ethality is not complete (there is a limit to what we can do in three days), but it is an interesting start.

The 20 questions were:

1. If ethics are normative, from whence comes the "norm"? If a Humanist ethics is different, or non-normative, can it be useful?
2. Would a humanist ethics be socially determined - exist indendent of individuals, or would it be internally derived?
3. Would a Humanist more likely be a deontologist or a teleogist? Why?
4. How would humanists deal with cultural relativism?
5. Which would prevail in a humanist ethic - care or justice? Why?
6. How would a humanist ethic balance self-sacrifice, self respect, and self-actualization?
7. Are humanists more motivated by sympathy (empathy) or anger? Can both lead equally to benevolence?
8. What are some Humanist "shouldn't oughts?" (I had read a piece from Katherine Hepburn about the things everyone just knows shouldn't ought to be done.)
9. Is personal advantage the measure of right and wrong, or the advantage of all affected?
10. Is there TRUTH in ethics? What truth?
11. Are "right" and "wrong" expressions of heart or head?
12. Do people have duties as well as rights? Which are more ethically based?
13. Dewey advocataes a universal moral education. What form should it take? Can humanists trust publlic schools to provide an adequate/acceptable moral education?
14. How can one reconcile self-actualization and personal freedom with the rights and needs of others.
15. Does utilitarianism give Humanists an accurate/adequate guide for moral choices?
16. Are general ethical principles intuiutive largely, or naturalistic and empirical phenomena?
17. How does humanist ethics differ from Christian or other ethics?
18. Compare Deweyian democracy with Bush's and Appiah's. Where is the legitimate humanist stance on democracy?
19. What is the role/definition of freedom appropriate to a humanist ethics? How much individual freedom is acceptable?
20. Will a genuine humanist ethic vary from accepted norms in our culture to such an extent that it could not be useful or embraced by society?

Saturday night, after a long intense day, we ordered in pizza, watched an episode of the original Star Trek, and discussed the ethics of humanist authors Isaac Asimov, Gene Roddenberry, and Kurt Vonnegut (hence Cat's Cradle).

5. Public Humanism: Being A Humanist Leader/Activist

An exploration into ways individual humanists can be effective in various venues and provide positive leadership both within and outside existing humanist groups.

• George Lakoff, Don't Think of an Elephant
• Peter Drucker, The Leader of the Future
• James Kouzes & Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge, 3rd ed.
• Max Depree, Leadership is an Art
• Edgar Stoesz, Chester Raber, Doing Good Better: How to be an effective board member of a nonprofit organization
• Ronal Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers
• Barbara Crosby, John Bryson, Leadership for the Common Good, 2nd ed.

Not all of all of these books willl be relevant to our quest to be humanist leaders as individuals and members of organizations, so I will make some suggestions for reading. I also requested two small missives: Fighting Back, by Tim Madigan and Tom Flynn, and Min liv som Humanist, by Edd Doerr, to show how some humanists are showing public leadership.

6. Science

This was an August class, which was held in Minneapolis, because that is where most of the scientists on the adjunct faculty reside, and we wanted to make use of their expertise in addressing this topic. The adjunct mentors, then, were: Andreas Rosenberg, David Schafer, Harvey Sarles, Robert Tapp, and Phil Regal. The books we read and discussed were:

• "Science and Religion: Are they compatible?" by Paul Kurtz
• "Bioterror" by Phil Regal
• "The Republican War on Science" by Chris Mooney
• "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Kuhn
• "Science, Truth, and Democracy" by Phillip Kitcher
• "The Ascent of Science" by Silver
• "Naturalist" by E.O. Wilson
• "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker
• and the "Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy", which David Schafer considers a must for any humanist library.

The topics and issues within the area of Science are so many that, admittedly, much was not covered which could have been. Using a variety of experts who approach science from different perspectives, however, was useful. Overall, the class enjoyed this session very much.

7 - "Three E's- Education, Economics, and Ecology"

This session was held in D.C. in December. At first, the three "E"s were seen as separate topics, but as we discussed the, they appeared to be very related, especially as approached from a humanist point of view. The problems in any one area cannot be solved without also addressing the other two. Readings included not only books, but many articles and other resources.

For the topic of Education, we read classics by John Dewey and Paulo Friere, as well as articles on school finance, school choice, homeschooling, separation of church and state, testing, and the disparities in education related to race, class, etc. We discussed the implications of these trends in education for our democratic society.

For Ecology, we read the HI book on "Ecohumanism", "Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind", edited by Roszsak, Gomes and Kanner, and the Earth Policy Institute's annual report on the state of the world. The 2006 one focused particularly on China and India, which was very helpful because it brought out issues we had not been so familiar with, as well as the ecological impact of world trade. We did not read, but did discuss, "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore.

World trade also was a key element in our discussion of Economics. Finding no book which adequately addressed economics from a humanist viewpoint, we used the books "The Wal-Mart Effect" by Charles Fishman, which gave a good overview of how one large company can influence all aspects of economics from wages and benefits to quality and effect on the environment. Possibly the most hopeful book we read was "Plan B 2.0" by Lester Brown, which does lay out some possible solutions to many of the problems. We also used many articles, especially from "The Liberal Opinion".

8 - Global Humanism

This class met in Boston, in conjunction with the Harvard 30th Anniversary conference "The New Humanism". The topic of global humanism fit bvery well with the theme of the conference, and talks by such notables as Salman Rushdie, Amartya Sen, and Tu Weiming.

Books read were:

• "Women, Development and the UN," by Devaki Jain
• "God's Politics" by Jim Wallis,
• Toward a New Political Humanism," by Barry Seidman
• "In Our Own Best Interest," by William Schulz
• Humanism Today Vol. 12 "Globalization and Humanism"
• Humanism Today Vol. 14 "Multiculturalism."

9 - Rituals and Aesthetics

Our final session was in New York in August. Much of the time was spent in preparing for our graduation ceremony, sharing projects, and practicing officiating at various humanist rituals - weddings, memorial services, union services, divorce celebrations, child naming, etc. For this we used many materials brought by the mentor, as well as pamphlets from the British Humanist Assoc. We also spent one afternoon in the New York Metropolitan Art Museum, comparing ancient Greek and Roman art with Renaissance, Sacred, and Modern art.

Books read included:

• "The New Wedding" by Khoren Arisian
• "In Memoriam" by Ed Searl
• "From Beginning to End" by Robert Fulghum
• "Spirituality for the Skeptic" by Solomon
• "Parenting Beyond Belief" by Dale McGowan
• "Great Occasions" by Carl Seaburg
• "Words that Wound" by Mari Matsuda, et al.
• "Reverence: Renewing A Forgotten Virtue" by Paul Woodruff