Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 108 No. 9 £1.50 December 2003
GREAT IDEAS OF SCIENCE PRESENTED AT CONWAY HALL
PETER ATKINS LECTURES ON "THE EXTRAORDINARY SIMPLICITY OF EVERYTHING"
Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry and Fellow of Lincoln College at Oxford University, gave the SPES 76th CONWAY MEMORIAL LECTURE in the main Conway Hall on 13 Peter Atkins November, 2003 to a very keen and attentive audience.
Besides being the author of several chemistry textbooks used throughout the world, Peter Atkins has written a number of more popular books of scientific exposition, including The Creation and The Creation Revisited.
Peter Atkins has made no secret of his atheism and disdain for religion. For this reason he agreed to become an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. He much enjoys the excitement of science and fervently believes that we shall, by using science, discover the secrets of the universe, including the explanation for its origin.
His most recent book is entitled "Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science"*. It opens with a photo of the detached middle finger of Galileo's right hand, which relic is now in the Museo di Storia della Scienza. The finger indicates that the direction taken by Galileo, i.e. experimental science, is the path to true knowledge.
The ten ideas simply and expertly expounded in the book (and summarised in the lecture) were: evolution, DNA, energy, atoms, entropy, symmetry, quanta, cosmology, spacetime and arithmetic. After the lecture, Peter adroitly answered the audience's numerous questions and continued to do so at the reception in the Library, leaving everyone with a determination to investigate 'the extraordinary simplicity of everything.'
*Oxford University Press, (2003) ISBN 0 19 860664 8 (hb) £20.
THE GENESIS OF THE SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS Alan Bartley 3 EMPOWERING WOMEN - Report on The IHEU Conference Anna Behan 9 POLAND - TRANSFORALITION IN A PATRIARCHAL WORLD Katarzyna Szumlewicz 10 SECRETS, LIES AND WORKS OF ART - The Witt Library Dr Anthea Brook 12 HAS HUMANISM ANY FUTURE? David Warden 13 OUT OF THIS WORLD - An Examination of Modern Physics and Cosmology Hyman Frankel 21 SOME NOTES ON EXISTENTIALISM Tom Rubens 22 FUTURE EVENTS SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8034 Fax: 020 72428036 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected] Officers Chairman of the GC: Terry Mullins. Hon. Representative of the GC: Don Liversedge. Vice Chairman: John Rayner. Registrar: Edmund McArthur. Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac
SPES Staff Administrative Secretary to the Society: Marina Ingham Tel: 020 7242 8034 Librarian1Programme Coordinator:JenniferJeynes M.Sc. Tel: 020 7242 8037 Hall Manager: Peter Vlachos MA. For Hall bookings: Tel: 020 7242 8032 Caretakers' Office: Tel: 020 7242 8033
New Staff Members Carina Kelsey, Lettings Assistant Victoria Le Fevre, Administrative and clerical Assistant
New Members Michael Hutchinson, East Barnet - John Burgess, West Dulwich
YULETIDE PANTOMIME, 14 December 2003 Hamlet, Act VI. The Inquest A pantomime for adults, based loosely on Shakespeare's notes for a sixth act. Fortinbras Prince of Norway - Peter Vlachos, Trog his secretary - John Rayner Horatio a Danish gentleman - Terry Mullins, Julian an actor - Victoria Le Fevre Sandy another actor - Carina Kelsey
While Victoria was debating whether one more sip of the mulled wine would be the correct amount to kill the stage fright, Carina, holding a havana cigar, was frantically looking for her own version of the script with the red highlighted lines... Peter who had been there before reflected total confidence, and at the last minute, our natural actor, Terry Mullins, struggled to find the right page. And John Rayner (scriptwriter) frustrated by the shortness of his character could not help repeating again and again after moi (the director) the introduction to the scene of Hamlet and the names of the cast. We all enjoyed the fun. Well done chaps! The encore will have to wait for next year. Marina Ingham
SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Reg. Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields.
We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions, evening courses and the renowned South Place Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society's journal, Ethical Record, is issued ten times a year. Funerals and Memorial meetings may be arranged. The annual subscription is in 8 (£12 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65).
2 Ethical Record, December, 2003 PEOPLE'S CONCERTS AND THE GENESIS OF THE SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERT SOCIETY Alan Bartley Lecture to the Ethical Society, 26 October 2003
Over the years the name of South Place has become associated as much with its series of Sunday evening concerts as with the activities of the Ethical Society. And the very fact that its chamber concerts have continued for 123 years speaks for itself. This talk will focus on the early days of those concerts; how they came into being, the audiences that came to hear them, how the concerts survived financial difficulties, and a little of the music that was performed and the instrumentalists who played it.
The Sunday chapel meetings had always included a musical element, but with the appointment of the humanist Moncure Conway as Minister came an enhanced interest in chapel music. A Music Sub-committee was appointed, which discussed the organist's proposals and made recommendations to the Chapel Committee regarding the engagement of choristers and the music for the services. Clearly high standards were sought, the minutes recording an application to the Royal Academy of Music for a first soprano, and in 1881 the noted Beethoven scholar J. South Shedlock was appointed choirmaster and organist.
The People's Concert Society But the chapel was also hosting concerts of secular music, as a surviving programme for a dramatic cantata Peace and War testifies. This programme records the 26th series of such events, suggesting that secular music had been a regular feature of chapel life since 1858. In 1880 Society members with an interest in instrumental music arranged for the chapel to host a series of Sunday evening chamber concerts presented by the People's Concert Society.
The scene now changes to nearby Whitechapel, where Samuel Barnett was vicar of St. Jude's Church. The Reverend Barnett was a progressive thinker whose sense of social duty led him to take up residence among the poor, introducing them to civilising influences by means of lectures, concerts and outings. His diary for 1878 reports:
Very much as the result of the concerts held in our schoolroom, the People's Concert Society has been formed, its object being to spread the taste for high-class music.
Victorian cultural philanthropy was based on the idea that art was a force for good, but the founders of the People's Concert Society declared no 'improving' agenda. Their aim was simply 'to increase the popularity of good music' An article in The Times recalling the founders of the Society and their objectives said: 'They made no fuss about it. They did not march under the banner of "charity...or of "education"...; neither did they invent any slogan "Music for the million" or the like'.
Nevertheless, the organisers' sympathies clearly lay with lower-class audiences. At the PCS's first general meeting in 1879 the chairman stated that ' the society aims at creating a taste for good chamber music among those who have hitherto had little or no opportunity of hearing it'.
The early years of the People's Concert Society were essentially exploratory, trying various venues for suitability, testing the receptivity of audiences, and experimenting with the timing of concerts and admission arrangements. The earliest known report of a
Ethical Record, December, 2003 3 PCS concert dates from 1879, and reveals the determination, maintained throughout the Society's life, not to compromise on the quality of the main executants:
On Tuesday evening...an excellent Concert was given by the RC.S. in St. Mary's Schoolroom, Whitechapel...Most of the performers were amateurs; but valuable professional help was afforded them by Hen- Otto Peiniger as violinist, and Miss Mary Carmichael, as solo pianist. There was a large and highly appreciative audience.
Otto Peiniger, then in his forties, had been a pupil of the great violinist Joachim and regularly received complimentary reviews for his playing at West End venues.
From Whitechapel the PCS extended its activities to Chelsea, where they gave concerts at the radical Eleusis Club and, in the following year, in the Chelsea Vestry Hall and Skinner Street Schoolroom in Bishopsgate, both halls accommodating around 800 people, but attempts to woo an audience at venues in Hatton Garden and Notting Hill proved disappointing, the local residents mostly too poor to pay anything at all.
No Selling On A Sunday But in 1880, towards the end of the second season, the PCS essayed three concerts at the South Place chapel and the enthusiastic response, with a reported 1,100 attending the final recital, encouraged the Society to embark on a fortnightly series there the following season. The Sunday evening concert having drawn the biggest audience, it was decided to give subsequent South Place concerts on Sunday evenings. The sale of concert tickets on the Sabbath being forbidden by law, a voluntary leaving collection was taken at the door.
Sadly I've found few records of the music played at South Place during those early days of the PCS, but surviving programmes of their concerts in Chelsea and Bishopsgate show that works such as the Mozart Clarinet Quintet were given with their movements separated by songs and instrumental solos. It's probable that South Place audiences were weaned on to chamber music the same way. But by 1884 there was a full house for an uncompromising all-Beethoven concert which included the Archduke Piano Trio and the Eroica Variations 'intelligently played by Miss B.Wild, who studied at Leipzig, according to the Monthly Musical Record.Things had clearly moved on.
The number of subscriptions taken when the scheme was introduced suggests a high proportion of the South Place audience who could readily lay their hands on half- a-crown, and the frequency with which a silver collection was taken in times of financial distress supports the idea that there must have been a sizeable middle-class element in the audience. South Place concert advertisements placed in the Daily Telegraph were again clearly aimed at a middle-class readership. A Daily Graphic article of 1898 was accompanied by drawings that would seem to show an audience from that economic stratum, although concert-goers of whichever class are likely to have been in their Sunday best.
For this was clearly a mixed audience. Children were welcome, so long as they were accompanied by a 'grown-up person', and frequent references to children-in-arms clearly signify the presence of the lower classes. The coincidence of poor attendances with bad weather also suggests that many came on foot from neighbouring working- class districts. The Committee was evidently conscious of the fact that many of their audience had to make an early start to work the following morning, as a pencilled note on a surviving programme remarks, alongside a Beethoven String Quartet: 'None of the repeats were observed as this number was not commenced till 2 minutes past 9'. 4 Ethical Record, December, 2003 And another pencilled note confirms a significant Jewish element from working-class Whitechapel among the regulars: 'This being the eve of the Day of Atonement partly accounts for the thin attendance'.
What was remarkable about those audiences was the reception they gave to the music. Chamber music is after all the vehicle for a composer's most abstruse thoughts, often densely argued and uncompromising in its utterance. Yet contemporary reports continually remark on the intense absorption of untutored PCS and South Place audiences. Typically this, from the Pall Mall Gazette: 'The programme was followed in the most attentive manner by the crowded audience...a quartet by Brahms, which occupied forty minutes in performance, was listened to with unabated interest, although many of the audience were compelled to stand throughout the concert.'
Of course many members of the audience may not have been entirely without experience of good music. Some are likely to have been practitioners themselves, as parlour vocalists or as amateur instrumentalists, and with an abundance of struggling music teachers giving lessons from threepence an hour, cheap imported pianos available for hire, together with easy-play versions of the classics, it is possible that many would have had at least a passing acquaintance with the music of the masters.
Illustrated Music Lectures Whatever the level of their musical education, the opportunity to reinforce it was offered by occasional illustrated lectures at South Place. The first recorded music lecture of this kind had been given in 1885 by J.S.Shedlock, who spoke on Mozart. Free illustrated lectures followed by a concert of the composer's music were to be given over the years on the music of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Dvorak and Russian composers, while the celebrated baritone Harry Plunket Greene gave a lecture-recital on 'Interpretation in song'.
But, for all their enlightened views, the South Place committee's sympathy for 'cheap concerts' only extended just so far. They were, after all, businessmen, and there was certainly no intention to subsidise the PCS enterprise. The minutes of the South Place Religious Society afford tantalising glimpses of attempts by the PCS treasurer to keep expenditure down. Initially the hire charge for use of the chapel was £2. 5s per night but in the autumn of 1882 the PCS was informed that unless it took the chapel on consecutive Sundays after Christmas the charge would rise to three guineas (this was an increase of 40%, representing over 200 'penny admissions' per concert). The PCS agreed. Then in June 1883 it was resolved to demand an increase in the chapel hire charge from £2.5s to three guineas unless the PCS agreed to take the chapel for six months (the Society again succumbed). The following year a rental compromise suggested by the PCS was refused.
In his celebratory book The Story of a Thousand Concerts, W. S. Meadmore asserts that the PCS left South Place because they were short of funds. I suspect that there was another reason for the People's Concert Society's departure from the Finsbury chapel. Since their inception the PCS had averaged 45 concerts each season, operating in several other venues including Poplar Town Hall. In examining Meadmore's assertion of a funding crisis, the PCS ninth annual report shows the season's loss on their 18 concerts at South Place to be under £46, while the loss on the same number of concerts at Poplar was £77.
So if the PCS were looking to cut their losses, why did they choose to leave South Place, instead of Poplar, where the losses were much heavier? Ethical Record, December, 2003 5 As I have said, the facts point to there being a sizeable middle-class element attending the Finsbury concerts. I suspect that the PCS came to decide that this proportion of middle-class concert-goers was inconsistent with their prime aim to bring good music to the under-privileged. This would have been a compelling reason for the Society to leave the Finsbury chapel and continue giving concerts at loss-making Poplar, where the audience consisted almost entirely of Thames-side dockers. And I would not be surprised to learn that the PCS had come to resent the manipulative methods of the South Place committee.
Whatever the reason for the PCS leaving South Place, musical relations between the two societies continued to be amicable. The South Place sub-committee continued always to send a representative to PCS annual meetings, the respective secretaries kept in contact, sometimes recommending players, and the PCS returned to South Place occasionally to present concerts.
Alfred J. Clements At the South Place committee meeting in January 1887 we first make the acquaintance of Alfred J.Clements, a 28-year-old amateur violinist who ran a printing company. The minutes read:
'A letter was read from Mr Clements proposing that the Sunday musical evenings be carried on by a committee from this society. Resolved that Mr Clements and Mr Todd be appointed a sub-committee with power to add to their number to consider a plan for carrying on the PCS work and to report on the same to the committee.'
No time was wasted. The first concert under the aegis of the Sunday Evening Concert Committee took place on 20 February 1887 and included string quartets by Mozart and Mendelssohn with instrumental solos and songs, continuing the programme format established by the People's Concert Society.
A note of satisfaction may be detected in the minute recording a profit of over f 10 on the first seven concerts mounted by the Concert Sub-committee and the South Place elders, sensing a useful supplementary income, needed little persuasion to allow a continuation of what were now to be called the South Place Sunday Popular Concerts.
The immediate success of the South Place enterprise may be judged from the report of the Concert Committee for 1888:
The crowded state of the building and the enthusiasm displayed by the audience on each evening showed that the second season was even more fully appreciated than the first; and in consequence the Committee has felt justified in undertaking the whole of the concerts during the present winter. The size of the audiences may be gauged to some extent from the numbers of programmes sold. The earliest extant accounts date from 1892 and give an average of 670 programmes being sold each night. Following the introduction of new Fire Regulations in 1904, the programmes bore an instruction forbidding standing, but average programme sales figures during the Edwardian period continued to hover around 600 per concert.
But the Sunday concerts did not turn out to be the money-spinner that the Ethical Society Committee had hoped. By 1895 the concerts were in difficulty. The February balance-sheet showed a deficit following a prolonged period of bad weather and
6 Ethical Record, December, 2003 resultant poor attendances, but with musicians offering their services free, and Clements making fervent appeals from the platform, disaster was averted and by the end of the season the books were balanced.
Not that this was the last of the Concert Committee's fiscal problems. With the weekly chapel rental, payments to musicians, piano hire, printing charges and administrative costs all to be met, reliance on the collections was continually doomed to disappointment. Ultimately the end-of-season balance entirely depended on the generosity of the musicians. Many of them played frequently at South Place without recompense, and the 1895 balance sheet reveals that the season's instrumentalists and vocalists gave their services for an average of thirteen shillings and ninepence each per appearance, equating to about forty pounds today.
There is probably no single reason why many musicians performed at the South Place concerts for trifling fees. Perhaps some sympathised with what they regarded as a worthy philanthropic cause; some perhaps saw it as an investment, recognising an opportunity to exhibit their prowess and secure other engagements or attract pupils (the main source of income for 19th century musicians); others, aware of the precarious financial position of the concerts, may have seen the advantages of their continuing in the general interest, but perhaps the most plausible reason was that, as chamber-music players, the pleasure of making music together in sympathetic surroundings was paramount. Silence Was Demanded By sympathetic surroundings I mean the performing ambience established by Alfred Clements and his committee. Silence was demanded during the music, late-comers were not admitted while the musicians were playing, and people leaving early were requested to do so between pieces. This was a far cry from the usual audience behaviour in more fashionable West End concert halls. Artists reportedly said that they would rather perform at South Place than anywhere else, and the musicians' pleasure in performing in the Finsbury chapel is reflected in their returning season after season to play for fees far less than they might earn in more prestigious venues.
Although in the early days the music to be played was first discussed in committee, it was not long before choice of programme was left to the discretion of Alfred Clements, who would also engage the musicians. This was a significant move. With the concerts virtually under the direction of one competent person with a wide and practical knowledge of the chamber music repertoire, the result was a succession of attractive programmes of consistent quality.
The growing reputation of the concerts persuaded many established professionals, who were regularly performing in the most fashionable public and private venues, to agree to regular engagements.
Amongst others, early South Place audiences enjoyed concerts featuring pianists Percy Grainger and Henry Wood, violinists Albert Sammons and Spencer Dyke, clarinettist Charles Draper, and horn players Aubrey Brain (father and son), all artists of national renown, while amongst the ensembles was the string quartet led by the Viennese virtuoso Hans Wessely. The Saunders String Quartet, with the leader of the Royal Philharmonic Society Orchestra playing first violin, was virtually resident at the chapel.
As early as 1895 Clements instituted a policy of devoting at least one concert a Ethical Record, December, 2003 7 year entirely to modem British works, and when W.WCobbett offered prizes in 1905 for string quartets written by native composers, Clements promptly programmed the six winning compositions. To South Place also belongs the credit of giving many of London's first performances, perhaps the most notable being Tchaikovsky's String Sextet Souvenir de Florence, during an all-Tchaikovsky night in 1899. Concerts devoted to the music of a single composer were a favourite programming device of Clements, dating back to 1891 when an all-Mozart programme commemorated the centenary of his death.
An analysis of Cements' programmes over ten seasons reveals a clear preference for Austro-German composers, mostly Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann. With these well-established names forming the core of his programmes, Cements would also give a hearing to the work of up-and-coming continental composers.
The nature of the audience response is frequently recorded by Clements' pencilled notes on his programmes, Schubert's Octet for example being met with a 'great recall with many shouts'. Alfred Cements evidently took note of such expressions of audience preference when planning his programmes, since performances of the Schubert Octet ran into double figures during his tenure of office.
The Art Of Chamber Music With the chamber music of 196 different composers represented in the ten seasons considered, the only sense in which Clements could be accused of being conservative is in the unvarying format of his programmes. Throughout his reign as concert secretary he maintained the mix of instrumental and vocal music, never falling in with the new trend for piano recitals which were to become a feature of the more fashionable West End venues. (It is intriguing to speculate whether this decision may have been influenced by J.S.Shedlock. who believed the piano recital to be 'one of the most tedious forms of musical entertainment'.) But neither did Clements compromise the integrity of his programmes by including vocal items not qualifying as 'art music'. Furthermore, whether they were operatic arias from Handel or Wagner, or songs from Schubert or Chaminade, he insisted, with few exceptions, that they should be given in their original language. The unfaltering support of his audiences testifies to their trust in Clements' judgement and their belief in his aims.
In 1926 the Musical Times recorded the official acknowledgement of his achievement:
At a recent court dinner of the Musicians' Company the Cobbett Medal for 1926, awarded annually for Services to the Art of Chamber Music, was presented to Mr Alfred J.Clements, in recognition of his work as organizer for forty years of the famous South Place Chamber Concerts, and on behalf of chamber music generally.
A worthy tribute to a man who, from uncertain beginnings, had the vision, the single- mindedness, energy and dedication to built the solid foundation on which the South Place Sunday Concerts became based.
SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS IN CONWAY HALL 1830h Tickets £7 (£5 for LCMS Members) - free for 8-22yrs Concerts restart on Sunday 11 January 2004
8 Ethical Record, December, 2003 EMPOWERING WOMEN Report on The IHEU Conference Anna Behan, Council Member, National Secular Society
The IHEU International Women's Conference "Empowering Women", held at Conway Hall on the weekend of 15/16 November was a very successful occasion. There were approximately fifty participants from sixteen countries who heard a wide range of papers on political, social, health and other issues relating to women and their status in society. The speakers' topics covered a geographical spread including Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the USA, and provoked a stimulating debate. Many of the speakers identified religion as either a cause of the problems discussed or an obstacle to their resolution.
Several of the presentations discussed problems faced by women in India and its neighbours Pakistan and Nepal. Sangeeta Mall then spoke on Civil and Political Rights of Women. She mentioned the role of tokenism which gave a misleading impression of the actual role women play in the political process, particularly in some Asian countries. Dr Indu Grewal spoke on pre-natal gender diagnosis and Sex and Gender Discrimination. She discussed her study of the implementation of the legislation which makes pre-natal sex screening illegal in India to prevent the elimination of female foetuses. She reported that a large proportion of Health Centres are violating the Act but that no medical professional had been prosecuted to date.
The theme of religion and the harm it does was particularly emphasised by the two speakers on Iraq and Iran. Houzan Mahmoud talked about the current political situation in Iraq and gave a grim description of life there as women are forced to wear the veil and rape is the norm. She laid the blame on the US policy of regime change, and their desire to dominate Iraqis. The Americans had allowed foreign groups to enter and introduce the political Islam movement and she feared a US promoted Taliban style government. Her movement, the Iraqi Women's Rights Coalition, is seeking the separation of religion and state.
Azam Kamguian reported on the situation in Iran and women's fight for secularism there. She warned of the dangers of seeing illusions of progress where none truly existed and the need to fight cultural relativism. She cited the paradox that women were segregated in Iran and yet visible everywhere which produced the argument that "Islam had empowered women". She took comfort from the fact that resistance was now coming from those born within the Islamic state and that women and youth were the champions of the fight.
Within Europe, religion emerged as a significant theme too. Three speakers from Eastern Europe dealt particularly with the impact of the Vatican in politics and society. Agnieszka Wolk-Laniewska demonstrated from a selection of school text-books the depressing set of sexual stereotypes currently being created and reinforced. Katarzyna Szumlewicz's talk on Poland follows this Report. Viera Faragulova emphasised the extent to which the Vatican wants power in a unified Europe from the experience of Slovakia. Initial progress to democracy achieved since 1989 is under threat from elements which want Slovakia to be a model state for showing special respect for Christian values. Her hopes were for international pressure to bring systems in line with the EU.
The keynote speaker was Annie Laurie Gaylor, the co-founder of Freedom From
Ethical Record, December, 2003 9 Religion Foundation. Her speech was entitled "No Gods No Masters" and described the American experience. She uses the status of its women as the gauge of a country, and attacked George Bush for his retrogressive influence on civil liberties. She discussed the history of the Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923 and still not in place, although some guarantees are now in place at federal and state level. She then illustrated the history of freethinking among women by reference to the anthology she edited (also called No Gods No Masters), citing numerous pithy sayings from writers including Barbara Smoker and Taslima Nasrin.
Finally Robbi Robson organised a workshop to create a programme of action. A consensus of key issues (including education, health care, women's economic empowerment and the separation of church and state) emerged, and participants made personal commitments to carry the agenda forward. Babu Gogineni then read a draft motion (the wording was still to be finalised) to be read to the UN Conference in New York. This condemned the US representative in Iraq, Paul Bremer for supporting an Islamic state and the introduction of sharia law in Iraq as not in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was agreed unanimously by the Conference which then concluded.
POLAND - TRANSFORMATION IN A PATRIARCHAL WORLD Katarzyna Szumlewicz
Contribution to the 1HEU's "Empowering Women" Conference 15116 November 2003 in Conway Hall London.
The former political system, the so called 'real socialism', had done a lot for women. They were granted equal access to employment and education and were partly relieved of family burdens thanks to the well developed network of pre-schools and day-care centres. Abortion had been lawful in Poland and family planning had been promoted much earlier than it was in France or Germany. These regulations and policies were accompanied by a progressive divorce law and effective policies aimed at combating domestic violence. All these achievements are hardly questionable, regardless of one's attitude to socialist ideas and reality.
While giving women high social status and rights they can hardly hope to enjoy today, socialism failed to recognise the views and demands of women themselves. There were no independent women's organisations, let alone feminist groups, which resulted in strengthening conservative attitudes in the government and increased emphasis on family and maternity as the main fields of women's activities. This process was additionally reinforced by the Catholic Church, which — despite its virtual absence from the media and educational system - still exerted great ideological influence.
In 1989, after the breakdown of 'real socialism' in Poland, western commentators expected the newly introduced democracy to bring rapid improvement in the situation of women. After all, feminist organisations were now fully legal and wide recognition of human rights should contribute to the emancipation of the oppressed groups. And yet, the facts proved the contrary. Instead of being granted more rights by the democratic state, women were soon deprived of those rights and liberties they had enjoyed so far. First, the "holocaust of the unborn", as it was called by some quack experts, was suppressed. That was not all, however. Although the promotion of full families with many children should be logically followed by further development
10 Ethical Record, December, 2003 of the network of nurseries and pre-schools, in fact many of these institutions were closed down and the remaining few introduced high fees. As a result, women with large families had to leave their jobs and take care of their numerous offspring at home. Indeed, one cannot be surprised that despite the ban on abortion, expensive contraceptives and high availability of Viagra, the rate of natural growth in Poland has collapsed.
As though that was not enough, parliament did not even accept the motion to vote on the law of equal status of men and women. The arguments used by right wing politicians invoked "natural differences in the vocation of men and women". Conservative MPs ridiculed the proposal to avoid gender stereotypes in school textbooks. They argued that if the schoolboys saw in their books that more egalitarian relations between men and women are possible, they might experience a sexual identity crisis. The only correct, that is to say heterosexual, model of gender relations in Polish textbooks depicts woman washing, cooking or ironing, while her husband is either absent or reads a newspaper. Catholic children are obedient and the family is often visited by a priest or a nun. One priest is shown on the cover of one of the books as an indispensable member of a healthy Polish family.
The refusal to vote on the draft law on gender equality illustrates the actual, appalling inequalities between men and women. Can future developments take another direction, more favourable for women?
Despite the views of many Polish feminists of "Solidarity" origin, the current situation of women does not contradict the logic of transformation — it follows the same path. As the revolution of 1989 was geared against the system and government that were considered "left", all elements of the left political agenda were rejected all together - with gender equality and emancipation of women. Later, taxes on the rich were lowered, the labour code was amended to strengthen the position of employers and the social welfare system was gradually curtailed. The purpose was to rebuild in Poland a class society characterised by vast inequalities in wealth, economic power and incomes.
This purpose was fulfilled at a record pace. Although the official goal of the neoliberal policy was to curtail unemployment, actually the number of the jobless has been growing throughout the whole period of transformation. Over the years, the unemployment rate has soared to a record 21.2% (22% among women). Women also account for the majority of clients of the welfare system and are among those with lowest income.
Apart from the conservative liberal ideology, the second most important factor shaping Polish transformation has been the Catholic Church and religion. The Church - powerful already in the socialist period - has grown to enormous proportions. Today, practically no important government decision is taken without its consent. At the Church's demand, religious instruction was introduced to school curricula and it soon became compulsory. Officially, students of other faiths or non-believers may attend ethics classes - the hitch however is that because of insufficient funding, most schools do not employ the teachers of ethics. The Church is not satisfied with two hours of indoctrination per week. The syllabi of other classes, including history and biology, are also fixed after consulting bishops. Sex education was replaced in school curricula by unambiguously catholic "education for family life" and now children are being taught that HIV virus is transmittedby condoms and that hormonal contraceptive pills cause cancer. Ethical Record, December, 2003 11 Putting God In The European Union The Polish Catholic Church is extremely conservative. Despite the views and needs of the faithful, it has not given birth to any religious movement comparable to Latin American "Liberation Theology" or North American "Catholics for Free Choice". It promotes a medieval image of women. Liberal ideology only seemingly opposes this backward view. True, wealthy, independent women are free from domestic chores - but the number of wealthy women in Poland is very low and they often owe their freedom to the work of their underpaid and uninsured Ukrainian aids and baby- sitters. Exploitation of women by other women cannot be considered as real emancipation - at best, it's a semblance of economic advancement attained within the order of patriarchal tradition.
Polish democracy is a world without women. The members of the under- represented sex do not feel any better just because male employees, pensioners or the unemployed have been also deprived of any influence on the situation in the country and of any opportunity to defend their interests. This has been achieved by a coalition of financial and religious elites. One striking example of their overwhelming influence on the policy of the Polish social-democratic government is its commitment to introduce a reference to God in the preamble to the constitution of the European Union; so far, it has failed to repeal the ban on abortion, while at the same time cutting social welfare benefits for the poor. Women's rights and respect for their freedom and dignity seem unattainable without seriously undermining the power of the combined forces of the clergy and highly ideological oligarchy in Poland. SECRETS, LIES AND WORKS OF ART Dr Anthea Brook, The Witt Library Illustrated talk for the SPES Annual Art Soiree, 22 November 2003
The Witt Library is a collection of reproductions of paintings, drawings and engravings of western art from the 13th Century to the present day. The information on these items is kept as up to date as possible by the constant addition of clippings from sale and exhibition catalogues and the scholarly art history journals and of photographs from our surveys of private collections in the UK. Thus one of its most useful services is the tracking of works of art from owner to owner via the saleroom or auction house. The library is intended for use by the scholar and student of art history and by the professionals of the art market.
The library was founded in the 1890s by Robert and Mary Witt, who had started their own collections of reproductions. Robert was a barrister and a connoisseur of art. As they continued to add to their joint collection, organized in simple dictionary form, it came to fulfil a serious role, firstly to serve the needs of Mary, a teacher of art history, and then of the collector and the dealer, the compiler of museum catalogues and the scholar who seeks to define the oeuvre of an artist by comparing the documented works with those attributed to the artist and his circle. Robert had intended to leave the library to the National Gallery of London but by 1932 he had been pursuaded instead to leave it to the newly-founded Courtauld Institute of Art, where the teaching of art history remained firmly rooted in the old tradition of connoisseurship well into the 20th century.
The library remains today in the Institute's premises in Somerset House in the Strand. It now contains approximately 1.9 million mounts of the works of more than 75,000 artists. We are open to the general public between 10 and 6 Monday to Friday.
12 Ethical Record, December, 2003 HAS HUMANISM ANY FUTURE? David Warden, Dorset Humanist Association Lecture to the Ethical Society23 November 2003
I'm delighted and honoured to address you this afternoon on the subject Has Humanism Any Future? My talk is organised into four parts:
Part One : 6 Propositions Part Two : 6 Humanist Beliefs Part Three : 4 Deliberate Omissions Part Four : Some practical pointers
A few months ago I was rummaging in the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye and I came across a first edition Conway Memorial Lecture, published in 1929, and entitled The Religious Advance Towards Rationalism.At the back of the book there are some delightful details about the South Place Ethical Society. The 'Object of the Society' is 'the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment, the study of ethical principles, and the promotion of human welfare, in harmony with advancing knowledge'. It also lists your social activities as 'social evenings, dances, discussions, play readings, rambles, and co-operative holidays'!
Before I attempt to answer the question Has Humanism Any Future? — a little information about me. I was born in the seaside town of Bournemouth and I went to local schools there. As a serious and pious young man I intended to become a Christian minister and I went to study theology at Darwin College in the University of Kent at Canterbury. But calamity struck just three weeks before my final exams: I lost my belief in God. But unlike the poet Shelley, who was expelled from university for his pamphlet on atheism, I took my exams and I graduated with honours. But a degree in theology is not a lot of use once you've become an atheist and I eventually found my way into the recruitment and training profession. Over the years I've maintained a lively interest in theology and religion and nearly two years ago I decided to join the Dorset Humanist Association. I could have joined them years ago but at 44 I think I'm still their youngest member!
My first proposition is this: Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement. We know this is true because we've all met people who are broadly in sympathy with Humanism, and may even call themselves Humanists, but they feel no need to join a Humanist organisation. That's putting it politely, of course. They may have attended humanist meetings in the past and been so appalled by our introspective approach that they never want to set foot in another humanist meeting ever again. We also know that Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement because so many aspects of our civilization are implicitly humanistic: democracy, human rights, science, education and so on. Thirdly, we know that Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement because the word 'humanistic' regularly crops up in psychology, in sociology and in management literature. Recently I have been corresponding with a 'humanistic counsellor' in Brighton who informed me that humanistic counselling is the third main school of psychotherapy, following on from psychoanalysis and behaviourism. Humanistic psychology was inspired by American writers such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers and is represented today by the Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners.
The word humanism even crops up in theology and some of you may remember the fuss that was made a few years back when an Anglican priest, Anthony Freeman, Ethical Record, December, 2003 13 published a book entitled God in Us: The Case For Christian Humanism Anthony Freeman subsequently gave a talk to this Society (El? Jan 1994).There was nothing new or startling about the book but the Anglican Church seems condemned to fight the same battles over and over again in every generation. The Anglican Church is riddled with humanism just as it is riddled with fundamentalism and this explains why it is finally beginning to break up . My brother, who is a liberal Anglican priest, confided to me only a few weeks ago that he believes the fundamentalist wing of the Church of England is 'evil'. It's difficult to see how such an organisation can hold together for very much longer. Furthermore, if statistical trends are to be believed, Christianity will be winding itself up in Britain by about the year 2050. We also know that Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement because, according to the World Christian Encyclopaedia there are 900 million non-religious people in the world, of whom 180 million are explicitly atheist. That's a tiny proportion of the world population, but much bigger than the number of atheists who have, so far, been gathered into the bosom of organised Humanism.
My second proposition is this: Organised humanism is just the tip of the iceberg. At the visible tip of the iceberg we've got the British Humanist Association, the International Humanist and Ethical Union and, of course, the South Place Ethical Society. Below the water level, we've got implicit humanism in democracy, human rights, science, human endeavour, humanistic psychology and so on. So what do we know about visible or explicit Humanism? We know that the British Humanist Association has got nearly 4,000 members and we know there are about 50 local groups. We also know that the IHEU has about 100 member groups around the world.
Now let's do some maths — I hope you all brought your calculators. If every humanist group in the world is the same size as the British Humanist Association (a very big assumption obviously), then we've got around 400,000 humanists in the world. We already know that there are 180 million atheists in the world, so if we put these two figures together, the total number of known humanists divided by the total number of known atheists, it means that so far, organised humanism has managed to capture less than 0.2% of its hottest market. If, on the other hand, we divide the total number of known humanists by the total number of non-religious people in the world, our hit rate goes down to a rather disappointing 0.04%.
So my third proposition is this: Organised humanism is not doing very well. It's not doing very well in absolute terms and it's not doing very well compared to its rivals. Let's take another look at the British Humanist Association and then compare it to one of its rivals. The BHA was founded at the end of the 19th century and its headquarters are here in London. It doesn't have any formal relationship with its local groups which are autonomous. The local groups meet wherever they can, usually in community centres, and they meet about once a month for talks and discussions. They might occasionally hand out leaflets but probably only in English. This is a very loose, decentralised organisation and today its UK membership is about 4,000.
Let's compare it to another organisation which seems to be doing rather better. This organisation also started at the end of the 19th century and its headquarters are now in New York. It has a very structured and supportive relationship with its local groups. All the local groups have physically built their own buildings. They meet three times a week for study and they hand out free literature in dozens of different languages. This is a highly disciplined and committed organisation and today its UK membership is about 350,000 members. Now when I tell you that this organisation is
14 Ethical Record, December, 2003 the Watchtower Society, more commonly known as the Jehovah's Witnesses, no doubt you will be horrified that it's being compared in any way whatsoever to the BHA. But one of my aims is to shock the humanist movement out of its complacency and to raise awareness of what our rivals are doing, how they are operating, and their steady advance across the globe and into the minds of our fellow human beings. Christianity may be on the wane in Britain, but across the world fundamentalists are on the march and they are extremely well organised.
My fourth proposition is this: Organised humanism is not doing very well because it's fragmented, it lacks clarity, and it lacks confidence. The fragmentation of organised humanism is a legacy of our history. The National Secular Society has its roots in 19th century socialism and the co-operative movement*. The BHA has its roots in the Ethical Movement of which the South Place Ethical Society is a noble remnant. The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association was set up in 1979 and the International Humanist and Ethical Union was set up in 1953 and is a loose coalition of humanist, ethical and secular organisations around the world. If you are a humanist in Britain today, you have the option of joining a local group but not the BHA or you can join the BHA but not a local group or you can join both if you want to. Many people seem to be confused about the relationship between these two things.
If you are an enthusiast, you can subscribe to all of the existing organisations, at a combined annual cost of around £100 and receive 5 periodicals. The Freethinker is an autonomous publication which prides itself on anti-religious aggression. Humanist News describes what the BHA is doing, mostly UK-based campaigns and news about the ceremonies network. International Humanist News is an update on international humanism, focussing in particular on human rights. The Gay and Lesbian Humanist is rather narrowly focused on attacking the church on gay issues. And the New Humanist, published by the Rationalist Press Association, has recently doubled its readership by giving up on humanism altogether.
Now I'm not suggesting that we can or even should merge these organisations and publications but the fragmentation of UK humanism is a severe impediment to our cohesion and our effectiveness. I find it confusing and rather expensive to subscribe to such a plethora of humanist journals, each one focussing rather narrowly and sometimes aggressively on its own concerns. But my main concern is that none of these organisations is nurturing local groups. The BHA prides itself on 'punching above its weight'. It would have more weight to punch with if local groups were growing and multiplying instead of struggling to exist.
I also said in my fourth proposition that organised Humanism is not doing very well because it lacks clarity. There are too many vague definitions of Humanism floating around. According to the BHA Humanism is an 'approach to life'. This strikes me as a bit feeble. According to the Humanist Philosophers Group, Humanism is 'an evolving tradition of thought' . Well they would say that wouldn't they but it's not much use as a soundbite. The International Humanist and Ethical Union is keen for us all to use the word ' lifestance' but this word just makes me cringe. I'd like to suggest that the way forward is to clarify what our core beliefs are and then we can market Humanism with a greater sense of confidence as a coherent system of belief. I'm not suggesting of course that a Humanist system of belief should become a rigid orthodoxy, but I think we can fairly easily identify what our core beliefs are.
*Although Charles Bradlaugh, its founder, became a Liberal M.P. [Ed.] Ethical Record, December, 2003 15 My fifth proposition is that UK Humanism is lagging far behind its continental counterparts. According to a Dutch humanist website, 25% of the Dutch population explicitly identify themselves as Humanists . No doubt there are historical and cultural reasons why Dutch Humanism is so far ahead of us, but one of the main reasons appears to be that they've maintained a strong link between secular humanism and humanistic psychology. In Holland and in Belgium you'll find humanist counsellors and chaplains working alongside their religious counterparts in schools, hospitals and prisons. It seems that Humanism is widely recognised as an alternative to supernatural religion. In effect, it's a secular religion.
My sixth proposition is that Humanism should be competing with religion, rather than whingeing about its privileges. Let me try and be clear about this. I don't particularly want unelected bishops to sit in the House of Lords, I don't like the fact that the BBC won't let Humanists anywhere near Thought for the Day, and I certainly don't like the fact that so few of our children are taught about Humanism in religious studies. But as long our membership continues to languish at around the 4,000 mark we will continue to be sidelined.
So how can Humanism compete effectively with religion? I think that in order to compete, what we need to have is a clearly-defined belief system. What I'd like to do now is sketch out what Humanism as a belief system might look like. So far, I've presented you with six propositions. And now I'd like to present you with my six humanist beliefs.
My First Humanist Belief Is This: I Believe In Personal Autonomy For me, this is the foundation stone of humanism. The belief in autonomy is what marks us out very sharply from traditional religions. Fundamentalist religions are based on what theologians call Theteronomy'. Heteros is a Greek word meaning 'other'. And nomos is a Greek word meaning 'law'. So heteronomy means being governed by someone other than yourself. And in the case of religion, it means being governed by God. But seeing as God doesn't really exist, religious heteronomy in effect means being governed by religious authorities who've had the audacity to declare themselves the mouthpieces of God. Religious heteronomy is a fundamental attack on what it means to be a human being. To be fully human, we need freedom, independence, to exercise our own initiative; not to have our lives pre-planned be under constant surveillance. So when I say, as a humanist, that I believe in personal autonomy, what I'm saying is that I believe in myself and that I want to learn how to be fully in control of my life. I think this is a very attractive belief so our humanist belief system has got off to a flying start.
My Second Belief Is This: I Believe In Critical Reasoning Now the distinction between humanism and religion on this front is less clear-cut. I was speaking to a Muslim a couple of weeks ago who told me that the Qu'ran could not have been written by the Prophet Muhammad because Muhammad was illiterate. Therefore the Qu'ran must have been written by Allah. Now the only way I can start to counter this fairly simplistic line of reasoning is by doing some historical research. The point to note is that my Muslim friend doesn't just believe that the Qu'ran was written by God — he is armed with a particular line of reasoning which sounds plausible to him. What humanists need to do is not condemn him for being 'irrational' but challenge his belief on historical grounds and this requires patient historical study. It's not that religious people are against reason. The problem with religion is that its reasoning processes are superficial and therefore potentially very dangerous.
16 Ethical Record, December, 2003 My Third Belief Is This: I Believe That Morality Is A Human Construction One of the chief objections to Humanism is that it denies any objective basis for ethics and leaves morality subject to the whims of individual taste. But there's no reason why there should be a perfect system of ethics any more than there should be perfect systems of language or law. All of these things are subject to human debate, historical evolution and social consensus. We can't deduce a perfect system of morality from religion or from utilitarianism or from any other moral theory. Moral theories might help us, but ethical decision making is messy and difficult. Morality is not just an outcome of personal choice however. It's a complex system of negotiation between the individual and the communities in which he lives. The advantage of a humanist approach to ethics is that this complexity is not sacrificed to the moral tyranny of the Bible or the Qu'ran.
My Fourth Belief Is This: I Believe In Growing To My Full Potential It's very fashionable these days to talk about personal growth and the bookshops are full of self-help books to help you Unlimit Your Life. But this belief is one of the things that clearly differentiates us from our religious competitors. Religion tends to view human nature as intrinsically evil and the purpose of human life as submission to God in the hope of life everlasting. The only type of personal growth recommended by religion is growth in submissiveness. Humanism, on the other hand, encourages people to be assertive and to have self-respect. It frowns on fatalism, and encourages people to identify and destroy self-limiting beliefs. Now whether you do this through humanistic psychology or neuro-linguistic programming or good old fashioned positive thinking is entirely your own choice. But as humanists, we should be experts in the art and science of helping people to realise their full potential in life. This is one the most exciting things that humanism can offer and it requires us to re-engage urgently with the humanistic psychology tradition associated with Carl Rogers and other important thinkers.
My Fifth Belief Is This: I Believe In Humanist Spirituality I didn't really want to use that word, spirituality, because of its religious connotations. But I think there is an important dimension in human life to which the word spirituality refers. I'm thinking about primal needs which can't be satisfied by the free-market economy. For instance, during the week I might rely on instant meals from the supermarket but on a Friday or a Saturday night I get pleasure from preparing a meal from scratch, soaking the beans, chopping up the vegetables, frying them gently in olive oil, adding some crushed garlic, cumin seeds and a good splash of red wine. From a purely rational point of view, this makes no sense at all. If all I need to do is eat, I might as well carry on eating instant meals. But I recognise that I have primal needs that can't be satisfied by rationality but only by getting in touch with my deepest feelings about things. I have a primal need to cook.
Unfortunately, this is where traditional religion has a distinct advantage over humanism. Ancient church buildings and religious rituals connect with these primal instincts. The slightly musty smell in a village church, the sense of connection with countless generations of worshippers, the soaring vaults of Cathedral naves, the penetrating blast of a church organ, the purity of chorister voices, the soothing effect of flickering candles, the sumptuous costumes of bishops and deans. It's pure theatre. And what have we got? We've got Conway Hall but apart from this we mostly meet in drab community centres. Well, let's set our sights a bit higher. Let's start building humanist buildings that connect in some way with people's deepest values. Humanism is a very young movement. We need to start thinking on a grand scale and start planning for the next thousand years. Ethical Record, December, 2003 17 This belief in a humanist spirituality also presents a challenge to economic assumptions about human well-being. It encourages the recognition that beyond a certain optimal point the accumulation of possessions starts to erode our sense of well-being. A striking example of this is the spectacle of celebrities like Elton John having periodic clear-outs of expensive clutter. On a more realistic level, it might involve spending more time learning a musical instrument and less time listening to CDs, or more time painting and less time worrying about whether you've taken in the latest blockbuster exhibition at the Royal Academy. 'Humanist spirituality' means developing some resistance to the over-commodification of life. My Sixth Belief Is This: I Believe That The Ultimate Meaninglessness Of Life Releases Us From Anxiety Whenever I speak to a general audience about humanism, I inevitably get the question about the meaning of life. Margaret Nelson, an email friend of mine, from the Suffolk Humanist Association insists that the meaning of life is 42, but I think we can improve on this. When I was studying theology at the University of Kent it occurred to me, in a philosophical moment, that if the human brain is programmed to think contextually then Sartre's comment that a 'godless universe is absurd' is a logical and necessary truth. But if you try to solve the problem of absurdity by enclosing the universe in a God-shaped wrapper (that's what I meant by thinking contextually) you're immediately faced with the same problem at one remove. If God is just existing without any explanation then God's existence is equally absurd. So religious people haven't solved the problem of absurdity at all. All they've done is push it beyond their mental horizons. I think we need to accept and even celebrate the absurdity of the universe. Whenever I start to worry about my mortality and the frustration of unfulfilled dreams, I comfort myself with the thought that, in the end, it doesn't really matter. In rare moments of Buddhist enlightenment, I simply let go. Fortunately, none of these morbid thoughts stop me from getting out of bed in the morning. Humanism is about making plans and it's about constructing meaning but it's also about living in and for the moment. Humanism is a form of existentialism. These six beliefs are my six pillars of humanism. And of course it's a personal selection. You may be surprised at some omissions from my list of beliefs so what I'd like to do now is look at four of the things I've consciously omitted. Atheism The last time I explained humanism as a system of belief, a humanist in the audience expressed surprise that I hadn't included atheism. There's a reason for this. I do happen to be an atheist but atheism is merely a technicality. If God's existence was proved beyond reasonable doubt, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I would still be a humanist because I believe in autonomy. Atheism supports my belief in autonomy, but it's not a necessary precondition.
Secularisation You might also be surprised that I haven't argued for the secularisation of society or the separation of church and state or the abolition of faith schools. Well, this is because I believe in free-choice rather than social engineering. Secularism is not a neutral position. It's an ideological position. I think there is an element here of state control, of intellectuals knowing what is best for society. Why should we have a secular society if the majority of taxpayers don't want it to be secular? I believe that Humanism should simply compete in the marketplace of ideas. 18 Ethical Record, December, 2003 Morality Without Religion You may've also noticed that I haven't made any explicit connection between Humanism and morality. This is because I want organised Humanism to give me the opportunity to explore ethics; I don't want organised Humanism to assume that I want to become more moral or more altruistic. I'm trying to achieve a balance in my life between altruism and egoism, between my interests and the interests of others. This is what I meant when I spoke about ethics being a process of negotiation between me and the community in which I live.
Let me give you an example. Four-and-a-half years ago, my father suffered a stroke. My mother was unable to look after him and as a family we faced a difficult dilemma. Should one of us give up our career in order to make his final years as happy as possible or should he go into a nursing home? Now, if I were a moral and altruistic person, maybe I would have given up my career without hesitation. A Christian friend of mine has done just that. She sacrificed her life in order to look after her elderly mother who suffers from multiple sclerosis. But I don't believe in Christian ethics any more than I believe in Christian doctrines. The outcome of this story is that my father spent four years in a nursing home and between us my sister and I saw him virtually every day for those four years. I sometimes felt that I'd been sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service but I undertook it willingly to bring some relief to my poor father. Through those years I often agonised over whether we'd done the right thing despite the protestations of many people who told us how good we were to give my father so much of our time. I don't accept we were good or bad — we simply made a rational calculation and did what we could within those limits, and with the natural compassion felt by most children for their ageing parents.
Felix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Culture Movement wanted to 'rescue...the wisdom and the moral insight that past generations have stored in their religions' . To a large extent, modem Humanism is still based, albeit unconsciously, on Adler's assumption that religious morality is a good thing and needs to be preserved and promoted. I disagree. And I take comfort in the fact that the German rationalist Ernst Haeckel was bold enough to declare that "The supreme mistake of Christian ethics ...is the exaggeration of love of one's neighbour at the expense of self-love". That's not to say that we can't learn anything from religious ethics. But as humanists we need to be critical and sceptical in the field of ethics just as we are in every other field. Morality isn't something that can be dished out quantitatively like Christmas presents. Morality is about the quality of our relationships.
Religion Bashing Earlier in the talk I spoke rather disparagingly about 'anti-religious aggression' . I hope you won't form the impression that I've gone soft on religion. Some humanists evidently have. Alfred Hobson and Neil Jenkins in their book Modern Humanism that "In view of the value of religion to its [followers], the Humanist movement makes argue no attempt to convert religious people to Humanism". I think this is underselling Humanism. I believe passionately that Humanism is a good belief system and that fundamentalism is profoundly bad for individuals and for society. I care passionately about children being given an informed choice between humanism and anti-humanism. Of course I'm fully-signed up to the principles of toleration and respect for individual people, whatever their beliefs, but toleration and respect doesn't mean giving up our critical edge.
Getting the right balance is difficult and my impression is that organised humanism often gets it wrong. Our arguments against religion are aggressive and Ethical Record, December, 2003 19 unsophisticated and we often use insulting language. For example, describing religious people as 'bigots' merely demonstrates that we're losing the argument. And let's stop using the word 'religionist'. No-one else uses it. Why should we?
The alternative approach is to use our deadly weapon: well-informed, critical reasoning. We need to sharpen up our act by diligent study of our opponents' arguments and by practising our debating skills. Every good humanist should have a Christian friend, a Muslim friend, a Hindu friend, a Watchtower friend. Not an exclusive list. We need religious friends who are prepared to debate the arguments with us. We may never convert them, but every time we debate the issues with them we are sowing the seeds of doubt. And the seeds of doubt may eventually grow into the fruits of reason.
What Is The Purpose Of Organised Humanism? Jonathan Miller, a prominent atheist, has recently been quoted as wondering why Humanists need to get together at all. He seems to view us as a peculiar sect . I agree with Jonathan Miller to some extent; I acknowledge that we are a peculiar sect. But the reason why organised Humanism needs to exist is to give people a choice between traditional religion on the one hand and nothingarianism on the other. Nothingarianism equates all too often to limited moral and intellectual horizons and a susceptibility to all sorts of quackery. Humanism is a learning community which gives people the chance to practice their thinking skills and widen their moral horizons.
I think the Dorset Humanist Association has got just about the right mix of talks, discussions and social events but we're also trying to establish friendship links with humanists abroad. We've recently made contact with humanists in India, Nigeria and in Holland and these international links are starting to give us a more 3-dimensional understanding of Humanism.
At the moment we've got about 60 members but I'd like to see that double on an annual basis until we have to split into a number of satellites. The received wisdom is that 'people don't join groups anymore'. I accept it's a challenge but I don't think we should be too defeatist about this. Many people are looking for something to believe in and belong to beyond the narrow confines of hedonistic individualism.One of the things we'd like to do is offer an educational course in Humanism covering religion, philosophy, psychology and ethics. We'd also like to foster stronger relationships with other UK groups and provide educational services to local schools. You have a wonderful humanist library here in Conway Hall. I'd like every humanist group in the country to build up its own humanist library.
So Has Humanism Any Future? I said near the beginning of my talk that humanism is bigger than organised Humanism and I'm confident that even if organised Humanism collapsed, humanism would still be a powerful and pervasive force in the world. As for organised Humanism, I think it does have a future but whether it continues to exist as a peculiar sect or grows into a thriving belief system is partly up to us. One of my fantasies is that in 100 years' time, a young man will be rummaging in the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye and he'll come across a first edition of a Conway ID lecture entitled Has Humanism Any Future? And by then, he will know the answer.
The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society.
20 Ethical Record, December, 2003 OUT OF THIS WORLD An Examination of Modern Physics and Cosmology by Ilyman Frankel Book Launch at the Ethical Society, 23 September 2003
SPES member Hyman Frankel has just had published his latest book, his first on physics, entitled Out of this World, an examination of modern physics and cosmology. Cardiff Academic Press (2003) ISBN 1-899025-25-1. Price £25 from hookshops
Hyman Frankel's Son Mark's Introduction. 'Out of this World' is not a work of science fiction. I see it as an addition to a series of work that my father has produced over a long and productive life covering a range of topics. My earliest memory of him as an author is a slim volume he produced on the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who is best remembered as Bertrand Russell's collaborator on the Principia Mathematics. Whitehead had written a book Adventures of Ideas which my father criticised in a volume with the punning title of Misadventure sof Ideas. I was very young when he produced this work and I can tell you nothing about it but I do recall that it seemed to me as a child a most impressive achievement.
Father went on to develop an interest in sociology and to write Capitalist Society and Modern Sociology which was amongst other things a critique of the book The Future of Socialism by the sometime Labour Minister and social democrat thinker Anthony Crosland. There have been other works for periodicals and also some fiction, but I believe that Out of this World will be the crowning achievement of a long and productive authorial career.
All my father's work has been about applying Marxist analysis to philosophical, scientific and political thought. This is the common approach in all his work. Naturally, it makes his work controversial. However, it also means he has a definite message and a valuable contribution to make to debates about the issues not just of our age but, if I may speak grandly, of all ages. One charge that cannot be levelled at his work is that he chooses trivial subjects.
Another charge that cannot be levelled is that it is badly or obscurely written. The clear prose and logical structure of his work make all his books a model of their kind. He combines commitment and scholarly enthusiasm with the gift of lucidity. Mark Frankel
Christopher Norris, Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy, University of Cardiff, writes:
Out Of This World is a first-rate piece of expository writing which engages some of the deepest issues in contemporary physics and cosmology, and which clarifies those issues for the intelligent lay-reader without undue simplification...
1 would hope that Frankel will make many converts through his forthright critique of the Big Bang theory, its deployment by unscrupulous or credulous creationists, and the various Hawking-style extrapolations from it to the 'mind of God'...
"Frankel is a thoroughly competent, professional and well-equipped author who can more than hold his own in the company of academic writers on the history and philosophy of science... Ethical Record, December, 2003 SOME NOTES ON EXISTENTIALISM Tom Rubens A Talk given at the Ethical Society, 9 November 2003, preceding the premiere of a film entitled "Opaque Silent Silence", written and directed by Alberto Bona.
We can begin to look at existentialism as a protest against the outlook of Plato, as expressed in The Republic. There, Plato contends that 'existence'—the world of empirical experience—is paltry and of only secondary importance, since empirically existing entities are real only in so far as they manifest a metaphysical 'form' or 'essence' that is situated beyond the sphere of experience. Also, Plato sees individuality as a defect: the individual is significant only in so far as he performs a public function. By contrast, existentialism argues the primary importance of both experience and individuality.
Existentialism emerged in northern Europe during the 19th century. With its roots in the German Romanticism of the early part of that century, it championed the individual and the sphere of the personal against what it saw as the impersonal rationalism of the 18th century Enlightenment. It had both religious and secular sources, deriving from the writings of the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard and the German atheist Friedrich Nietzsche.
Kierkegaard contended that abstract, impersonal, systematic thinking could never have the same validity as experience, because it was a product of the latter: defining abstract thought as theory or 'essence', he argued that 'essence' was secondary to its source, 'existence'. Also, because scientific thought was the creation of human beings, it could not be applied to them: man, as subject formulating science, could not be converted into an object of science. (This, incidentally, anticipates the postmodern critique of science as just one human discourse among others.) Kierkegaard's insistence on the greater importance of experience to abstract thought based on experience has remained a feature of existentialism: especially in relation to the two leading systems of philosophical thinking, idealism and materialism.
As regards experience and its ethical dimension, Kierkegaard stressed the importance of moral commitment through making difficult—even anguished— but absolutely free choices: the kind that confirmed one's individuality. (Here, he foreshadows Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre, all writing in the 20th century.)
Like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche regarded the world and experience as lying beyond the province of abstract thought: the latter, by its very nature, dealt in types and generalities, and so missed the dense particularity of the actual. Again like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche stressed individuality as against social conformity.
In the early 20th century, the German thinker Karl Jaspers echoed Kierkegaard's ascientific approach to man by defining existentialism as " a philosophy which does not cognise objects" but "elucidates and makes actual the being of the thinker.- The implication of this is that man's scientific view of himself has a significance which is primarily psychological. In further agreement with K.ierkegaard, Jaspers emphasised the importance of extreme situations, in which we experienced anguish and displayed a capacity for making free decisions. This experience showed that the self was inexhaustible by scientific knowledge, precisely because it was free—there being no limits to what it could make of itself. (Again, Sartre is foreshadowed.)
22 Ethical Record, December, 2003 A fellow German contemporary of Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, concurred with him, as well as with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, by emphasising the need for genuine self-encounter through individualistic action. Such action, for Heidegger, constituted 'authentic' existence, as distinct from the 'inauthentic' kind based on social conformity and imitation of other people's behaviour. Once more, extreme situations, especially of anguish and of the realisation that death is inevitable, produced this authenticity: with the individual realising that, just as no-one else could die for him, so no-one else's way of life could substitute for his own.
The focus on 'authentic existence' is also found in the French philosopher, Gabriel Marcel, who contributed to the general existentialist attack on the 'typing' of the individual by society. He wrote: "I need hardly insist on the stifling expression of sadness produced by this functionalised world."
Sartre: Achieve Authentic Existence A fellow French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, is by far best known modern exponent of existentialism (he died in 1980). His work echoed almost all his predecessors. Sartre rebelled against a certain kind of traditonal rationalism by arguing that reality, including human existence, was an irrational phenomenon: something godless and absurd—a mass of brute facts that were contingent in the sense that they were neither logically nor causally necessary. On causality, Sartre declared: "the world of reasons and explanations is not the world of existence." The individual needed to recognise this irrationality as a first step to achieving authentic existence. A further step was to comprehend that the self was absolutely free, without any fixed nature, and therefore a pure capacity for action. People who refused to recognise these facts about selfhood were guilty of inauthenticity: they saw themselves as fixed essences playing fixed roles in society, and were unaware, or refused to acknowledge, that beneath this apparent fixity lay the openness and challenge of free choices. As regards these choices, the individual was solely responsible for them, and they were the only basis for authentic relationship with others.
Sartre argued that we have—while alive—no fixed or final nature or essence because what we are is being continally defined by our actions. Through action, yesterday's coward could become today s hero, or vice versa. And tomorrow could be another story again. Also, these actions are free whether we recognise the fact or not. In the sense that we are what we do, 'essence' is subsequent to action or 'existence'. (Note that this is not the same use of these two terms as in Kierkegaard.) Only when we are dead do we have a final definition, simply because we can no longer act, and therefore no longer have the possibility of redeeming ourselves from past failures and inadequacies. (This condition was poignantly dramatised by Sartre in his play No Exit. Three characters, now dead, are in Hell both physically and psychologically: they are stuck with final definitions, based on shoddy actions committed when alive.)
For Sartre, freedom was total; if it was not total, then it was non-existent. However, in the eyes of a third French thinker in the existentialist camp, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, freedom did exist but was not total. Originally a protege of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty diverged from the former in contending that, if freedom were total, we would not be able to distinguish some of our actions as free, and others as determined by our situation. The fact that we could make this distinction proved that we possessed partial freedom. The implication is that, the more we become aware of the ways in which our situation has determined our actions in the past, the freer our actions will be in the future.
Ethical Record, December, 2003 23 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8037/8034 Registered Charity No. 251396 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected] No charge unless stated
JANUARY 2004 Sunday 4 NO MEETINGS
Friday 9 1930h GALHA MEETING CAMPATTACK - Television broadcaster, journalist and former Dominican friar Mark Dowd talks about his personal experience of the camp yet homophobic nature of the Roman Catholic Church.
Sunday 11 1100h THE LUCK OF THE DEVIL - Tony Blair's Justification After the Event In Iraq? Christopher Bratcher (In Tribute to the late Conway Lecturer, Prof Bernard Williams)
1500h ETHICAL DILEMMAS - (postponed from 7 December) SHOULD SMACKING OF CHILDREN BE CRIMINALISED? Joy Wood says Yes! Join the debate. Chair: Ed McArthur
Sunday 18 1100h LIBERTY & EQUALITY - Competing Values? Jonathan Derbyshire (Ibc)
1500h IDEALISM: Outdated Fantasy or Valid Philosophy? Stephen Szanto will argue it is valid. Ian Buxton will then present a counter-argument.
Sunday 25 1100h SHAKESPEARES'S SONNETS: The Question of Identity Christopher Hampton
1500h THE PILTDOWN CONTROVERSY (video)
Tuesday 27 1730h HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY Prose. THE CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST - an Evening of Poetry & Readers: Dannie Abse, Wanda Barford, Alan Rrownjohn, Lotte Kramer, Naomi Lewis & George Szirtes. Wine
FEBRUARY Sunday 1 1100h NOAM CHOMKSY: Power, Politics and Human Nature Gary Holden (postponed from Nov.)
1500h ETHICAL DILEMMAS
SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS IN CONWAY HALL 1830h Tickets £7 (15 for LCMS Members) - free for 8-22yrs
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