There is always a pleasure in reading a collection of essays by different thinkers as in one single book we can have a good mixture of thoughts. Of course, it has an inherent danger also that one tend to lose the connection amongst different articles unless one firmly grips the common thread that underlies them. And here is an edited book, 'Debating Humanism', which is a collection of essays from thinkers from different fields that includes journalists, philosophers, theologians, sociologists, educationists, etc. What more one can expect to make an interesting reading possible. So, the pleasure of accumulating varied thoughts is guaranteed. And what about the inherent danger?? I shall reserve it for my final comments.

As mentioned the book is a collection of articles. If the names could mean anything to you, kindly take note that the articles were contributed by Dylan Evans, Frank Furedi, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Anthony Freeman, AC Grayling, Kenan Malik, Daphne Patai, Andrew Copson, Dennis Hayes, Josie Appleton, Simon Blackburn, Bob Brecher. And the central theme of their writing is on humanism. Let me first give a brief introduction of what humanism means. The Continuum of Humanist Education (COHE) defines Humanism as a godless philosophy based on reason and compassion. In this sense, Humanism can be said to be a rational and ethical philosophy keeping trust on realising human potentials that affirm the dignity of human beings, in a sense without the help of any belief in supernatural reality. Humanism tries to get the values and ethos not on any authoritarian basis unlike the previous regime of Christian era, but rather it is on the basis of rational dialogue and debates. And one can see very many different faces of humanism in the present day that ranges from secular to religious to modern to philosophical to renaissance, etc, etc.

The book starts with a good introduction from Dolan Cummings about the issues to be discussed. Though Cummings has mentioned that collections are loosely divided into five sections, still, I find that each article even within the same section could be read individually and appreciated. Can there be secular fundamentalism? Can there be relativism in education? Can multiculturalism is a valid argument against justice and law? Can there be religious humanism? If these are some of the questions that ever came across your mind, you can find some good insights for the above-mentioned questions in this book. And if you never thought about any of these questions, still, you can find a strong need and case in raising these issues after reading this book. So, whatever possible questions we raise about this humanism, could be one of the issues of debate. We can't in that sense close the contents of debate with respect to humanism.

The book discusses with more of the above-mentioned types of questions taking examples from the present day society. As the book is discussing with the social and political issues, one can find interesting anecdotes and instances that supports the authors' arguments. Take for instance one peculiar case — In Kenan Malik's article we could see a case of a person who has raped a girl, claims that it was his custom in choosing a bride among his tribe and hence the court has put him just 120 days in jail!

While some articles seem to be bit technical and maybe in that way hinders one's appreciation of the issue, some others are delight to read. Take for instance, the concept of multiculturalism and its politics — a reference to a case where the court gives a lenient judgement on the basis of one's cultural tradition really raises a lot of issue. Another one on the faith schools, which talk about the relativism in education seeking to claim that creationism is one of the theory like Darwinian evolution makes us to sit and rethink about science education. And another that talks about how it is much needed to recognize that we are alienated from our own selves talking about ecocentrism, cosmocentrism and like by giving a negative meaning to 'anthropocentrism'.

Though I may not be in a position to express my assessment of each and every article, overall one important aspect that came to my mind after reading these articles is that, humanism while rebelling against the religious authority didn't had any readymade solution to address their issues which was once done by religious faith. Furedi observes in the article, "The Legacy of Humanism" thus: Humanists did not simply reject religion because they had a superior secular faith but because they recognized that the search for the truth required an open-ended orientation to experience.

In that case, the only universality of humanism is the faith in reason and commonness of human experiences. Though the book is on humanism, but very aptly it is titled 'debating humanism'. In that sense, it acknowledges that humanism is not one single universal concept accepted by everybody. In fact humanism is hard to define as we saw earlier and there is ever-growing re-conceptualization and reevaluation of humanism. And hence the connecting thread, that is 'humanism' by its very nature is that which slips out of our hands leading to an inherent danger. But it can be safeguarded by the only other thing that we can't accommodate in humanism, that is the blind dogma, which is contradictory to the humanism effort. So, be it rock rights, animal rights or just only human rights, be it personalized learning with different learning styles or universal learning, be it Creation theory/Darwinian theory or Creation theory and Darwinian theory in schools, be it multiculturalism in law and justice or uniform law, all issues are to be resolved through discussions and debates. So, the way to catch the common thread is to see the underlying issues of confrontations rather than merely accepting what the author says, and that's where the true humanism lies!! In fact, in nutshell at the very beginning Dolan Cummings puts the issue right in front of us: 'to be human is to debate'. That gives the gist of the book and the essence of what this book is all about.

© 2008 V. Prabhu

V. Prabhu writes about himself: I have finished my doctoral degree in philosophy. My research topic was on Wittgenstein and his views on religion, culture and value. Currently I am working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. I am interested in ethics and applied philosophy.  Email: vprabhu@iitg.ernet.in