Michael Schmidt-Salomon

Though I consider myself to be an evolutionary humanist and in general an admirer of Michael Schmidt-Salomons legacy I can't really come to terms with this book. Maybe my expectations differed too much from what was in fact promised but to me it is an odd piece of work which tries to cram too much relevant topics into an insufficient amount of pages. There are some good overviews on the development of the different sciences and humanism as a whole which are bundled into a loose progressive narrative which in my opinion is a bit too simplistic (I'd love to see how the author would deal with critiques of modernity like Moldbug or Peterson as he outright ignores all arguments against individualism) but still readable as in a time of PC-doctrine it is a relieve to read a sane liberal who is not totally ignorant of the genetic lottery and evolutionary differences between the sexes (at least the latter is treated in much detail). Furthermore there is a wonderful chapter in which the author answers to people who argue for a decline of the arts during the last century. Unfortunately he focusses (though in a certainly very skillful way) only on the area he is most familiar with, the music. I am not sure whether he could extend his argument easily to paintings, literature or theatre, tough I'd be very interested in his thoughts on these issues. So far it would still be a solid 4 which could be recommended to the scientific layman but the last part of the book begins to really bother me as the author starts to list a long list of potential ideas to make the world a better place, which includes things like a tobin tax, cradle to cradle, Gesellian economics (!), transculturalism, etc. This extremely dates and devalues the book as it gives the impression that the author just listed all concepts he stumbled upon in the Spiegel-bestseller-liste during the last years and which seemed to be nice ideas to him. Why is this necessary? If he at least wrote some reasonable defenses of these ideas but instead due to the short length of the book it reads more like some collection of advertisements. The book closes with a short essay on spirituality from a secular perspective which is quite interesting and reminds the reader of Sam Harris opinions on this topic.

Overall I expected a monography which tries to argue for evolutionary humanism and therefore (1) creates a sufficient captivating narrative which is able to unite a great amount of people, (2) justifies meaning in a (seemingly) meaningless universe, (3) sketches answers to the problem of atomistic individualism in a postreligious world and (4) helps us to deal with mortality.

(1) was tried and at least from a liberal perspective done quite well though I am not sure whether any conservative would agree to his views. Elements of (2) exist but are at least to me not convincing or thought out enough. (3) is almost not present. And ee goes into (4) but in the end embraces deathism which in my opinion just can't compare to the eschatologic ideas of religion on the issue.

Having all that in mind I am really not that satisfied with the book. But again, maybe the problem were my expecations. Maybe you ask too much from a single person to answer these conundrums. Still I think contemporary evolutionary humanism sooner or later has to find answers to the aforementioned issues (and many more). Perhaps we just need more people working on this stuff in general.

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