Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope

A fantastic exploration of humanism through time. This book reawakened a love of history with its approachable mix of overall themes and specific human moments. I loved the trips through the Italian countryside in search or manuscripts, the advent of evolution with its impacts on religion and naturalists, policies and practices for medical treatment, the history of Esperanto, and so much more. The most unexpected theme was the love of reading and writing that brings humanists together. I'm thinking differently about religion, government, and how I approach the world after this survey of how others have approached their own challenges through the ages.

In 2009 the British Humanist Association ran an advertising campaign that put posters reading ‘There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life’. Like all such campaigns it was designed to elicit a response and the more passionate the better.
The great British public did not disappoint, egged on by a media that never knowingly lets a moral panic go to waste it got its collective undergarments into an almighty twist. For a couple of weeks, the posters and the threat they posed to civilisation as we know it was the hot topic, until something else cam along and the circus moved on.
This was just another incident in the 700 year plus history of humanists making people feel uncomfortable by inviting them to do something show more dangerous; think.
In this joyous history of humanism Sarah Bakewell explores the movement in all its many forms. Taking in along the way the Renaissance scholars who rediscovered the lost wisdom of the Greeks and Romans, Enlightenment thinkers alternately inspiring and fleeing from revolutions, Victorian supporters of Darwin and some of the most radical thinkers of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.
It is a story told through the lives of big characters including scholars, writers, philosophers and social reformers. All of whom, though they understood the term ‘humanist’ in different ways, were united by a belief that the world is a place that can be explored and understood. Not somewhere unpleasant from which only prayer and obedience will free the faithful.
They also held to the core belief of humanism, namely that human lives, all human lives, are of value. This, as Bakewell is at pains to point out, is entirely different from simply questioning or openly disbelieving in the existence of a god.
That as the experience of the attempts to create a religion of reason following the French Revolution in the eighteenth century, or those of the communists to erase religion in the wake of the Russian and Chinese ones in the twentieth, demonstrates can have disastrous consequences. Usually due to shoehorning a political ideology into the resulting vacuum, one that often proves to be every bit as cruel and jealous as a deity.
Humanism instead invites its followers to, as E M Forster put it ‘only connect’, to seek out facts, form theories and make out of them a way of living that locates your own happiness in that of others. That may be through supporting campaigns for social change, it might just be through trying to be nice to the people around you. There are enough ways of being a humanist for all of them to be right to some extent.
Bakewell is blessed with the gift of being able to write about complex philosophical issues in language that accessible and often laugh out loud funny. She is also entirely clear eyed about the fact that despite its proclaimed liberalism for much of its history humanism, like most such movements, was largely open only to white, wealthy men.
In what is, in the West anyway, a largely secular world, it would be easy to say humanism is no longer relevant. In her closing chapter Bakewell suggests why it still is, religious fundamentalism is on the rise, driven by political populism that uses support for socially conservative views as a recruiting tool.
To paraphrase the words of Robert Ingersoll, the nineteenth century American poet who gave humanism the closest thing it has to a creed, if happiness is the only good and the time and place to be happy is now and the only true way to be happy is by making others so. Then in a frightened, fractious world taking part in the great experiment of working out how to create such happiness is more important than ever. show less

It’s tempting to despair in these benighted times of war, political populism, mendacious demagogues, religious fundamentalism, the rise of irrationalism and re-emergence of fascism, reversals of hard-won liberties in Western democracies, and institutionalised prejudice; so a book on the history of Humanism is both welcome and necessary.

Humanly Possible is a history of humanist thought and thinkers from 1300 to the present day. 700 years of freethinking, rational enquiry and questioning of received wisdom and religious and political authority; 700 years of making connections between people, recognising our shared humanity and celebrating our differences. Anyone who thinks that progress is an illusion, or is simply overwhelmed by the show more parlous state of the world, should read this book; it is, among other things, a chronicle of how human advancement was achieved by courageous women and men who thought and fought against the grain.

Humanly Possible made me realise that there has never been a better time than now. I don’t mean this in the sense of Voltaire’s Dr Pangloss that ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’; far from it, in fact. It’s simply that reading Sarah Bakewell’s accounts of the persecution by church and state of freethinkers down the centuries, and the horrors of fascism and communism in the twentieth century, reminded me that human history has always been a struggle between the forces of light - the Enlightener’s ‘light of reason’ - and the forces of darkness.

She makes the important point that for much of history humanist thought left out most of humanity. When philosophers spoke of the rights of man they usually meant precisely that: the rights of men. And ‘white, able-bodied, gender-conforming males’ to boot. It was for later thinkers and activists to extend these ideas to all humanity. Some reviewers have questioned whether it is entirely legitimate for Bakewell to annex so much pre-nineteenth century thought under the banner of Humanism. Personally, I think it is, because she is identifying common themes and doing that quintessentially humanist thing of making connections between diverse traditions (‘only connect’, as E. M. Forster said).

Sarah Bakewell weaves together philosophy, history and biography with great skill. Her prose is beautifully lucid and infused with wit and humour. I certainly wasn’t expecting a book about philosophy to make me laugh so much. I liked her openness to those with views very different to her own but also her anger at those who would force their views on others through statute and suppress freedom. I liked her lack of dogmatism, her broad definition of culture, and her emphasis on the sheer fun and pleasure of intellectual life; and, above all, I liked her cautious optimism and belief in the capacity of people to address the problems that face humanity and create happier societies through freethinking, enquiry and hope. An inspiring and important book. show less

A history of freethinking, literary immersion, and rejection of religious authority
I read Sarah Bakewell's "At the Existentialist Cafe" a few years ago, thoroughly enjoying her writing. I therefore bought this book as soon as it came out, and also enjoyed it. The goal of the book is to define humanism by reference to many of its practitioners, starting with Petrarch, and ending with a 2022 manifesto from the British humanist society. Humanists have generally been skeptical of religion, and often had to hide or delay publishing their works, because they lived in societies that were prosecutory. There writing focus on human concerns rather than theology. Boccaccio, Erasmus, Hume, Montaigne, Bertrand Russell, are famous characters in show more humanism. Lorenzo de Valla and Robert Ingersoll are less well known. Zora Neale Hurston appears early, Confuscius is mentioned, and several of the stories concern gay writers, so that the diversity boxes are checked, but generally this is about mainstream European philosophers. As a physician, I was especially interested in a section discussing Vesalius and de Valla promoting the study of anatomy based on dissection. I think of myself as a freethinking person, so the theme of the book made perfect sense to me. A recurrent quote from Robert Ingersoll sums up the attitude of the author and the humanists:
Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now.
The place to be happy is here.
The way to be happy is to make others so. show less

An enjoyable overview with some fascinating anecdotes and insights along the way. Makes me wonder how humanism may adapt and redefine itself in these times. Lord knows, we need the hope offered in Bakewell's subtitle.

Excellent history of 'humanist' thought over the last seen hundred years. Humanism is what Bakewell points to when she says it's humanism. Mostly it's a philosophy that respects human thought and diversity and asserts the freedom of the individual to think and live in the way the individual wants to live. I've read some good criticisms of the books (notably, she skates over cases where some of the thinkers she profiles are less that good), but I found it to be a valuable learning tool, and hopeful in the end.

Another great history of philosophy by Sarah Bakewell. She takes us from ancient Greece to almost the present day to explore people and works that combat doctrine and despotism. As usual, the narration is terrific.

I need to listen to it again, or (heaven forfend) read the text. This was a library audio, and eventually I might spend the money to own it myself, as I'm sure I'll want to listen to it again.