John Gray
Made in Heaven
Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future
By Steve Fuller
Palgrave Macmillan 288pp £60 hbk/£19.99 pbk
It’s curious how often a militant commitment to humanity goes with a deep dislike for the human animal. Joseph Conrad wrote that while H G Wells wanted to improve human beings but didn’t care for them, he himself had no hopes for human beings but loved them all the same. Whether Conrad was really so fond of humanity may be doubted, but he had a point: humanism – at least of the modern secular variety – is very often a species of misanthropy. The animus of humanists against religion is telling, for if anything is quintessentially human it is the religious impulse: every culture is, in some degree, animated by it, while no other animal displays anything remotely similar. To despise religion is to despise humanity, so it cannot be the real human animal to which secular humanists are devoted. The object of their piety can only be some kind of ideal creature, a figment of the imagination that has never existed (and fortunately never will).
Interestingly, the misanthropic logic of humanism has been accepted by some of humanism’s more radical exponents. The contemporary cult of transhumanism is an arresting example. Viewing humans as the apex of evolutionary development, transhumanists are in no doubt that we are the most valuable species to date. Equally,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk