Humanly Possible

October 1, 2022

Covering seven centuries of humanist thought, this hefty volume ranges from Erasmus and Christine de Pizan, to anatomists and agnostics, to Voltaire and Zora Neale Hurston as it elucidates a wide range of sources that, whether emphasizing the scientific, the cultural, or the moral, consider how best to live. A nice fit with Bakewell's dazzling Duff Cooper/NBCC-honored How To Live and New York Times best-booked At the Existentialist Caf�.

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Starred review from January 2, 2023
NBCC Award winner Bakewell (How to Live) brilliantly tracks the development of humanism over seven centuries of intellectual history. Humanism, she concedes, isn’t easy to define, though it fundamentally centers “the lives and experiences of people here on earth.” Drawing on the usual suspects (Erasmus, Voltaire, Bertrand Russell), as well as less expected luminaries (Ludwik Zamenhof, who invented Esperanto in hopes that a universalized language might promote multicultural understanding), Bakewell takes readers through the evolution of central humanistic concerns—whether life can be understood without God (“humanism warns us against neglecting the tasks of our current world in favor of dreams of paradise”); human interconnectivity (the South African concept of “ubuntu” for human relationality; the interconnectedness in E.M. Forster’s writing); and the importance of education (which Erasmus believed “should train a person to be at home in the world”). She also discusses humanism in philosophy, politics, and medicine, the latter of which centers the humanist goal of “mitigating suffering” even if some early interventions harmed more than helped. On the flipside, Bakewell unpacks antihumanism, which “point out the many ways fall short,” though she notes humanism and antihumanism have historically worked to “renew and energize each other.” Erudite and accessible, Bakewell’s survey pulls together diverse historical threads without sacrificing the up-close details that give this work its spark. Even those who already consider themselves humanists will be enlightened.

Starred review from January 1, 2023
A history of humanist thought told through the lives of its major thinkers. In this fascinating, well-organized journey through the evolution of humanism, Bakewell, award-winning author of At the Existential Caf� and How To Live, introduces us to the men and women who have resisted religious dogma and fixed ideologies to carve out a way of thinking in which individuals occupy center stage. Humanists are freethinkers, following no predetermined path. They are committed to inquiry and formal education and believe that "the meaning of our lives is to be found in our connections and bonds with others." Bakewell begins in the 14th century in southern Italy with Petrarch and Boccaccio, both of whom strove to cultivate "the joy in writing" and worked to enlarge and salvage the "wrecked or sunken knowledge" embodied in classical manuscripts. The author then introduces us to such northern humanists as Erasmus and Montaigne, whose famous essays embraced "both [the] philosophical and personal," along with the Enlightenment thinkers Voltaire, Diderot, and Hume, "the most intellectually merciless thinker of his time." During the 16th century, Bakewell writes, humanists became "less naively adoring of the past, and ever more interested" in human complexity, fallibility, and uncertainty. Also making an appearance are Harriet Taylor Mill, Charles Darwin, T.H. Huxley, Frederick Douglass, Bertrand Russell, Matthew Arnold, E.M. Forster, and Vasily Grossman, among many others. Bakewell acknowledges anti-humanism as well--fascists in Italy, blasphemy laws, the contemporary zealots of artificial intelligence--and reflects on the challenges that a turbulent 20th century posed to overcoming injustice through independent thought, moral inquiry, and mutual respect. Throughout, Bakewell frequently reminds us that humanism is always a "work in progress." Ultimately, "history and the human world are neither stable and good on the one hand, nor hopelessly tragic on the other. They are our own work, so if we want it to proceed well, we have to exert ourselves to make it happen." A wonderfully learned, gracefully written, and simply enjoyable intellectual history of humanism.

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