Humanly Possible (Part One)

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Introduction (Reza)

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry and Hope, by Sarah Bakewell, is a brilliant book that offers a glimpse into seven hundred years of humanist thinking in Europe. Sarah presents the conceptual foundation regarding the attitudes and thoughts that contributed to modern humanism. She skillfully weaves this history with philosophy and biography to create an engaging narrative that helps readers understand what happened and why.

In 14th-century Italy, the desire to discover, gather and engage with ancient texts and wisdom led some scholars to abandon blind adherence to supposedly divine traditions in favour of a rational freedom of thought and action that prioritised human welfare and happiness.

The rise of humanism has always been shrouded in the mists of history, with occasional flashes of freethinking emerging in various parts of the world. Strictly speaking, the terms "humanism” and “humanism” were not used until the 19th century. However, Sarah traces the roots of humanistic thinking over the past seven centuries (mainly in Europe) and provides us with a vivid background and examples of both religious and secular freethinkers who paved the way for the movement we now know as humanism.

Humanly Possible is a pedigree scholarly work that is also highly accessible and a very good read. I wrote this summary mainly to help me better absorb and deeply understand it. It is indeed a labour of love and a privilege to spend time and effort writing a summary of this book. However, I hope it’s also helpful to others.

Note: I would like to point out that not all sections are summarised to the same degree. While some sections are only slightly shortened, others have been drastically cut. This is a personal choice; I am not doing this work to satisfy anyone or meet any requirements.

About the author, Sarah Bakewell

Sarah Bakewell, who currently (2025) lives in London (and occasionally in Italy) with her Italian wife, was born in Bournemouth, England (1963). She travelled around the world during her childhood and youth with her parents. She lived in Sydney, Australia, for many years before returning to England after a long journey through the Pacific islands, Southeast Asia, and Europe.

She studied philosophy at the University of Essex. Years later, she became interested in writing her first book, The Smart (2002). After that came The English Dane (2005), then How to Live (2010): A Life of Montaigne, At the Existentialist Café (2016) and Humanly Possible (2023): 700 years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope.

Since 2002, in addition to writing, she worked for the National Trust (2008-2010), cataloguing book collections around England. She also taught creative writing for several years at London’s City University and Oxford’s Kellogg College. She won the Rosalind Franklin Medal (2023) and lectureship from Humanists and the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Non-Fiction (2018). In addition to her books, she has written many reviews and essays on various topics over the years.

Introduction (Sarah)

In her introduction, Sarah defines humanists as people who prefer to live without religious beliefs and make moral choices based on empathy, reason and a sense of responsibility to other living creatures. She quotes the American writer Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), who aptly summarised humanism when he said: “I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead.”

She explains that some religious individuals might also be considered humanists if they focus primarily on the lives and experiences of people on Earth rather than on the institutions, doctrines or theology of the Beyond. For example, a humanist philosopher puts the whole person at the centre of things rather than deconstructing that person into systems of words, signs or abstract principles. A humanist architect designs buildings on a human scale in ways that do not overwhelm or frustrate those who live in them. Similarly, there can be humanist medicine, politics or education.

Humanism is also evident in literature, photography and film. In each case, the individual is kept at the top of the list of concerns, not subordinated to some grander concept or ideal. Sarah portrays the scholars of fourteenth and fifteenth-century Italy and beyond as a distinct group of humanists. These humanists specialise in the humanities, focusing on studying and describing human life and culture. They translate and edit books, teach students, engage with their erudite friends, debate interpretations, and further intellectual life. They believe that learning and teaching human studies promote a more virtuous and civilised existence.

The term “humanist” reflects the common ground of these various humanists. They all emphasise the human dimension of life. Like everything else around us, humans are made of matter. However, we inhabit a reality (the unique dimension of human life) that is neither entirely physical nor spiritual. Here, we practise culture, thinking (rationality), morality, ritual, and art, investing much of our time and energy. In this realm, we converse, share stories, create art, navigate ethical judgements, and strive to do what is right. We negotiate social agreements, worship in temples, churches or sacred spaces, pass on memories, teach, play music, tell jokes and attempt to reason while simply trying to be who we are: humans.

While scientists study the physical world and theologians explore the divine, humanists focus on the human world of art, history and culture. Non-religious humanists base their moral choices on human well-being rather than divine instruction. Humanist philosophers, as well as other humanists, continually assess their ideas against the lived experiences of real people.

The human-centred approach is illustrated by the remark by the Greek philosopher Protagoras (490-420 BC): ‘Man is the measure of all things.’ He implies that humans experience reality in a distinctly human way. We know about and care for human affairs; they are significant to us, so let’s take them seriously (prioritise them).

Others, like the English writer E. M. Forster (1879-1970), proposed an even more inclusive definition of humanism. In reply to a question, he said, “Humanism could better be honoured by reciting a list of the things one has enjoyed or found interesting, of the people who have helped one, and of the people whom one has loved and tried to help. The list would not be dramatic, it would lack the sonority of a creed and the solemnity of a sanction, but it could be recited confidently, for human gratitude and human hopefulness would be speaking”.

Here, Forester’s refusal to express anything abstract or dogmatic about humanism is indeed a typical humanist stance. For him, it is a personal matter, and that is the crux of the argument. Sarah acknowledges that (non-religious) humanism is personal to her as well since individual lives are more significant and rewarding to her than grand (philosophical) ideas. She is captivated by the (human-centric) foundation that all humanists share. She feels grateful that she has been able to live out her humanism with minimal interference and recognises that, for many, humanism is a cause for which they risk their lives.

Humanism is personal and consists of a cloud of meanings and implications not attached to any particular theorist or practitioner. Until the twentieth century, humanists rarely gathered into formal groups and did not speak of humanism as a general concept or practice until the nineteenth century. The fact that people (humanists) have predated the concept (humanism) for several centuries is pleasingly humanistic. Yet Sarah believes there is a coherent, shared humanist tradition, and it makes sense to consider all these people together. Multicoloured but meaningful threads link them. Those are the threads she wants to trace in her book (Humanly Possible), and in so doing, she takes another humanist line from E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End (1910) as her guide: “Only Connect”.

By "only connect”, Forster meant a range of things, including that we should look to the bonds that connect us rather than to divisions, that we should try to appreciate other people’s perspectives on the world as well as our own, and that we should avoid the inward fracturing of ourselves caused by self-deception or hypocrisy. Sarah agrees with all of this and takes it as an encouragement to tell a story of humanism in a spirit of connection rather than division. She has written about humanists more than isms, hoping readers will be intrigued and inspired by their stories of adventures, quarrels, efforts, trials and tribulations as they navigate a world that has sometimes treated them with disbelief and discord.

Humanists have been scholarly exiles or wanderers throughout the centuries, surviving only through their intelligence, quick thinking and resourcefulness. In the early modern era, several got into trouble with the Inquisition or heresy detectives. Others sought safety by concealing their thoughts, sometimes so effectively that we remain unaware of them.

Well into the nineteenth century, non-religious humanists (freethinkers) could be insulted, banned, imprisoned and deprived of rights. In the twentieth century, they were forbidden to speak openly and had no hope of running for public office. They faced harassment, prosecution and imprisonment. In the twenty-first century, humanists still suffer from all these things (in some countries more severely than others).

Humanism centres on the human factor, a complex concept that profoundly affects all of us and depends heavily on our perceptions. It is not surprising that those who openly express humanist views can face victimisation, particularly in environments where religious or political conformity is heavily enforced. Nevertheless, countless generations of determined humanists have eloquently and rationally presented their arguments, helping their ideas permeate many societies.

Humanistic ways of thinking have risen from numerous cultures and eras. Sarah believes they have existed in some form since our species first began to reflect on itself and contemplated its choices and responsibilities in this world. Nevertheless, this book spans seven centuries, from the 1300s to the present. Most (though not all) of the individuals discussed here lived during that time and were Europeans. This framework was chosen partly because many significant events occurred within that context and partly because it provides continuity. Many of these individuals were aware of and engaged with one another’s work, even when they could not meet. Focusing on this specific slice of history and geography allows a clearer exploration of humanist thoughts and illustrates how they have evolved.

Materialist Philosophy

Materialist philosophy (understanding human life non-supernaturally) is the first key idea in humanist thinking. Its earliest known discussion of materialist views arose in India as part of the Cārvāka school of thought founded by the thinker Br.haspati (circa 1600 BCE). They believed that when our bodies die, that is the end of us as well. The philosopher Ajita Kesakambalī was quoted as saying: This human being is composed of the four elements, and when one dies, the earth part reverts to earth, the water part to water, the fire part to fire, the air part to air, and the faculties pass away into space. Fools and wise, at the breaking-up of the body, are destroyed and perish; they do not exist after death.

Democritus (Greek philosopher, circa 460-370 BC) believed that all entities in nature are made up of atoms and that these indivisible particles combine in various ways to make all objects, including us humans (both mentally and physically). He thought they combine to form our thoughts and sensory experiences while we live. When we die, they drift apart and go to form other things. That is the end of the thoughts and experiences; therefore, we end, too.

From a humanist perspective, this fact brings reassuring and uplifting consequences for our lives. If nothing of me will persist into the afterlife, there is no reason for me to live in fear, worrying about what the gods might do to me or what torments or adventures might await. The atomic theory made Democritus so light-hearted that he became known as “the laughing philosopher", free from cosmic dread, allowing him to chuckle at human shortcomings rather than weep over them.

Another Greek philosopher who did not believe in the afterlife was Epicurus (341–270 BC). In a letter, he wrote that he avoided false ideas about the gods and death, which are the chief sources of mental disturbances.

Then there was the famous statement of the “human measure” by Protagoras (490-420 BC), who knew Democritus personally. His talk of “measuring everything by humanity” was considered disturbing, but he went even further, writing a book about the gods, which he started by saying: “As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life”.

The argument that followed was that we need not waste our brief lives worrying about the gods. Our business is with our earthly lives while they last. It is, again, another way of saying that the right measure for us is the human one. We do not know what came next in the book because nothing beyond those few lines survives, but we have a good idea of why.

The biographer Diogenes Laertiu (180-240 AD) said that as soon as Protagoras’s work on the gods appeared, the Athenians expelled him and burnt his works in the marketplace after sending around couriers to collect them from all who had copies in their possession.

Nothing directly written by Democritus or by members of the Cārvāka school survives either, perhaps for similar reasons. From Epicurus, we do have a few letters, but his teachings were also turned into verse form by a later Roman, Lucretius, in the long poem On the Nature of Things. That was almost lost, too, but a later copy survived in a monastery, found in the fifteenth century by humanistic book collectors and circulated afresh.

After all these fragile moments and near losses, Democritan ideas did survive into our era. They could thus be put into beautiful words by the American author Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), in her 1942 memoir Dust Tracks on a Road:

Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever-changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe does not need finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.

The tradition lives on in the form of a 2009 poster campaign in the UK, supported by the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK). The message, displayed on the sides of buses and other places, was a Democritan statement: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

The idea had come from Ariane Sherine (London, 1998), a young writer and comedian who wanted to provide an alternative, reassuring message after she saw buses carrying advertisements from an evangelical religious organisation whose website threatened sinners with eternal hellfire.

This switching of focus to the here and now remains one of the key principles of modern humanist organisations. It was even formulated as that most unhumanist-sounding thing, a ‘creed’ or statement of core beliefs. The author of this was the American freethinker (or non-religious humanist) Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899). The creed goes like this:

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.

The Meaning of Life

The second big humanist idea is that the meaning of our lives is found in our connections and bonds with each other. The principle of human interconnectivity is succinctly expressed in a play by Publius Terentius Afer, known as Terence in English. The ‘Afer’ denotes his origin, as he was likely born as a slave around 190 BCE in or near Carthage, North Africa. He later gained fame in Rome as a writer of comedies. One of his characters states this (the Latin is included):

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. Or: I am human and consider nothing human alien to me.

It does, in fact, do a good job of summarising an essential humanist belief: that we are all tied up in each other’s lives. We are naturally sociable beings, and we can all recognise something of ourselves in each other’s experiences, even those who seem very different.

A similar idea emerges from the southern end of the African continent, captured in the word “ubuntu." This term refers to the network of mutual human relations that connect individuals within a community. The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931-2021), who chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission during the country’s transition away from apartheid in the 1990s, cited ubuntu alongside his Christian principles as the inspiration for his approach.

He believed that the oppressive dynamics of apartheid had harmed both oppressors and oppressed, severing the natural bonds of humanity that should exist within and between people. He sought to create a process that would re-establish those connections rather than dwell on avenging wrongs. He defined ubuntu as: ‘We belong in a bundle of life. We say, “A person is a person through other people."‘

Our shared humanity is also acknowledged in the Chinese tradition of Confucian philosophy. Kongzi, or Master Kong, known to Europeans as Confucius (circa 551-479 BCE), lived slightly before Democritus (circa 460-370 BCE) and Protagoras (490-420 BCE). In the years following his death, his followers collected and expanded his sayings to create the Analects (Sayings of Confucius), which cover morality, social etiquette, political advice, and philosophical insights. A key concept throughout this collection is ren, translated into English as benevolence, goodness, virtue, ethical wisdom, or simply “humanity”. The meaning of ren closely aligns with that of humanitas. When disciples asked Kongzi for a fuller explanation of ren, he referred to shu: a network of reciprocity among people.

Shu, he explained, means that you should not do to others what you would not wish them to do to you. If this principle sounds familiar, it is because it is found in many other religious and ethical traditions around the world and is often referred to as “the Golden Rule. “

The Jewish theologian Hillel the Elder (circa 113-10 CE) said, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.” The Hindu Mahābhārata and Christian scriptures phrase it differently: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Although, as George Bernard Shaw pointed out, this version is less reliable because “their tastes may not be the same. “

These are various ways of expressing that our moral lives should be grounded in mutual connection. It is about fellow feeling, rather than being observed and judged according to divine standards. We largely experience that fundamental spark of fellowship spontaneously because we are highly social beings who have developed deep connections with those around us.

One of Kongzi’s later followers, Mengzi (Master Meng or Mencius, 372-289 BC), made this spontaneous recognition a foundation for an entire theory regarding the goodness of humanity. He invites his readers to discover its source within themselves. Imagine that you are out one day and see a small child about to fall into a pond. What do you feel? Almost certainly, you feel an impulse to jump in and save the child. No calculation or reasoning precedes this impulse, and it requires no commandment. That is your ‘seed’ of a moral life, although you must still reflect on it and develop it for it to evolve into a complete ethics.

Importance of Education

Another concept within the humanist tradition is the need to nurture and cultivate our potential. Because of this, education is essential. As children, we learn from parents and teachers; later, we grow through experience and further study. Of course, we can still be human without advanced education, but mentorship and broadening perspectives are invaluable for realising our humanity to the fullest.

Being well-educated is particularly important for those who will manage political and administrative systems for others. Kongzi and his followers insisted that leaders and civil servants should undergo a lengthy, rigorous apprenticeship. They must learn to articulate effectively, understand the traditions of their roles, and immerse themselves in literature and the humanities. According to Kongzi, having such refined individuals in leadership benefits society because virtuous leaders inspire everyone else to uphold similar standards.

In Greece, Protagoras also believed in education. He had good reason too, as he made a comfortable living as a travelling tutor, preparing young men for political or legal careers by teaching them how to speak and argue persuasively. He even claimed he could teach them to be virtuous. Protagoras shared a story to illustrate why education was essential.

At the dawn of humanity, he said, people had no unique qualities until the two Titans, Prometheus and Epimetheus, stole fire from the gods for them, along with the arts of farming, sewing, building, language, and even religious observance.

The myth of Prometheus’s theft and his punishment is well-known, but Protagoras’s version presents some unique twists. When Zeus observed the events, he granted an additional gift: the ability to form friendships and other social bonds. Now, humans can cooperate. However, they still possess only the potential for these connections. They hold a seed. To cultivate a truly thriving and well-managed society, humans must nurture that seed through learning and teaching one another.

We must take charge of this and figure out how to collaborate effectively using them together. At the core of humanists’ love for education lies a profound optimism about its potential. While we may be capable, there is always room for improvement. Our current achievements provide a foundation upon which we can build, and in the meantime, we can also take joy in reflecting on what we have accomplished. Thus, joyful recitations of human excellence have become a favoured genre of humanist writing.

The Roman statesman Cicero (106-043 BC) wrote a dialogue that includes a section praising human excellence, inspiring others to follow suit. The genre reached its peak in Italy with works such as “On Human Worth and Excellence, " written in the 1450s by the diplomat and historian Giannozzo Manetti (1396-1459). In this work, he stated: “Just look at the beautiful things we have created! Look at our buildings, from the pyramids to the cathedral dome recently built by Filippo Brunelleschi in Florence and the gilded bronze baptistery doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti nearby. Consider the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Homer and Virgil, the histories by Herodotus and others; and let’s not even begin to discuss the nature-investigating philosophers, the physicians, or Archimedes, who studied the movements of the planets.”

Manetti celebrates life's physical pleasures and the finer delights that arise from fully utilising our mental and spiritual capacities: “What pleasure comes from our faculties of appraisal, memory, and understanding!” He praises our activities even more and urges us to engage actively rather than remain passive. We are a work in progress, and much remains to be achieved.

Manetti, Terence, Protagoras, Kongzi, and others have woven the threads of the humanist tradition over millennia and across diverse cultures. They are interested in what humans can achieve and hope for even more remarkable accomplishments. They often place great value on studying and gaining knowledge. They tend to favour ethics rooted in relationships with others and our earthly existence rather than the anticipated afterlife. They all seek to connect, live well within our cultural and moral frameworks, and maintain contact with that great ‘bundle of life’ from which we all emerge and serve as our source of purpose and meaning.

There is much more to humanist thinking than this, and Sarah presents many additional strands and types of humanists. However, before that, she shares the accompanying narrative of the anti-humanist tradition.

Anti-Humanist Tradition

Along with the humanist tradition, there has always been a shadow that Sarah labelled as the anti-humanist tradition. This shadow is equally broad and long. In contrast to humanists, who focus on the elements of human happiness and excellence, anti-humanists eagerly count our miseries and failings. They highlight the many ways we fall short and the inadequacy of our talents and abilities to confront problems or find meaning in life. Furthermore, anti-humanists often resist the idea of taking delight in earthly pleasures.

Instead, they argue for radically altering our existence by turning away from the material world or dramatically restructuring our lives. In ethics, they consider good nature and personal bonds less important than obeying the rules of a greater authority, whether sacred or secular.

Instead of celebrating our outstanding achievements as a basis for future improvements, they seem to think that humans primarily need to be humbled. In the Confucian tradition, for instance, Xunzi (circa 310-238 BCE), unlike Mengzi, characterised human nature as “detestable” in its original state. He believed it could only be improved through remoulding. He and Mengzi agreed that education is beneficial, but Mengzi held that we needed it to cultivate our natural seeds of virtue, while Xunzi argued it was necessary to reshape our very nature.

Christianity also presented both options. Some early Christians were notably humanistic. For them, praising humanity was also a way of honouring God, as He created us. The fourth-century theologian Nemesius (circa 390 AD) of Emesa resembles Manetti in his writings about human nature.

“Who could express the advantages of this living thing? He crosses the seas, in contemplation, he enters into the heavens, he recognises the motions of the stars … he thinks nothing of wild beasts and sea monsters, he controls every science, craft and procedure, he converses by writing with those with whom he wishes to do so beyond the horizon.”

But a few years later, theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo (Saint Augustine, 354-430 AD) formulated the concept of original sin. This concept states that, thanks to Adam and Eve, we are all born fundamentally wrong and that even newborn babies start life in a flawed condition from which they had better spend their lives seeking redemption.

Before becoming Pope Innocent III, Cardinal Lotario dei Segni (1161-1216) wrote a devastating critique of human self-esteem in the 1190s in a treatise titled “On the Misery of Man” (subsequently refuted point by point by Manetti). In it, he narrates a grim account detailing the unpleasant nature of human existence from conception onward.

Never forget that you begin as lumps of slime, dust, and filthy seed thrown together in a moment of lust. While the foetus is in the womb, you feed on a bloody maternal fluid so vile it can kill grass, blight vineyards, and give dogs rabies. You are then born naked or, worse, clothed in a caul (amniotic membrane).

You grow into the ridiculous shape of an upside-down tree, your hair looking like tangled roots, your torso a trunk, and your legs two branches. Do you take pride in climbing mountains, sailing the sea, cutting and polishing stone to make gems, building with iron or wood, weaving clothes from threads, or thinking deeply about life?

You should not, for all this is a pointless activity you probably do out of greed or vanity. Real life consists of toil, anxiety and suffering until you die, after which your soul may end up burning in hell while your body goes to feed the hunger of worms. “O, the vile ignobility of human existence! O, the ignoble condition of human vileness!”

The purpose of this horrorfest is to shock us awake so that we understand the need to transform ourselves. It should make us turn away from what Augustine referred to as the City of Man towards the City of God. What we perceive as pleasures and achievements in this world are only vanities.

“Do not look for satisfaction on earth, do not hope for anything from humanity,” wrote the mystic and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) much later. “Your good is only in God.”

In lectures from 1901 to 1902, the American philosopher William James (1842-1910) analysed how this two-step process in religion operates: first, we feel uneasy, sensing that "there is something wrong with us as we naturally stand." Then, religion offers the solution: “a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by connecting properly with the higher powers."

However, this does not occur only in religion; politics can also do it. In the twentieth century, Fascists began by claiming that something was deeply wrong with contemporary society but that it could be fixed if all personal life was subordinated to the interests of the national State.

Communist regimes also identified flaws in the existing capitalist system and suggested remedying them by a revolution. They claimed that society might need temporary support by force, but this was considered worthwhile, as it would lead the population toward an ideological promised land, a state of grace where no inequality or suffering would exist.

Both systems, fascism and communism, were officially non-theistic. Nonetheless, they merely replaced God with something similarly transcendent: the nationalist state, Marxist or fascist theory, and a cult of personality centred on the leader. They stripped ordinary human freedoms and values, offering in return the opportunity to ascend to a higher level of true freedom or meaning. Whenever we observe leaders or ideologies overriding the conscience, liberty, and reasoning of human beings with the promise of something greater, anti-humanism is likely on the rise.

The opposition between humanism and anti-humanism has never been precisely mapped onto the divide between religion and doubt. Just as some atheists are anti-humanists, many religions continue to embody humanist elements that lead us to a very different understanding than the wrongness/salvation model. Humanist and anti-humanist ideas have worked in opposition to one another, but they have also renewed and energised each other.

Sarah acknowledges that humanist and anti-humanist thoughts often coexist within the same individual. She uses herself as an example. When circumstances seem dire in the human world, with war, tyranny, bigotry, greed, and environmental degradation appearing to run unchecked, her inner anti-humanist mutters curses about humans being worthless, and she loses hope.

At other times, however, when she hears about collaborative teams of scientists who have designed and launched a new type of space telescope so powerful that it can show us remote parts of the universe as they were 13.5 billion years ago (just after the Big Bang), she thinks: what extraordinary beings we are to be able to do that!

When she gazes at the celestial blue stained-glass windows of Chartres Cathedral in France, crafted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by long-vanished artisans, and contemplates the expertise and devotion behind them, or when she witnesses the myriad acts of kindness or heroism that people perform daily for one another, she becomes every inch an optimist and a humanist.

Maintaining this balance in our psyches is not a negative thing. Anti-humanism effectively reminds us to avoid vanity and complacency. It provides a healthy realism regarding our weaknesses and nefarious tendencies. It cautions us against naivety and prepares us for the reality that, at any moment, we and those around us might act foolishly or immorally. It compels humanism to continually justify its existence.

Meanwhile, humanism warns us against neglecting the tasks of our current world in favour of dreams of paradise, whether on this Earth or elsewhere. It helps counter extremists' alluring promises and wards off the despair that can arise from obsessing too much over our flaws. Instead of a defeatism that attributes all problems to God or our own biological and historical inevitability, humanism reminds us of our responsibility for what we do with our lives. It encourages us to focus on earthly challenges and our collective well-being.

But Sarah cautiously believes that humanism flies a better flag. Cautiously, because humanists are rarely flag-wavers by nature. However, if they were to stitch words onto a banner, those words might represent three principles: Freethinking, Enquiry, and Hope.

These take different forms depending on our humanist orientation. For example, enquiring will mean one thing to a humanities scholar and another to a campaigner for non-religious ethics, but it will appear repeatedly in the humanist stories we will encounter in the coming pages.

Freethinking: Many humanists prefer to guide their lives by evidence, their moral conscience, or their social and political responsibilities to others rather than by dogmas that are justified solely by reference to authority.

Enquiry: Humanists believe in the importance of study and education. They strive to practise critical reasoning and apply it even to sacred texts and other sources that are considered beyond question.

Hope: Humanists believe that, despite our failings, we can achieve meaningful things during our brief existence on Earth, whether through literature, art, historical research, advancing scientific knowledge, or enhancing the well-being of ourselves and other living beings.

While she was working on this book (in the years before 2023) and when I was writing this summary (early 2025), sinister developments occurred worldwide. Nationalist and populist leaders seem to be on a roll, the war drums are rolling, and it can be hard not to despair about our human and planetary future.

Sarah remains convinced that such challenges should not deter us from freethinking, enquiry, or hope. On the contrary, she believes we need them more than ever. This conviction has driven everything you read here.

If we think we have it bad, let us turn our attention to southern Europe in the 1300s. Amid disorder, disease, suffering, and loss, a few enthusiasts collected fragments of a more distant past and used them to envision a fresh start. In doing so, they transformed themselves and became the first of the great literary humanists.