Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)

1968-06-01 / 2. szám

HOP Vol XX Special Number

1968 No 2- 9 -(765?)

The search for a new type of humanism has two powerful motives» The first is the shock of the experience of inhumanity« Europe had to see the hell of inhumanity, and it has not been possible ter turn off from this haunting vision of horrors« The literary products oxv the forties - those with lasting value - have a common theme which is the protest in the defence of the tormented and humiliated man who nonetheless lives and wants to live*

The second is the experience that, at the time of the greatest dangers and horrors, there was a rapprochement, a discovery of unity among those who, although of varied ideological backgrounds, had remained real human beings in the midst of inliumanityo But why is it that it is only insthese frontier situations that those making the common profession homo/sacra hcminis - notwithstanding the different ideological presuppositions and consequences of this one profession - can find one another?2) »

The standard ^definition of humanism — beyond the aforesaid profession - is impossible« This is clearly indicated by the following two examples« Speaking of a conferer.ce held in 1949, Karl Barth said in a lecture delivered in Zürichi " c • o already the conception of humanism itself and the definition of this conception were surrounded by the deepest darkness and a host'-of contradictions"a3) Seventeen years later,-an ideologically homogeneous (Christian) consultation, in the closing communique on the Geneva conference on Church and Society, enphasizes that, beyond the commonly held conviction concerning the Christological foundation of Christian anthropology, "there is no complete theological agreement concerning the meaning of our humanity in Christ".4)

b) Various Sfypes .of Humanism

duwur? ■7” > as a significant category of social ethics, becomes a problem wherever the at imp« is made to answer, in terms of practical action, the following questions who is man, what is the essence of humanity, what is the humanity of the homo, what is his alienation from his humanity and what are the ways of counteracting this alienation, that is, the ways of humanizing life? As to the latter, one is to ask further: what is the meaning of humanization as a programme of social ethics and as a criterion of social ethics?

These are the fundamental questions of humanism, and various answers \re given to them by the humanism of classical idealism, by Christianity, by Marxism and by existentialism,. Instead of a standardized idea of humanism embracing all ideologies, we have as many types of humanism as there is a multitude of anthropological theories.-, Anthropology, however, presupposes in every case - either consciously or unconsciously an ontology and thus supplies the motives of ethical action,, Ontology tries to answer the question: what is be- 3,11g, what is reality? - and the leading question of every ethic is: what is the nature of action that corresponds to reality and hence the right kind of action?