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

1968-06-01 / 2. szám

HOP Val XX 'Special Number

1968 No 2- 10 -(07652)

Humanism as responsibility for the humaneness of man, as the effort to make man truly humane, is not only the meeting place of various ideologies, but, at the same time,also the place in which the differences between the various ideologies appear» To overlook the differences is detrimental to joint and practical actions» - In the .interests of a common and concrete responsibility for man we must clearly see the theoretical differences» Syncretism- let it be in the sphere of humanistic theories - serves no good purpose»

Being aware of the risk of misunderstanding which necessarily attends the following shorthand characterisations, we must nonetheless attempt to outline the typical answers given to the basic problems of anthropology,. These replies will tell us what are the types of humanism which are even today effective factors of social life0 For the sake of stressing again the connection between humanism and the problems of social ethics, we remind the Reader that it was already in the draft preparatory to the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches, that a rather fragmentary treatment was given, in the chapter entitled "Christian Hope and the Hopes of Our Time", to the problem of the various types of humanism»5)

According to the classical, idealistic type of humanism, both of the antiquity and the New Age, the essence of man is the spirit, the logos«

It is because of his ignorance that man is alienated frcm what is his true essence» Hence the way of counteracting his alienation is learning and teachirg with the help of which the ideas of the True, the Good and the Beautiful become possessions of the individuals in the fields of science, lav/ and arts.

The "goal of humanism is the well-trained and free ethical personality«

According to exist:entialistAc humanism 'which, being rooted in the nominalism of the Middle Ages and in the idealism of Fichte and is expressed in the thinking of the early Heidegger and of J„Pe Sartre > the essence of man is not his participation in the logos or in the idea but the absolute individuation, as the fact of man creating himself» T>je metaphysical essence (Wesen) is replaced by the exist ore, and the idea of participation by the plan of realizing ourselves (Heidegger?. Entwurf; Sartre? projet)« There is no eternal essence to be realised by the actions of man; the secret of the humánum is that we are "condemned to freedom" (Sartre)0 Alienation is the attempt to flee from this .absolute freedom, into the security of being hid in the community which lays before us the general laws of action.. And the way of humanization is to accept our absolute freedom, The "authentic", the "humane" man is alone, and the only social qualification of his ethics is his attention to the Kantian maxim? Act in such a way, that the law of thy action may become a general maxim!

The opposite of this extremely individualistic humanism which verges on solipsism is the humanism of Marxism, Marxism finds the essence of man not in some basic and unchangeable traits but in the totality of social conditions» The full human essence is not something given in advance, but somét hing which emerges as the outcome of man^s work» It is in the historical ard social pro-