The new humanism
"I propose, in the following pages, to present a critique of contemporary social thought in the light of a scientific humanism--a humanism, i.e., which, steering clear of ethical attitudes that arise from purely personal predilections, does not pronounce a doctrine unsound unless it is either out of focus with the objectively observable human relations within which it functions, or unless these relations themselves violate our fundamental human passions. Current social criticism still selects its weapons from the armory of ethical idealization, metaphysical abstraction or biologic simplification. An Hegelian spirit, a Nietzschian stomach, or a Benthamite bible will not, however, in our critique, be permitted to determine the doom of an idea. Planting our critical standards within the solid soil of social relations, we shall allow these relations themselves to be the final touchstone of theory. Moreover, since our contemporary professoriat--those official assassins of social truth--are concealing their theoretical impotence behind the elusive mask of humanism, it will be our aim to demonstrate the essential inhumanity of their humanism, and having driven them from their moral moorings, challenge them to defend their doctrines on purely objective grounds. Social theory, broadly speaking, includes within its scope all those phenomena that derive from the realm of human society. Our critical excursions will therefore take us into such widely divergent fields as Anthropology and Ethics, Art and Economics, Law, Language, Sex, and War. These and a variety of other human themes we shall survey from our one theoretic standpoint, convinced that such a procedure alone can concentrate within our analytic searchlight the maximum of critical illumination. But criticism is not enough. Therefore, although we are fully aware that a new structure of positive social theory cannot well be reared unless upon a foundation of a new social world, we, nevertheless, believe that the broad outlines of such a theoretic structure can, in a number of instances, even now be briefly indicated and suggested. We therefore humbly offer what, so far as we know, is a new orientation in the psychology of instinct, a new approach to the problem of the soul, a new concept of culture, and a new philosophy of Art"--Foreword. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).