Several philosophers have said it, but the truth is painful: The worship of a symbol is idolatry but . . . it’s symbol all the way down. That “it’s symbols all the way down” is and has always been the human condition as we have wrestled to understand and describe…

(Exploring I/Thou, I/It, and I & I) Philosopher Martin Buber’s famous distinction between the I/Thou and I/It relationships has long been a cornerstone of liberal theological thought. Briefly, Martin Buber postulated that we human beings enter into two sorts of relationships, I/It and I/Thou relationships. For Buber, the I/It relationship…

If the burned-over summer of 2023 has taught us anything, surely it is that we human beings need to start loving the earth more. Or else. As a Humanist, I blame the monotheisms for forging the destructive I/It thinking that is damaging the planet and threatening our species. However unfair…

People matter more than ideas. People have many ways of knowing, many ways of discovering and expressing what it means to be human. All ways matter. Art is universal. Science, mathematics, and scholarship are universal human expressions testable and provable in all human cultures. …

What is a Poetics? Poetics is perhaps a precious and academic-sounding word, but I think it well expresses the concept that we are creating our lives from moment to moment, and that it is possible to create an aesthetic life from moment to moment. As the philosopher Epictetus put it…

Let’s face it, in such questions as race, class, and gender, Emerson wrote some really mean and dumb things. Should he be cancelled? Well, to be factual, Emerson already cancelled himself. In his 1836 essay Nature — often credited with beginning the transcendentalist movement — Emerson wrote, Why should not…

Humanism stays relevant despite a pedigree that goes back millennia because as a world view it places emphasis on human values, human agency, and human experience here, now. …

Sure, you want to explode. But remember this: Despite your explosion, people will still do as they always have. Here is the most important thing: Do not stress. After all, everything is going according to the way of the web of existence, the laws of nature. In a very short time, you will be nobody and nowhere, just like Hadrian and Augustus. Fix your eyes steadily on what it is you are doing. Remember: It is your duty to be a virtuous person acting in accordance with nature. Do that without fail and speak justly, as you understand justice. Speak justly with temperance and modesty and without hypocrisy. (Meditations, 8.4–8.5)

4. 24: If you want tranquility, focus. Isn’t it best to focus on what it takes to be a decent social animal? Such actions bring not only…