Humanism and Embodiment: From Cause and Effect to Secularism

A live issue in anthropology and development studies, humanism is not typically addressed by analytic philosophers. Arguing for humanism as a view about truths, Humanism and Embodiment insists that disembodied reason, not religion, should be the target of secularists promoting freedom of enquiry and human community. Susan Babbitt’s original study presents humanism as a meta-ethical view, paralleling naturalistic realism in recent analytic epistemology and philosophy of science. Considering the nature of knowledge, particularly the radical contingency of knowledge claims upon causal mechanisms, religious thinkers like Thomas Merton and Ivan Illich offer more scientific conceptions of practical deliberation than are offered by some non-religious ethicists. Drawing on philosophical sources such as Marxism, Buddhism and Christianity, this original study considers implications of an embodied conception of reason, revealing philosophical, practical and political implications.