Humanity as a binding link
Ambassador Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka participated as a panelist at the
international conference on ‘21st Century, Towards the New Humanism’ on
January 23, 2012 at the Russian Centre for Science and Culture. The
event gathered dignitaries as well as Russian and French scholars and
researchers.
The initiative was organized by the Permanent Mission of the Russian
Federation to UNESCO, the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of
Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad and for International
Humanitarian Cooperation Mission Rossotrudničestvo in France, and the
Russian Centre for Science and Culture. The event took place with the
support of UNESCO, the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the
European Humanist Federation Russian Humanist Society.
The object of this two-day seminar (January 23 - January 24, 2012)
was to support UNESCO in its initiative for a New Humanism for the sake
of bettering conditions for intercultural dialogue and solidarity. The
discussion also intends to prepare the possibility of holding - together
with the Spanish Forum ‘NUNC!’ - a broader conference on New Humanism in
Moscow in autumn 2012.
Speaking on New Humanism Ambassador Jayatilleka emphasized on the
need to place the human being at the centre: “...humanism is the closest
we can get to universal good, to a universal idea. Humanism puts the
human being at the centre. And placing the human being at the centre
means to recognize that above all else, beyond national, ethnic,
political, civilizational, religious, systemic, and ideological
differences, one thing unites us and that is that we are all human.”
Also participating in this seminar were: Prof. V. A. Kouvakine
(Professor, Lomonosov Moscow State University and President of Russian
Humanist Society), Prof. D. A. Leontiev (Professor of psychology,
Lomonosov Moscow State University; Head of the research lab of positive
psychology and quality of life studies, Higher School of Economics,
Moscow), Prof. Alexander Razin (Professor Lomonosov Moscow State
University), Prof. Yaroslav Golovin (Professor of Moscow State Open
University), Olga Pastushkova (PhD, Vice-President of Russian Humanist
Society), Julia Senchikhina (PhD, Vice-Director General, Institute for
Humanist Studies Foundation, Russia), Dr. Alexandra Otchirova (Doctor in
Philosophy) and Farit Moukhametshine (Head of the Federal Agency ‘Rossotrudnicestvo’).
Text of ambassador Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka’s address:
My thanks to the Russian Cultural Centre but also to UNESCO. I am
particularly thankful to the Russian Cultural Centre because Russian
culture, as Ambassador Ion de la Riva said with reference to Russian
literature and Tolstoy in particular, is profoundly humanistic. I
would also like to make the point that Russian political ideas have had
a strong streak of humanism. We think of Herzen, we think of the
Decembrists and we understand that a progressive, rational, radical
humanism was very much part of Russian ideas.
I would also like to say something heretical, in a critical defense
of the Russian Revolution because the Russian Revolution takes place in
a context of the greatest degeneration and decomposition of humanism,
the greatest challenge to humanism the world has witnessed, and that is
the First World War. It is against the historical backdrop of this
crisis of ideology, this ruination and negation of humanism, that you
have the radical response of the Russian Revolution. The Russian
Revolution itself was a radical variant of humanism. I think the tragedy
of the Revolution is when it deviated from its humanistic roots and
inspiration.
The tragedy of the Revolution was the anti-humanistic aspect, but
this was not the totality of the Russian Revolution. I would also like
to say that those who defended Moscow, those who defended Leningrad,
those who defended Stalingrad, in the face of the worst threat to
humanism, that is Nazi-fascism, were also inspired by spirit of humanism
and were defending the heritage of humanism in Europe and the world. So
I would like to pay my tribute to the Russian people, Russian culture,
Russian history and Russian ideas, from the perspective precisely of
humanism.
Humanistic worldview
I think that rediscovering and advancing humanism provides us with a
valuable opportunity. It is an answer to the crisis of ideas, to the
crisis of philosophy, the crisis of ethics, the crisis of attitudes,
that is part of the global crisis today. Why do I say that humanism
provides us with opportunities? Because, humanism is the closest we can
get to a universal good, to a universal idea! Humanism puts the human
being at the centre.
Placing the human being at the centre means to recognize that above
all else, beyond national, ethnic, political, cultural, civilizational,
religious, systemic, and ideological differences, one thing unites us
and
that is that we are all human. So long as we respect that fact, that
above all else, and in the final analysis, we are human, we are able to
connect, to communicate, to seek common solutions. This is why I find
the search for a humanistic worldview to be, not only some ideal
exercise but a very practical answer to the global crisis of today.
Religious rituals
I also feel that there are material reasons that make this possible
-namely the information revolution, the interconnectedness that you see
in the world today through the new information technology. What does
this mean? It means that we are relating to each other as individuals,
we are communicating as human beings to other human beings real-time,
across vast distances. So perhaps for the first time we also have the
material means, in terms of the means of communication, to make humanism
a reality! Because the technology exists, the means of production of
ideas exist, in a manner that they did not exist before.
Now, what is, or should be, new about the New Humanism? The New
Humanism has to be universalistic. Of course we understand and recognize
the powerful roots of humanism from within the Western and specially the
Western European tradition, but I would say that part of our project has
to be to interrogate all existing ideologies, ideas from all parts of
the world and seek out their humanistic kernel, the humanistic core, the
humanistic aspects. It was said that Marx took the rational core of
Hegel; took the method that abandoned the system.
I think a similar exercise is necessary to go through the heritage of
Latin America, Africa and Asia; the heritage in literature, the heritage
in political ideas, the heritage in social ideas, the heritage even in
forms of social systems, and try to uncover, try to unpack, try to
deconstruct them, so you can find a humanistic core, if it exists, and
carry it forward. Of course you will not find it in Nazism, in fascism,
but in many traditions you find if you seek in terms of, shall we say,
an archeology of knowledge, you will find this humanistic core.
My esteemed colleague, Ambassador Ion de la Riva of Spain has already
referred to the Buddha. In Buddhism it is said “May all living beings be
happy”. Now this to me shows a broad universal humanism. If you take
Christianity, and there are many references which would constitute lead
to a Christian Humanism. The Christ after all, called himself the Son of
Man. The idea, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, the
dictum that you should ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ and to me the
very important proposition that ‘the Sabbath was made for man and not
man for the Sabbath’ constitute a humanism.
If the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, this is
also true of religious rituals, of religious institutions, and it is
also true for states. States were made for humankind, for man and woman,
not man and woman for the state! This is not to say that we must defend
the idea that the state should not exist and that the market should be
everything. No. The market was also made for man, just as the state was
made for man. If we can remember that, that it extends beyond the
Sabbath and that the human should be at the center, then we would
understand that you can have a Christian reading and a reading of
Christianity that are profoundly humanistic.
Sovereignty of nation
That is true also of socialism because just as humanism deals with
the Rights of Man as individuals, it must also talk about the rights,
responsibilities and duties of Man, of humans, in the collective. We
know that in the Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizens
proclaimed here in Paris in 1789, you have as Article 3, the notion that
'all sovereignty flows from the nation'. So we must not countrepose the
rights of man to the sovereignty of the nation as some liberal or
ultra-liberals do. However, this is also not to put the nation above
man, but to find a synthesis. In socialism, you have a humanism focused
on the collective dimension of human existence. There now has to be a
reintegration of humanism in its individual and its collective
dimensions.
Where socialism failed was when it failed to make the transition from
defending and fighting for the rights of man in the collective; failed
to reintegrate into that project the rights of man as individual; failed
to make the point that while the state is important, the state is made
for man and not man for state.
But there is a valuable humanistic core within of socialism, within
the heritage if I may say so, of communism - and that humanistic core
has to be extracted. Marx did say that man made history but not under
circumstances determined or chosen by himself. So he gave a place for
man as the maker of history and he sought to make man the master of
history, but he also recognized that there were powerful systemic and
structural constraints.
These two, the motive force that is man at the centre, and on the
other hand the systemic and structural constraints that man find himself
under; this antinomy, this contradiction, has to be held in equilibrium.
I would bring it altogether and say that today, now, nunc, is the
time to recognize that humanism is a universalism, and this is the
closest we can get to universality because it places the human at the
centre and it understands and values our common humanity, the fact that
we are all human beings. We place that as the highest value.
If we understand that we must give primacy not only to man and woman
as individuals but also, and equally, to man and woman as citizen, and
man and woman in his/her collective existence, then we will have the
foundation stones of and the stepping stones to a better and different
future. |