Name — A Human Hearted Way for the 21st century

On using the term human hearted

Introduction:

People have been taking a human hearted approach to meaning and ethics for thousands of years. Its even possible to argue that one of the oldest known epic tales of humanity, the Epic of Gilgamesh, (with versions going back to around the 3rd Millenium BCE) contains a human hearted theme. The hero Gilgamesh learns that the one thing he cannot defeat, either for himself or for his great friend Enkidu, is death. The chorus in the epic advises Gilgamesh to accept the joys he can find in this world and not worry about defeating death.

Many different words have been used to describe outlooks which are in fact human hearted - with people calling upon our human capacity for sympathy, compassion, benevolence, moral sense, humaneness, and so on, to describe approaches to life Most of these words have such a general usage that it would be asking too much to try to use them to describe one particular approach. We searched for a term that could be broad enough to cover the range of outlooks that are part of the human hearted tradition, but was not so broad that it could mean almost anything.

Human heartedness and Ren

One of the earliest thinkers in the human hearted tradition, the Chinese philosopher Confucius, used the word “Ren” to refer to what he thought was a key aspect of our human potential: our capacity to engage in sympathy and caring for others based on both our ability to empathize with others, and our sense of compassion. Confucius urged people to cultivate and develop their Ren. Other thinkers in China explored Ren as well, discussing and debating its meaning and how to cultivate it. There is no one official definition of its meaning.

While a concept like Ren seems to go very close to summarizing what the human hearted tradition is about, it might be confusing, because of its role in Confucianism, to simply borrow the word into english and use it to include both people in China, and elsewhere who had practiced human heartedness. In fact, of course, the word Ren itself is very difficult to translate. There is no agreement on the best term, and Ren is probably best seen as an untranslatable word that has not made its way into english - yet. Words that have been used for translation purposes include words such as benevolence, humaneness, humanity, compassion and human heartedness. Most of these words have had particular uses in English, whereas human hearted is a relatively unknown term, and in a metaphorical sense at least, it gets at what is at the core of the human hearted tradition; cultivating the best or our human potential, the best of the human heart; and using that as a guide to action.

It makes sense to say that, whether we are talking about David Hume’s claim that innate sympathy and goodwill is a better guide than pure reason and logical abstraction, or Charles Darwin’s claim that because our species has a “social sense” we would have developed ethics sooner or later, or debating different interpretations of Ren in Chinese philosophy, we are looking at different approaches to realizing the same thing; the best of our human potential, a human hearted way of living.

So, for now, we are adopting the term human hearted to describe the tradition as a whole; i.e. including paths based on the concept of Ren and paths taken by people who have never heard of Ren. In doing so we definitely are not advocating for the primacy of Confucianism, or of a specific interpretation of Confucius’ thought, which we discuss more below. We are using human hearted as an umbrella term which Ren, along with other concepts can fit within.

In this sense we are treating human heartedness as a concept in its own right, one that should not be bound by Confucianism, any more than sympathy should be bound by the thought of David Hume. For the 21st century and beyond the human hearted way is something that any human should be able to cultivate and practice. We know that it isn’t the ideal name to connect this diverse range of thinkers and practices. But until we do discover an ideal name human heartedness strongly expresses what we are advocating, and we plan to use it until a better name comes along.

Some alternatives to human hearted that we chose not to use:

We needed to choose a word that was broad enough to cover the range of approaches that fall within human heartedness while not being too biased to any one interpretation, or too vague. Words like sympathy and compassion would easily encompass the range of approaches. But they are too broad and vague; sympathyism or compassionism as names could mean anything. Also we don't want to wind up implying that only human hearted people have sympathy and compassion !

We also thought about adding the word ‘new’ to our approach “new Humeism” or ‘new Confucianism’ for example. But simply putting the word new in front of a particular school still puts the focus on that school, and risks having a discussion focussed on the correct interpretation of Hume or Confucius rather than a forward looking discussion of the actual content of the idea.

We also considered terms like self actualization and self realization. These are well known terms, and while closely associated with people like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. These terms also have a free standing existence and can be discussed without having to constantly refer back to Rogers and Maslow. They point to the internal resources the human hearted tradition relies upon. However these types of terms have very frequently been associated with an approach based on extreme self centred individualism and/or egotism. The human hearted tradition focuses more on realising our social potential, it emphasizes realising our best social potential through engagement with others, not self centred individualism. So while such terms can be used to describe elements of the human hearted tradition they would not work as broad descriptive terms for it. (There is an appendix at the bottom of this page discussing various other names we rejected)

In a nutshell human hearted seemed a better candidate because:

Firstly its intuitive sense; human hearted, puts a focus on the human source of sympathy, compassion, fulfilment etc. which is what the approach we are advocating is all about. The essence of human heartedness is using the best of one’s social potential to find good ways to live and develop good policies for society. It seems very straightforward to say that Ren, or Hume’s emphasis on sympathy, or Darwin’s emphasis on social instincts, are all clearly human hearted approaches.

Secondly, its a term that allows us to include non western as well as western allusions without committing to any one viewpoint. We want to encourage a conversation between civilisations so an English term that has been inspired by attempts to translate a Chinese term seems like a good middle ground. We hope that using this term will help people be aware that contributions, indeed important contributions, to human heartedness come from outside the western tradition as well as from within it. We wanted an english term that would encourage people to think beyond the usual corpus of western thinkers.

Thirdly, If we had adopted the word Ren into English we may have appeared to be putting a focus on answering questions from within the Confucian tradition. Our focus is not what is the correct interpretation of what Confucius said. But on what is a human hearted way for today. Use of the term human hearted takes us away from a pre commitment to a purely Confucian, or purely anything else, approach. Discussing what is a human hearted way in today’s world is a quite separate question to what did Confucius mean by Ren.

Fourthly, As discussed above, there are also significant problems with other possible terms.

So, for now, we are calling this the human hearted tradition. Our goal is to build a global discourse on how to live in a human hearted way in the 21st century.

So are we irrevocably committed to using ‘human hearted’ ?

No ! We needed a name and human hearted is what we have developed. If, over time, others join with us in this project and, amongst those committed to human heartedness, it becomes clear that some other term would be better, then we would be keen to engage in discussion on a more appropriate term.

Briefly again on Confucianism:

We do not view the human hearted project as simply an expansion of Confucianism. There are many aspects of Confucianism we disagree with after all, such as traditional Confucianism’s restrictive outlook on the role of women*. Our concern is not to find the ‘correct' interpretation of Confucianism in terms of the Confucian tradition, but to build a human hearted tradition that includes the best of what Confucianism (including contemporary Confucianism) has to offer and the best of what Hume, Darwin, science and a host of other sources have to offer. Just as discussing Marx’s contribution to socialism should not imply that Marx’s views are the only possible version of socialism, so we want to discuss human heartedness for today without the conversation degenerating into a textual interpretation of what one or another ‘leading’ person said on the topic. We hope this website will help trigger a revival of the human hearted tradition that encompasses the best that its many contributors have to offer.

Appendix - More on some of the terms we rejected:

We discussed earlier the reasons for rejecting some alternative names. That part of the discussion could have gone on much longer if we included all of the names we considered and rejected. We include below a longer list of possible names we have rejected, and the reasons we rejected them.

One way to generate a name would be to focus more on the ‘social’ aspect of our potential, which is what human heartedness highlights. But using ‘social' leads to a word like “socialism” as a collective word for all these approaches. That word is well and truly taken !

Another possibility we considered was to create a name based on the human sourced nature of the tradition, such as “humanism”. But again this is a name that is already taken, and about which much debate swirls as to its meaning. There is no doubt that secular humanism can be included as part of the human hearted tradition, with its emphasis on the human source of values. However the contemporary humanist movement can often be more focused on promoting atheism and it would unnecessarily invite conflict with people in that movement to try to say the word Humanism specifically means human heartedness.. The human hearted tradition is a humanistic one, but it can also function separately and distinctly from the broad church of the existing humanist movement.

One more possibility was to create a new word from the focus on human potential and call this tradition the “potentialist” tradition. The word potentialism has in fact been used by Lyndon Storey, one of the creators of this website, and by writers like Callum Golding, to indicate a similar set of ideas. But that word has both failed to gain support, and risks obscuring the range of people who have contributed to the human hearted tradition. Potentialism, as discussed by Lyndon Storey and Callum Golding, is certainly part of the human hearted tradition, but it is not the only part.

We also thought about words like sympathy and compassion. But these are so widely used, in so many different contexts, it would be too vague and confusing to try to claim a particular ‘sympathyism’ or ‘compassionism’ tradition. Also, things like sympathy and compassion are key platforms for using reason and other factors to build towards human heartedness. But by themselves they do not amount to human heartedness. We also did not want to risk implying that only people in this tradition have sympathy and compassion !

* Of course many would say that whatever the outlook in the past the foundational concepts of Confucianism easily provide a rationale for an outlook supportive of the full development of all people, not only men. For discussions of Confucianism and Feminism today for instance see writers such as Chenyang Li - Chapter Nine. The Confucian Concept of REN and the Feminist Ethics Of Care: A Comparative Study in C Li Confucian Political Ethics