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 16, rue Spontini 75016
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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.
I think that rediscovering and
advancing humanism provides us with a valuable of
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 center. Placing the human
being at the center 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.
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 neighbor 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 16, rue Spontini 75016
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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.
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 counterpose 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 center, 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 center 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.
Embassy of Sri Lanka
Paris
26thJanuary
2012
