John Gray's Objections to Humanism
John Gray's objections to Humanism are developed most fully in his book Straw Dogs (2002) and revisited in The Silence of Animals (2013) and Seven Types of Atheism (2018). His target is principally what he calls 'liberal' or 'secular humanism': the belief that human beings are uniquely significant, that reason can progressively improve the human condition, and that humanity can increasingly take control of its destiny.
1. Humanism retains the basic structure of Christianity
Gray's most fundamental objection is genealogical. He argues that modern secular humanism is not as secular as it thinks. Christianity traditionally teaches that human beings occupy a special position in creation, that history has a direction, and that humanity can ultimately be redeemed. Humanism, according to Gray, has removed God while retaining much of this structure: humanity replaces God as the centre of value, progress replaces providence, and the improvement of humanity replaces salvation. In Seven Types of Atheism he argues that much supposedly secular thought is effectively 'repressed religion'.
This is why Gray is particularly hostile to the humanist idea of progress. He regards it as Christianity's doctrine of providence translated into secular language. The assumption that history is moving towards something better, he argues, has no basis in Darwinism or in the actual history of humanity.
2. Darwinism undermines human exceptionalism
Gray thinks humanists have not followed Darwin's implications far enough. Evolution gives us no reason to believe that humanity represents a special culmination of life. We are one animal species among others, produced by contingent evolutionary processes.
Consequently, Gray rejects the humanist tendency to contrast 'humanity' with 'nature'. Human beings are not rational spirits temporarily inhabiting an animal body; they are animals whose capacities for language, intelligence and self-consciousness have themselves evolved.
This has a particularly important consequence for humanist morality. If humans are simply one evolved species, Gray argues, there is no objective evolutionary 'direction' in which humanity is supposed to develop. Evolution produces adaptation, not moral improvement. There is no evolutionary scale running from primitive to advanced, with contemporary humanity at its summit.
3. Human beings are much less rational than Humanism assumes
Humanism places considerable confidence in reason: we can examine our beliefs, identify errors, deliberate about our interests and collectively make better decisions. Gray thinks this dramatically overestimates human rationality.
Our conscious reasoning is, in his view, only one element in a much larger system of instincts, desires, unconscious motives and evolutionary adaptations. Human beings frequently use reason not to discover the truth but to rationalise what they already want to believe.
This is connected with Gray's rejection of free will. If our thoughts and desires arise from causes over which we have no ultimate control, then the humanist picture of the autonomous, rational individual becomes problematic.
4. Human perfectibility is an illusion
Humanism often maintains that although human beings are imperfect, education, reason, science, democratic institutions and social reform can progressively improve us. Gray thinks this confuses technological and moral progress.
Technology can undoubtedly make particular aspects of life better. Anaesthetics, sanitation, medicine and other developments are genuine achievements. But technological progress does not imply that human beings themselves have become morally better. Indeed, technological power can amplify the destructive capacities of the same human beings.
This is one of Gray's important distinctions: we can become more powerful without becoming wiser. Human beings have acquired extraordinary control over nature without acquiring corresponding control over themselves.
5. Human history provides little evidence for moral progress
Gray does not deny that particular things can improve. He accepts, for example, that modern medicine can alleviate suffering. His objection is to turning these particular improvements into a grand theory of historical progress.
The twentieth century is particularly important to his argument. Modern science, technology, bureaucracy and political rationalism did not prevent enormous atrocities. The belief that humanity could deliberately construct a better world sometimes contributed, in Gray's interpretation, to attempts to impose utopian visions through enormous violence.
Thus, for Gray, history is not a story of humanity gradually escaping barbarism. Periods of civilisation and peace can be followed by periods of extraordinary violence. There is no guarantee that what has been achieved will be retained.
6. Science cannot provide the humanist morality that some humanists expect
Gray is not simply anti-science. In fact, Darwinism and contemporary science are central to his critique of Humanism. His objection is to scientism: the belief that scientific knowledge can supply a comprehensive worldview and tell us what humanity ought to value.
Science can tell us how things work, but it cannot, simply by itself, tell us what purposes we ought to pursue. Gray therefore regards the idea that science will progressively liberate humanity as another form of secular faith.
This is particularly significant because some forms of secular Humanism have placed science where religion once stood: science becomes the source of reliable knowledge, while rational humanity uses that knowledge to construct a better future. Gray regards this as an unjustified extrapolation from the genuine achievements of science.
7. Humanism's conception of 'humanity' is itself questionable
Gray also objects to the tendency to speak of 'Humanity' as though it were a single rational agent with a common purpose. There are billions of individual human beings with conflicting desires, interests, cultures and values. There is no single entity called Humanity making collective progress towards a predetermined goal.
This connects with his attack on the idea of a universal human nature that can be perfected. Human beings certainly have common characteristics, but these include aggression, competition, self-deception and the pursuit of power as well as cooperation and altruism.
8. What Gray puts in its place is not another Humanism
This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of his position. Gray is not simply arguing that Christianity is correct and Humanism is wrong. He is broadly sympathetic to atheism, but he rejects the assumption that atheism naturally leads to Humanism.
Instead he draws on thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud and certain strands of Buddhism and Taoism. He particularly values traditions that challenge the idea of a sovereign, rational human self. He also advocates something closer to contemplation and acceptance: rather than assuming that we can remake the world according to our desires, we should recognise our limitations and our place within nature.
The argument in its simplest form
Gray's critique can be reduced to this chain:
- It begins with Darwinism...
- Humans are animals...
- Animals are not moving towards a predetermined goal...
- Therefore human evolution is not moral progress...
- Reason is itself an evolved instrument rather than an independent faculty standing above nature...
- Therefore human beings cannot simply rationally redesign themselves and their world...
- Therefore the humanist faith in progress, perfectibility and human mastery is unjustified.
There is an important qualification here though. Gray is attacking a particular conception of Humanism, not necessarily everything that contemporary Humanists mean by the term. Humanist writers have explicitly argued that Humanism does not require utopianism, scientism, materialism or a belief in inevitable progress. A criticism frequently made of Gray is therefore that he sometimes constructs an overly confident version of 'the Humanist' in order to attack it.