Noting that expressing oneself in a privative manner is more useful than ever in defining the scope of the discussion and preventing readers who are less inclined to engage with ideas different from their own from succumbing to anarchic fantasies before reading the entire text, I will begin by talking about what the term “neo-humanism” is not and should not be understood to mean.
Throughout their long historical and biographical journey, humans have passed through the most diverse psychological and existential places, in a frantic search for a Holy Grail, a philosopher’s stone, a light coming from the high and wild peaks of the Himalayas, or, to avoid a useless string of possible variations on the same theme, the only extraordinary asset that can never be lost or acquired: themselves. A complete “himself,” in which every part is integrated and situated in the right place, and the whole has thus become organically capable of defining itself as a true microcosm.
All attempts, approaches, and ideological choices (when not purely destructive) have served to make man aware of a condition that eludes the conquering relationship -conquered relationship because it actually coincides with both and, more importantly, coincides with both in the very act in which the former enters into a relationship with the latter, thus creating a unity where the desire and will to discover are inalienably united with the sought-after object.
Nevertheless, in doing so, whether achieving success or encountering the obstacles of failure, man has increasingly affirmed and enlivened the idea that no primacy can justify the hypothesis of a reduction of reality: he is immersed in the world, constitutes a functionally essential part of it, and makes the latter inextricably linked to the human being who lives within it. The uniqueness of man, therefore, becomes a non-exclusive part of the plurality inherent in the world-nature and is therefore reflected in the human mind and determines, in a ‘naturally’ consequential way, the immense pantheon of images that lives dynamically within it.
Therefore, before any other consideration, neo-humanism is not a form of “monotheism” and, on the contrary, stands in direct opposition to any form of unification of signifiers (definable by the often-abused term “gods”) in the name of a particular aspect of its psychology. The centrality of man means an awareness of the multiplicity that colors his inner work and, above all, an awareness that the integrative unification that the “complete” man can achieve occurs only because it is based on the recognition of a diversity that cannot be eliminated without the risk of total existential flattening.
Similarly, the term “neo-humanism” is by no means synonymous with “tolerance.” Man was not born to “tolerate,” a condition that places him ipso facto at a level of false and fallacious superiority toward what is “tolerated,” but rather to freely accept and integrate into his interpretative context the ideas expressed by other men. This freedom is much more than a possibility, since it can only be denied in appearance. Still, its substance is revealed in the existential condition of man as a being ontologically deprived of the faculty of not being free.
It is precisely this condition of (non-)freedom that determines the need for a plurality of manifestations and inner images (for this we gladly pay an enormous intellectual debt to the insights of C. G. Jung), without which man is seized by the obsession of an exhausting search within a perimeter too narrow to guarantee that natural spatiality that no human being can and should ever be denied.
Therefore, what can indeed be said in negative terms about neo-humanism is that it is not intrinsically subject to any exclusive ideology, being itself an “ever-incandescent magma” that sees in its petrification the death of all potentiality. In this descent from the high peaks of a volcano to the depths of the valleys, neo-humanism takes on every shade it encounters and, in this never superficial embrace, it offers man the most extraordinary of centralities: the awareness that it is based on an in-dividualitas, where no artificial division can ever exclude the power of the manifold shared by a single being.
For these reasons, recourse to any form of “monotheism,” whether in the strict or broad sense, is the result of a conceptual effort destined from the outset to fail: no monotheism is capable of assuming a “whole” that does not take into account, even if it buries its head in the sand, an implicit duality. Negation and complementarity are the aftermath of an essence that, forced into unnaturalness, degenerates into pure associative madness.
Man, with his claim to define a single super-partes signifier, has turned himself into a housewife obsessed with separating every grain of wheat based on invisible external factors. If, in fact, it does not have a character so distinctly suited to making it a member of one of the two sets, the housekeeper racks her brains, resorting to the most convoluted reasoning in order not to fall prey to doubt. Good and evil are the names given to these groups, which in fact represent the legacy of a man who, out of pure intellectual and psychological pusillanimity, has subordinated himself, relegating to a vanishing point lost in the fog the task of giving perspective depth to his mental illness.
Consequently, and to avoid this, neo-humanism places itself in that ‘beyond’ that transcends nothing except what is already in man’s hands and restores to him that trampled dignity, through a work of rediscovery of the plurality characteristic of the essence that makes life worth living to the full.
Neo-humanism is therefore not a form of religion, nor can it be assimilated into a pseudo-ideological belief that prefers to deny diversity rather than integrate it; it has no standard-bearer, no idol, no symbol of good or evil. In its deepest form, neo-humanism is the recovery of the “spiritual” power of man who lives in a reality where science and technology shape every aspect of daily life, beyond any judgment.
It (neo-humanism) is not to be understood as a return to man’s bucolic vocation (a choice that is clearly left to the individual), nor as a veneration of nature as a form of ecological extremism; neo-humanism is the awareness of human life and its peculiar tendency towards creative interaction with the world (both strictly natural and artificially modeled).
This cultural movement, to finally speak in favorable terms, is a path where grass grows freely, where flowers have their colors, where nettles cling to the bare feet of travelers, where statues evoke images that go beyond any caption, where man does not need to ask permission to embrace the the intensity of every inner perception, where morality gives way to naturalness, and where no universal signifier will ever have the power to take the place of the manifold, because the wonderful paintings painted by neo-humanism always contain every nuance of color and, by reflection, these nuances always find their rightful place, giving the resulting whole an irreplaceable sense of beauty.
Neo-humanism could therefore be considered a form of “internalized neo-paganism,” without, however, going so far as to claim to influence current culture with forms that no longer have an external place in human life. In fact, starting from the assumption that today’s reality is limited and sometimes suffocated by the idea of a significant singularity (primarily through “monotheism”) does not imply that this is not an essential component of the present day in which our awareness takes place. Recognizing the present is the first step in laying solid foundations where a building, even a small one without spires, can find the support it needs to stand tall and remain upright in bad weather.
“Integrating,” therefore, will never mean destroying, just as “considering” will never sink into the nefarious vortex of tolerance. The symbol of neo-humanism is an embrace: an embrace that may remain empty but will never close without allowing those who desire it to be included.
In the same way, those who remain excluded (by free critical will) will never be transferred to the mephitic cauldron of evil, of the different or the useless, because even the ideas of detractors always have their place, and a genuine and profound neo-humanism can only constantly shed light on them and give them value.
Perhaps some might accuse neo-humanism of extreme relativism. Still, if the proposed alternative is obscurantism masquerading as absolutism, the hypothesis of a multiplicity of views is definitely more appreciable than the suffocating silence of a museum where all the rooms are closed, allowing visitors to contemplate only one specific work. On the contrary, in the ‘museum’ of neo-humanism, every work has equal dignity, insofar as it enriches the form and substance of the whole when placed in an integrated context. No Mona Lisa will ever be exhibited except alongside and with the same respect given to every other painting, so that it is always and only visitors, with their intelligence and sensitivity, who linger longer in front of the masterpieces that most strongly elicit their reactions.
The idea of defining a priori what should shape each individual’s critical sense is a “diabolical” idea which, referring to the Greek etymology of the term dia-bàllein, separates rather than unites; it pits some against others: the former worthy of praise as “adepts” and the latter to be despised for their audacity.
No fear of knowledge, instilled with the skill of psychological manipulation, should ever cross the threshold of neo-humanism, just as no fear drove Ulysses to cross that line sealed by the triumph of irrationality. The choice is and must always remain in the hands of man, who, already weighed down by the precious but heavy burden of freedom, has the primary duty never to shy away from exercising his own will, even if this may sometimes appear illusory.
Neo-humanism does not view free will as the “humanized” degeneration of morality, which seeks to act as a watershed placed by a supreme being between good and evil (trying to make us believe that even in the ocean the two flows will remain unnaturally separate), but rather as an essential need that beings can try to satisfy (with the humility of those who have eyes but not yet all the landscapes they can look at) or deny as “simple” folly. It is of no use to anyone to judge those who choose the second path, but certainly, neo-humanism can only continue its enduring invitation to take the first path, running all the risks involved and never clinging to any certainty outside of one’s own self. A self that could even deceive through its images, but which always keeps alive (unless it sinks into the most profound psychopathological distress) that unity which is not born to separate, but rather to be the primal emblem of generative integration.
May man, therefore, return to being the sole helmsman of the ship of existence, and may all his ideas, images, thoughts, reflections, and creations always be accepted as “works” to be critically analyzed without any censorship operating before free choice. I conclude, therefore, hoping that the words that Ulysses uttered through the pen of Dante will always be the most extraordinary prayer to be raised incessantly to one’s own individuality:
“…Consider your seed.
You were not made to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge.”