Declaration of Principles

What system, what nation, what people, what organisation escapes the general crisis today.

Nihilism, unemployment, inflation, violence, torture, persecution and death infiltrate everywhere.

In this emergency, Humanism gives a response in order to organise social relations from the human being and for the human being. This response is a social commitment that becomes a fact in the formation of the Humanist Party.

If in other times Humanism reacted against obscurantism and authoritarian regimes, making science shine and proposing progressive forms of social organisation, today original naivety has matured acquiring identity and consciousness of its limitations and possibilities. Humanism today starts from human existence and not from theories that propose the reality of a world that precedes human life.

Humanism today does not accept the explanation of former or previous philosophies in the sense that a metaphysics, a sociology or, lastly, a philosophy or history are necessary in order to explain human existence; on the contrary, it is only starting from human existence, which is lived and is concrete, that a scientific vision of the world can be organised.

Contemporary Humanism is not satisfied with pseudo-scientific theses lacking existential foundation, nor is it satisfied with the myth of the presumed "human nature" that determines whether people choose good or evil. What are the principal points of Humanism in reference to social affairs?

They are the following:

• The world in which we are born is a social world formed by human intentions.
• Only the sociability of the world has intentions. Nature is susceptible of being intentionalised, "humanised." In fact, society is both an agent and a receiver of humanisation, of meaning.
• Human existence is freedom to choose between affirming and denying the world. Human intentionality allows humans to affirm or deny conditions, therefore allowing them not to be a mere "reflection" of those conditions.
• Society is historicity. Thus, the human being is personal and social history, and not human "nature." Nature affects only the human body, but not human intentionality which defines what is human.
• It is from the condition of liberty that human beings choose to accept or reject the social conditions in which they are born, develop and die. No one can exist without confronting the social conditions in which he or she lives, and no one can avoid choosing among them. Not choosing among conditions is also a choice. The results of the choice neither confirm nor invalidate this fact.
• The notion of historicity arises from the confrontation with social conditions and is understood as preceding and continuing beyond one's existence. Thus, social activity is a continuous appraisal of history and is a commitment towards the future beyond one's personal death.
• Human existence develops amidst contradictions imposed by historical conditions at both personal and social levels. Such conditions are inescapable, but no historical necessities are derived from them.
• Contradiction has its personal correlation in the register of suffering. Because of this, when faced by contradictory social conditions, individual human beings identify their suffering with the suffering of groups of humans that are subject to those same conditions.
• Social contradiction is the result of violence. The appropriation of the social whole by a part of the whole is violence, and this violence is the root of contradiction and suffering. Violence is expressed as taking away the intentionality (and, most certainly, the liberty) of others. Or, in other words, it is an action of submerging the human being or large groups of human beings, into the world of nature.
• The different forms of violence (physical, economic, racial and religious) are the expression of the denial of the human in others.
• The appropriation of the social whole by a part of the whole is violence and this violence is the root of contradiction and suffering.
• Personal and social suffering must be surpassed by modifying the means of illegal and violent appropriation which have installed contradiction in the world. This struggle to overcome suffering gives continuity to the historical process and gives meaning to human beings because it affirms the intentionality denied to them by others.
• The results and development of the struggle for the humanisation of the world (natural and social) accumulate as progress. The different societies do not find themselves within the same framework or moment of process of development, they are rather in different paths of development. This means that the conditions for liberation are constantly available and are not within a distant future when the supposed "objective conditions" will take place.

Humanism adheres to a descriptive and interpretative methodology that has, as a point of departure in its fundamental development, the reflection of what is of immediate importance to existence. From this point of view, it aspires to a truly scientific methodology. On the other hand, in social practice, it aspires to achieve social change using the methodology of non-violence.

The appearance of the Humanist Party is not an absurd occurrence; but rather, it is the necessary response to the crisis of increasing social dehumanisation.

Organising the Party in each country will undoubtedly be a specific task for each country but always in theme with the general goal of humanising the earth.

« back

Humanist International - www.humanist-international.org