Humanitas

The three pillars of humanitas (or humanism) are cosmos, skepsis, and logos. An individual becomes a humanist because s/he is gripped by a fascination for the mysterium or "elusive something" that seems to pervade human life. What does it mean to be a human being? That is the pervasive mystery. The fact that one might find him/herself at leisure to ponder such a question says a lot about the conditions under which humanism becomes possible.

A fascination with logos is often the entrance-way to a fascination for cosmos and a tendency towards skepsis: for the workings of language, when carefully considered, confront one with the varieties of order that human beings have produced across the globe and through time; they also raise more questions than a lifetime's worth of research can possibly answer. The enormity of the task that faces the individual who embraces humanitas (i.e., making sense of human being through that most human of faculties, language) cannot be underestimated. Skepsis (or a suspension of final judgment upon matters where the available data simply does not warrant such finality) is a natural concomitant.

The fascination for cosmos (varieties of order) combined with a tendency towards skepsis produces an interesting side effect: for this combination engenders a cosmopolitanism in the humanist. Cosmopolitanism results when exposure to the implacable fact of human difference creates not fear but wonder; in the event, an individual's acceptance of difference expands and parochialism recedes proportionately.

This is humanitas.

For most humanists, the mysterium of the three pillars of humanitas (the mysterium that forged them in its smithy) fully occupies their attentions. For others, there remains the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. The former kind of humanist is nowadays referred to as a "secular humanist"; the latter is referred to as a "religious humanist." The real difference between the two kinds of humanist is that the latter tends to hold that the mysterium tremendum et fascinans in some (mysterious) way possesses the key to answering humanitas's threshold question: what does it mean to be a human being? In addition, the religious humanist tends to suspend skepsis to some degree when it comes to considering the mysterium tremendum. Philosophers have endowed skepsis about skepsis in such matters with the technical name fideism. The humanism of Montaigne is a classic example of this type.