The Hearty, Forgiving Laughter of the Paterian Humanist

No one is born a humanist, but if you work at it long enough, you may become one of the Terrentian variety. For it was the Roman poet Terrence who said "I am a man, therefore I consider nothing human to be foreign to me." Then, if you keep working at it, you may pass from the sort of open curiosity that characterizes Terrentian humanism to the appreciation that characterizes Paterian humanism. You may be on your way to Walter Pater's Diaphaneite.

Terrentian curiosity brings the humanist face to face with difficulty: the difficulty of finding ways to digest the depths of human depravity along with the heights. The mental acrobatics this requires sharpens the intellect and broadens one's sensibilities. Paterian appreciation, on the other hand, shifts the focus from the head to the heart. It is interesting to recall, in this regard, that the work Pater left unfinished at his death was a study of Pascal.

One never really understands a figure such as al-Ghazali, Pascal, Heidegger, Ibn Hazm. Oh, for a while, one thinks she does; but that is probably best put down as just another instance of hubris. If one is lucky, one lives long enough to forgive these thinkers, i.e., to accept them for who they were, when and where they were, and know that, there but for the grace of God go I. It is really no different than with anyone else with whom we must learn to live.

That does not mean that they will no longer disappoint us; they shall and they must. Indeed, if they fail to disappoint, to offend, they fail us as human beings.

In Pensees 4 Pascal wrote: "To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

Let it be the hearty, forgiving laughter of the Paterian humanist.