Abstract

The article is a comment to the book by Luc Ferry; L’homme dieu ou le sens da la vie (Man-god or the Meaning of Life) ed. Grasset, Paris 1996. Ferry is now a well-known French philosopher worldwide. His books translated into many languages deal with vital contemporary problems and are written with a clear and fine style.

Ferry calls his approach to the value and meaning of life a ,,transcendental humanism”. It is a free, non-theological spiritual orientation which starts with humanistic values, such as commitment to truth, justice, solidarity, beauty and above all love (with its threefold modification: eroticism, friendship and universal benevolence).

Those human values are not merely human, Ferry contends. They transcend natural attachment to the physical life, are rationally unexplainable and tie humans together beyond any frontiers. For that reasons transcendental humanism can be considered a kind of laic religion.

For the one hand – I am maintaining in this essay – Ferry’s proposal is apt to fi the spiritual gap created by the secularization of the traditional religions. It avoids the religious authoritarianism, supports free conscience and at the same time rejects materialistic way of life.

For the other hand it seems to be a bit narrow and unrealistic conception. One cannot emphasise only these values which concern inter-human relationship, as Ferry does. The non-human beings and in a sense the entire cosmos need to form a framework of the human meaning of life. Also, transcendental humanism cannot replace traditional religions, as the French author seems to suggest, because too many people always, and still today, require organized spirituality. Only its stiff objectification and formalism have to be rejected.