Humanity, Humanism, and the Pandemic

The initial response from our government to Covid-19 seems to have been uncaring. Whether due to incompetence or deliberate policy should be uncovered by a public inquiry. Early talk of developing ‘herd immunity’ really amounted to letting vulnerable groups die. Decanting elderly patients from hospitals, into care homes, appears to have spread the disease. And failure to stock enough Personal Protective Equipment, despite a previous government report, was inexcusable. All these instances betray shocking disregard for human lives. 

Then we realised, not surprisingly, that those most at risk from the virus were the elderly, the weak or sick, and the disabled. Furthermore, it became apparent that those from minority ethnic groups were particularly vulnerable. Not because of biological causes, but economic and sociological factors: overcrowded housing, inability to socially distance at work, pollution - the normal vectors arising from poverty itself.

Covid raises again the question about the value of human life. C. S. Lewis, faced with Nazism, spent time defending the value of the human. Far from being a detour in his apologetic task, he realised human value was only defendable if rooted in the divine. There is technical, scientific value in analogies between people and, for example, machines (computers are the current favourite example for brain science), and animals. But if taken too literally these metaphors make it easier to disrespect human value.

If broken, we switch a machine off. If an animal is sick or dying, mercy killing may be the kindest response. Both conceptions therefore make it easier to contemplate euthanasia, support for which is growing, even in hospices, which one would expect to be in the forefront of defending vulnerable human life. But as they lose their religious base, the staff, often younger, with no religious formation, see ending of life as a common-sense option.

We are in the realm of post-humanism. Humanism arose from, and depends on, faith in God. Erasmus and Calvin were both heirs of the renaissance humanistic tradition. Writers like George Steiner and John Gray, neither of them believers, chart the effects loss of faith has on our culture. Christianity sees human beings as something like God, made in his image, albeit tragically fallen from that position.

As our culture departs from its Christian heritage, the value of the human is diminished. Not that western culture always lived up to that notion. But, as the historians Tom Holland and Larry Siedentop show, many western values, of liberalism and individualism, derive from Christian tradition, which has been responsible for seeding these ideals throughout the world. In a post-Christian future, what will remain of them?

It may seem a big step from the immediate needs of a Covid pandemic, to consider seemingly abstract notions like philosophical anthropology, but a necessary one. The NHS, after World War Two owed much to a still-Christian social consensus. As our society surrenders to neo-liberal privatisation of the health service, where patients is treated as economic units, and profit is paramount, what then remains of human worth?