Eric Hoffer: Human Exceptionalist

A good friend of mine was a good friend of the late, great philosopher, Eric Hoffer.  Hoffer is best known for his scathing criticisms of totalitarian ideologies, particularly the book True Believer.

I am currently nudging in my noodle that radical enviromentalism and related ideologies are taking on a distinctly  authoritarian hue, and indeed, I worry that a new synthesis of past totalitarian beliefs—mixed with Rousseau—is emerging that poses a distinctly misanthropic threat to human freedom and flourishing.

That meme remains a thought in process, but I do know that denying human exceptionalism leads to tyranny—whether intended by the deniers (to borrow a term) or not.  So, when my friend came over for dinner last night, I asked him whether the great anti totalitarian had opined on HE.  Indeed, he had.  He believed in it wholeheartedly.  And for those who think HE requires religion, Hoffer was an atheist.

I plan to explore his work in this regard more thoroughly, but for now, I think this quote is a good starting point:

You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature – by making him one with rocks, vegetation, and animals – as by turning him into a machine. Both the natural and the mechanical are the opposite of that which is uniquely human. Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines. It is also obvious that when man domesticated animals and plants he acquired self-made machines for the production of food, power, and beauty.

Yes.  When you assert that humans are just another animal in the forest, only one part of nature—rather than to a degree separated from and above it—when you create the “rights of nature”  or the moral worth of animals to be coequal with those of humans, you fundamentally dehumanize us.  When you dehumanize, you shatter HE.  When you shatter HE, you subvert the necessary foundation that undergirds universal human rights and human freedom.

Nature is tyrannical, not free.  The strong feast on the weak.  There are no “rights”—a uniquely human concept—and the only protections are those that individual organisms or herds evolved.  Indeed, outside of man, there is no mercy.  There is only power.

And here’s a good HE quote from Hoffer:

Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.

And that is a moral distinction that distinguishes us and makes us unique from all other known life forms in the universe.

Eric Hoffer opposed tyranny and supported human exceptionalism.  That is not an accident.  The two are inextricably connected.