A.H. Maslow and Scientific Humanism

Zhang Yibing

Contents
Introduction  The Logical Development of Western Humanism
Chapter 1  The Logical Framework of Scientific Humanism
1  Proof of “inhumanity” in classical conception of science
2  The conceptions of science in humanism and holism
3  Instinctoid: humanism needs a basis of empirical science
4  A fusion word: a fusion of “to be supposed to” and “to be”
5 Integration: the general philosophical orientation of scientific humanism
Chapter 2  The System of Human Needs and Ontology
1  The humanistic guiding formula that “S is not P yet”
2  The system of human needs and the highest value of existence
3  The nonexistent humanistic ontology in reality
Chapter 3  A New Perspective of Peak Experience and Being Cognition
1 Peak experience vs. oriental Tao and Zen
2 Deficiency cognition vs. being cognition
3 Human cognizance in the genuine existence
4   Implications of Maslow’s theory of being cognition
Chapter 4  Self-actualization and Truly Perfect Individuals
1  A new historical motivation and “post-Marxist trend”
2  The Farthest Reach of Human Nature: Self-actualization
3  Self-actualized individuals and their ways of actualization
4  Maslow and Marx’s “capital individuals”
Chapter 5  The Realistic Extension of Scientific Humanism
1  New individuals, the new Republic, and new Utopia
2  “Social revolution” and new social models
3  “Z-Theory” in management science
4  “Intrinsic” humanistic conception of education
5   Psychotherapy oriented to personality perfection
Chapter 6  Conclusion: What Causes Maslow’s Emergence Today?
1 The prominence of subjectivity of contemporary natural sciences vs. Maslow’s conception of science
2  The social development of the present era vs. individual potentiality
3  What actually can we learn from Maslow?
4  Maslow’s “well-developed human nature” and Chinese people
References
Postscript

Introduction

The Logical Development of Western Humanism

   Thanks to a large circulation of A.H.Maslow’s psychological books at present, it is convenient for me to buy his Toward a Psychology of Being (Yunnan People’s Press, 1987) [Abranam H•Maslow (1908－1970): a famous contemporary American scholar in comparative psychology, social psychology and management science. He was born in 1908 in Brooklyn, New York, whose parents were both Jewish immigrants from Russia. He attended Cornell University in 1928. He transferred to the University of Wisconsin and received his BA in 1930, his MA in 1931, and his PhD in 1934. He had been a professor of psychology and dean concurrently from 1934 to 1951. He held office as chairman of American Society of Personality and Social Psychology, and yearly chairman of American Psychologica Society in 1967. His masterpieces include: Motivation and Personality (1954), Toward a Psychology of Being (1962), The Psychology of Science (1966), Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1971), and etc. ]  I had read through few pages before I was impressed by one part in the preface where the author claims that his humanistic psychology is a new revolution in ideas which is superior to those achieved by Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, Freud and Marx because his thought created “a new aspect of the universal world outlook, a new life philosophy, a new concept of humans, and a new beginning of working century.” A question first flashed through my mind: Isn’t it quite easy to become a master by ranking oneself among several thinkers?
   Some strange curiosity urged me to read a few of Maslow’s other books. Before I started reading, two questions came to my mind. First, why did Maslow’s books become so popular all of a sudden all over China? Besides Toward a Psychology of Being, his other books has been translated in the past few years such as Farther Reaches of Human Nature (Yunnan People’s Press, 1987), Motivation and Personality (Huaxia Publishing House, 1987), Self-actualizing People (Joint Publishing, 1987), Human Potential and Value (Huaxia Publishing House, 1986), The Third Force (Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1986), New Knowledge in Human Values (Hebei People’s Press, 1988), and etc. Including the newly published The Psychology of Science (Yunnan People’s Press, 1988), nearly all his masterpieces have their Chinese versions. Second, with so many Chinese versions published, why have few people made a further study of Maslow, who is referred to in textbooks on modern management science and psychology? What is the most bewildering is that few have studied him from the perpective of philosophy. Strange!
A few of my doubts seemed not to be resolved until I finished reading Maslow’s books at hand. It turns out that Maslow’s theory is humanism, which conforms to the trend of the acutual spiritual life in China, resuting in publishing craze. Next, Maslow’s humanism is deep embeded in psychological literature with its latent framework hard to perceive. Therefore, it is no wonder his humanism hardly give resonance to other people.
It is funny that at the moment I accepted Maslow’s “big talk” in a sense and came up with quite many odd ideas. Especially when I found that westerners had actually not sought necessary philosophical evidence for Maslow’s philosophical logical framework while looking for foreign literature, I felt an impulse to delimit the philosophical logic of Maslow’s thought. I faintly felt that Maslow did establish a new world outlook, which represents a new rational orientation to integrate science with human nature. From the perspective of the deep logic of the deveopment of Western humanism, Maslow represents the fifth generation of Western humanism: the trend of scientific humanism.
Referring to the “generations” of Western humanism hereby, we first have to review the history of Western humanism, which can be regarded as the introduction in theoretical logic to the present book.
In the West there have been thought of human since ancient times; however, the science of human didn’t emerge until a particular historical period came. At the beginning of the human history in remote antiquity when humans was first separated from Mother Nature, humans did not know what “humans” are. At that time, although humans raised their heads, stood upright and began to create a new world with their own hands (It is just the intermedium as the new foundation of existence that distinguishes humans from animals which are still combined with nature), humans must still have been deeply sentimentally attached to their suckling Mother Nature they had just left. Naturally, humans viewed nature as a being existing like humans with human emotions and desires, imaging that mountains, rivers, plants and animals should share all characteristics humans have (termed humanity), which then unconsciously resulted in the first significant achievement of human subjective initiative—personified pantheism and totemic mythology. It was the first projection of humanity from humans themselves to the outside world, and also a successful extension of subjects. [This state has still been repeated in the form of miniature during infant and child period of human growth of every individual, of which Piaget, the contemporary Swiss psychologist, gave a vivid description. See Piaget’s The Psychology of the Child (The Commercial Press, 1980) and The Growth of the Child’s Psychology (Shandong Education Press, 1982)].
In the large shadow of Mother Nature, humans were more likely to have a feeling of reverence mixed with deep fear for the magical might and mysteries. Man at that time was very weak either in practical power or in mental endurance. “Man is so fragile that a drop of water is capable of causing his death” (Pascal). Moreover, in his self-consciousness mans’ figure is even smaller. Finally he prostrated himself before nature; therefore, nature worship is inevitable. However, “man did not realize at all how he personified things” (Goethe), nor did man realize that the divinity of nature is exactly an ideal projection of his subjectivity. It was because man projected his intelligence onto nature that nature turned out to be so superhuman and divine. Meanwhile, as to the human relations, humans did not recognize people except themselves (or their ethnic groups) were human. The idea that “people to people is wolf” (Hobbes) initially formed in human struggles in the survival competition. [The romantism is absurd in which the living conditions of ancient people are described as a paradise in that a beautiful equal ontic society of primitive humans never existed in history. Since such equal and mutual human relations only existed in very limited consanguinity, once beyond the limit, others were nonhuman.] Outside human clans of consanguinity, it was humans that trampled on humans themselves.
With the development of history, the abundance of personified things freed people from their direct dependence on Mother Nature through practice. Instead, the progressivly forming environmental system around people became the object that people established and dominated. However, the early human history advanced every step at the cost of people’s self-denial when new human creativity reduced most people to inhumanslaves (“tools with the power of speech”). In this case, more people directly turned into things. Man came to have a great desire to dominate things, other (inhuman) people and even the whole world, which requires universal power and infinite wisdom. Nevertheless, when man failed to fulfil such a desire, he could but unconsciously create a superhuman and supernatural phoenix in subjectivity, who is God (Allah or Buddha)! That was the second general objectified projection of humanity. However, the alienation of human idealized essence into such an image of a spiritual being totally negated the realistic human existence. The Middle Ages mean the destruction of human beings: the realistic human existence is a sin, while the end of the genuine human existence became the sublimation, which is absolute inhuman logic. History is simply so inexorable that humans seek for absolute essence only to lose themselves totally, which must be considered as a great tragedy. [Some foreign scholars contend that theology also belongs to humanism (Landmann). In an immediate sense, the essence of theology is not humanistic but antihuman.]   
Such is the prehistorical history of Western humanism. Only in self-destruction do humans begin initial autocriticism: Man, what are you?! In this way, humans finally blew Divina (Dante) which advanced on humans themselves in their own life-and-death struggle. “Humans” and humanism came into the world like newly born babies in the delivery room of the history of thought.
The end of the Middle Ages unveiled the heavy historical curtain covering “humans” all along when the science of humans, as a kind of rational reflection by awaken humans, went on the stage of the history of thought. Also, since then Western humanistic theories has gone through four and a half generations.
Western humanism is denoted by such three Chinese words as “人文主义,” “人道主义” and “人本主义,” as a result of different liberal translations of particular theoretical connotation of  humanism in history. [The word Humanism first emerged during European Renaissance from the 14th to 16th century, evolving from the Latin word Homo. At the very beginning, it was probably the Ancient Roman polemicist Cicero who, on the basis of Homo, adopted the Latin word Humanitas (human feelings and cultimation), which means either the educational institutions cultivating human spirit or the utmost development of personal talent. Afterwards, there came up sucessively Latin Humanus (human, humane) and neo-Latin Humaniors (a collective noun referring to traditional literature, language and knowledge as well as the study of them). Humanism derives from those three words. However, during Renaissance people preferred such concrete expressions as Studiahumantatis (the study of humanism) or Humane lirerae (human literature). It was not until the early 19th century that the German educationalist Nierthammer (1766－1848) built the term Humanism for the first time in an article entitled “the dispute between philanthropism and humanism in contemporary educational curriculum theories.”] Probably such have been the first three generations of Western humanism.
人文主义 (the science of human culture)：The emergence of Western human science was associated with a new human means of existence, which is the capitalist mode of production with the object of material exchange. In Europe during the second half of the 14th century, as the capitalist mode of production was burgeoning in the late feudal society, the new bourgeoisie started rising to prominence in the historical arena when, however, the “animal-style” (Marx) hereditary hierarchy established in the Middle Ages was chaining numerous serfs at the bottom who were potential major free labor force of the new society. The new society demanded “people” and the new bourgeoisie required to operate under the banner “people” , which would be likely to be realized only if the chain tying down “people” was broken. The biggest feudary in Europe was the Roman Catholic Church which combined religion with politics. It was theology that glorified feudal autocracy with a divine auraole. Furthermore, under cover of theology human beings were negated while God became the ruler of human spirit. While admiring the paradise in Heaven, people were also arguing the autarchy on the earth. Therefore, idols in Heaven have to be overturned before feudal lords are overthrown; human value must be reaffirmed before free labor force is liberated. However, as the new bourgeoisie then were not strong enough to declare war on feudal system, the fight was transformed into an indirect struggle in literature and art against theology, thus giving birth to a large-scale cultural and ideological movement centering on the study of humans in Italy where capitalism developed first in Europe.
However, the new generation of “people” were obliged ti choose the way of reevaluating and reviving ancient Greek and Roman culture whose core is personified gods to mold the new human image on the ground that they had not established their own new cultural framework. As we know, the main body of ancient Greek and Roman literature and art includes rich and colorful myths and legends in which most of the gods are described as human and nice perceptual images. Compared with God in Christianity, they have more human emotions and desires as well as secular virtues. They are actually the beautified totems of ancient humans themselves. It was by affiming ancient culture that the new generation of people indirectly showed their intense desire to rely upon antiquity to reform the system and reaffirm human value and authority. Attempted to overthrow God by humans and substitute divinity with humanity, they advocated people’s secular free life and welfare and finally establishing a new society, which is the first banner of people raised high. As we see, a brilliant chapter, namely the Italian Renaissance, was added to history with a series of great names such as Dante, Boccaccio and Da Vinci. Later on the cultural movement gradually expanded all over Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, leading to an widely influential movement of humanistic thought and culture in the world. In the following history records the thinkers participating in the Renaissance are referred to as Humanist. [There appeared a word“人文” (humanism) among Chinese characters very early. The ancient “humanism” originally denotes Confucianism, as it is quoted from Zhouben: “Study humanism to educate people.” Another special denotation of the word is human things in contrast to nature, for example in a biography of Gongsun Zan in the 73th chapter of The History of the Han Dynasty: “Abandan all natural things whereas demand human things.” Consequently, considering that the Renaissance is a cultural and ideological movement to restore humans and their realistic status by virtue of affiming human culture, Humanism is liberally translated into Chinese“人文主义”(the science of human culture).] Such is the first generation of western humanism.
人道主义 (the science of human laws)：After the reversion of “people” in cultural images, with the development of the human history, the bourgeoisie became full-fledged, who were no longer content with sustenance in perceptual images but demanded realistic existence. On the one hand, they were sowing the seeds of toppling the palace of theology; on the other hand, they started converting their opposition to theocracy into that to feudal regime, transforming a sharp sword of culture into a hammer breaking the chain.
Since people in reality needed an awakening as well as enlightment on existence, humanism became the ideological apocalypse on the pursuit of life value and rights. The abstract effort made by humanists to substitute humanity for divinity and argue against theological asceticism as well as the superhuman Omnipotent by restoring human dignity and advocating freedom of human thought was replaced with “the fight on the uncovered political front” (Marx). Also, the general human principle of humanism took the shape of the political slogan “liberty, equality and philanthropy.” The enlightening humanists have publicly advanced “natural rights” for the first time, claiming human political equality, by which they were directly attacking the unequal and inhumanfeudal hierarchy. In the works of Montescuieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and so on, reason belongs to “humanity,” and “all people are born equal,” whereas freedom is “a godsend.” The sign of “god-given regality” was crushed down by the wheel of “sovereignty for the people”；instead, it was predicted that a democratic republic would emerge on the ruins of a decrepit inhumankingdom. Subsequently came the philosophical argumentation of the 18th century French materialists represented by Diderot and Helvetius as well as the rationalistic revolution of classical German philosophy emphasizing human self-subjectivity represented by Kant. At this stage the human metaphysical “way” was constructed and it was the first time that humanism had risen in a theoretical form. The thinkers mentioned above, though, never pretended to be humanists, they were classified into Humanism, i.e. the science of human laws, in ideological history. It is the second generation of Western humanism. [In Chinese the term“人道”(the way of man) is originally a general term denoting ethics in human society distinguished from“天道”(the way of heaven). As in Xi Ci II, Yi Jing (Book of Changes), “There is in it (the book) the way of heaven, and the way of man.” Meanwhile, it also refers to the hierarchy of human political rights in ancient class society. As is quoted in Sang Fu Xiao Ji (notes for mourning) of Liji (The Classic of Rites), “The major hierarchy is to be dear to family members, to show respect for the respectable, to   subordinate to the elder, and to treat males and females differently.” Obviously, this meaning disagrees with the subject of rationalism of the second generation of Western humanism introduced above. Instead, it is the latter that is to promote the reform of the former. There were chances that only due to the same object of political and legal rights as well as social ethics has Humanism not been translated into“人文主义” (the science of human culture) any longer since the 18th century, but into“人道主义”(the science of human laws). Herein humanism refers in particular to a human theory on politics and ideology, but in the following practical use, its meaning constantly goes beyond the initial definition.]
人本主义 (the science of human essence)：The tit-for-tat fight ended with the triumph of rational human over the divinity. As if the uproar following human maturity throughout history woke the owl at dusk up with a start, human philosophy came into being. In the late development of German rationalism of the 19th century came forth a philosophical construction proving “human essence” entirely with a speculative logic to sketch the panorama of the human history, which is Feuerbach’s humanism on human essence.
As we know, the humanistic rationalism emphasizing self-subjectivity intiated by Kant were interrupted by a inhumanlogic distinguishing the general movement of objective ideas argued by Hegel. Since in Hegel’s view of absolute rationalism, individuality melts in the generality of ideas and people just negatively exist in a country, the advancing human actual life must be intolerant of such a inhumanconception. As a result, Hegel’s objective logic was blasted, from which arose young Hegelians giving prominence to individual self-consciousness (an intermediate towards human perceptual existence). Young Hegelians are the immediate matrix of Feuerbach’s humanism. Feuerbach, for the first time, proceeded from the considerations of a human whole and the genuine human existence, establishing the position of human beings in the ideological history. He struck another blow on God in the clothing of absolute concept, and then proceeded to replace the incorporeal and spiritual humans (reason and self-consciousness) in the traditional humanism with corporeal and perceptual humans, which is a great impact on the history of Western humanism. In such an impact was lurking a new logical base of humanism from the very beginning. To be precise, Feuerbach’s human philosophy theoretically and logically corroborate the traditional humanism further. Feuerbach did not resist the divinity simply with humans; instead, he clarified that the divinity is invented exactly by humans and is also an ideal extension of human existence. Humanism itself is not the real secret of theology. God is simply the “alienation” of human essence, and Heaven an idealized objectified being of human life. Only by discarding the objectified being of human essence, are humans likely to really revert to human essence (an ideal state of subjects). Feuerbach went forward, advancing that humans stand not only opposite the divinity, but also opposite all realistic existence, and that the opposition between human essence and human existence composes the genuine transcendental guiding framework of humanistic theories. Humans are not content with actualities, so they desire to surpass themselves. Thus the human history is a movement consists of the alienation and the reversion of human essence (the transcendental subject). Obviously, Feuerbach created the first humanistic logic, integrating the valuable concepts of human nature scattered among traditional humanists and completing the comprehensive collection and theoretical construction in the history of Western humanism. Feuerbach was the first humanistic master in the true sense as well as the first person to promote the modernization of humanism. Feuerbach’s humanism is the third generation of Western humanism, namely the science of human essence. [Originally there was no such word as “人本” in Chinese language. As a result, the original human essence was literally translated into“人的本质”in most early translations, whereas the word humanism was liberally translated into “人本学”(philosophy on human essence) and later has gradually changed into the term“人本主义.” Additionally, it should be specified that another word anthropolgism in English (German: anthropologismus), also referring to humanism, is usually literally translated into“人类主义.” As a matter of fact, the word anthropolgism shares the same meaning with the word humanism. The only difference between them is that the latter derives from the Latin word homo while the former, from the Greek word anthr (human being).]
The above are taken as the first three generations of Western humanism. According to the present reality, humanism has become a general category of humanistic science, including all the anthropocentric political and cutural thought, philosophy and practical social movements. However, it is worth noting that in the specific theoretical connotation the science of human culture, the science of human laws and the science of human essence have their own theoretical orientation. In addition, for a long period of time there has been existing a strange argument that any humanism is certainly categorized into the bourgeois ideology, which is rather absurd, for it does not accord with the history. As we all know, since the 16th and 17th century in Western ideological history  has emerged Utopian socialist humanism that focuses on attacking the capitalist system, which is exactly a reflection of early immature proletarian desire and demands. Besides, the young Marx also advanced his humanistic thought. Although he had not established the scientific conception of the world by then (by 1845), Marx had ideologically taken a firm proletarian revolutionary stand. It was by means of criticizing humanistic view of history that Marx ultimately established a new Marxist conception of the world, substituting the conception of history of alienation from the perspective of abstract human essence (idealized “labour”) for the conception of history of practical materialism from the perspective of human practical historical process of production, and abstract humanism for scientific socialism. Nevertheless, Marx had never totally denied or abandoned humanism, but tried to achieve it as a practical goal of socialism. Scientific humanism is a significant part of Marxism and the “capital human” with all-round development is precisely the ultimate goal of all our communist causes. [I disapprove of making Marxism humanistic within a framework of Marx’s early works, for Marxism is not the abstract humanism of subject but a science, and scientific humanism is only a subsystem within the whole framework of Marxism.]
More importantly, Western humanism, as a practical ideological movement, was not suspended after Marx; on the contrary, it advanced further. On the one hand, in relatively backward nations and areas, humanism in the form of democratism and humanitarianism was yet regarded as a banner of fight for practical “political liberation” (Marx), which can be seen clearly from the contemporary national democratic liberation movements against colonialism and racial oppression in Latin America and South Africa as well as those against despotism recently arising in Asia. On the other hand, the fourth generationof Western humanism has taken shape, i.e. neo-humanism.
Neo-humanism was a thread of the development of Western humanism from the late 19th century to the middle 20th century. In my opinion, Feuerbach brought the traditional humanism to an end. Humanistic conceptions viewing reason as human nature began melting in the perceptual impulse of Feuerbach’s naturalism. The base of neo-humanism was established by voluntarism. Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche regarded human essence as irrational emotion, will, and desire. In Bergson’s point of view, human essence becomes the continuation of the instinctive creation “internalized” in the life and can be experienced only by intuition that is perceptive about reason, which indicated a significant change from classical humanism (reason) to neo-humanism. The new humanistic logic has been constantly consolidated in the development of modern Western humanism. During the 20th century pragmatism secularized humanism at one time when from the perspective of W. James and Dewey, human class essence is perceived as perceptual experience of individuals and humanism is directly externalized by effectiveness of living and abstract value affirmation. Strictly speaking, Husserl’s phenomenology is not humanism, but the summation of humanistic logic in the history of modern Western humanism: The method of inner intuition in neo-humanism was systematically proved. After Husserl, neo-humanism reached its peak upon the emergence of Sartrean existentialism. On account of human nature trampled upon by Fascism, humanism carried a pessimistic keynote: human essence that was always being praised to the skies could not but engage in introspection and apperception among hardships and death throughout life, which was the distortion of Western humanism under specified historical conditions. Anyhow, existentialism indeed founded the most complete logical system and the most comprehensive philosophical proof of neo-humanism.
It should be noticed that modern neo-humanism has some distinct features in comparison with classical humanism. Firstly, the latter highlights the unity of human beings and nature in which human beings must submit and revert to nature, whereas the former stresses that human beings are different from ego and that human essence transcends natural laws. Next, as to the interpersonal relationship, classical humanism insists on the identity between individuals and class (society), maintaining that human essence of individuals is precisely the law of society or class. Neo-humanism goes from humankind standard to individual standard, advancing that only when opposed to others is an individual free, for neo-humanism is no longer satisfied with the general discussion on abstract human nature, but attaches much importance to individual existence condition and affirms human subjective initiative through individual structure of psychological instincts. Thirdly, classical humanism claims that reason is consistent with perception which is based on the former and that irrationality is bound to revert to reason. On the contrary, the present neo-humanism emphasizes the opposition between reason and perception, discovering that humans are losing more and more reason and that irrational immediate condition of existence is the true realistic essence.
Another point that needs to be defined is that another humanistc theory called “Western Marxism” exists in the modern West. As we know, Western Marxism is the distortion of Marxism in the development. It is, as it were, an adaptive mixture of failures in western labour movements at the beginning of the 20th century, the emergence of Fascism, the frustration international communist movements suffered as well as the entry of Western capitalism into a new developmental phase. Actually it is not a complete system of humanistic theories, but, as far as the mainstream of the trend of thought is concerned, it contains an intrinsic humanistic logic. Such Marxists as Lukacs and Gramsic inclined to the subject of the process of social history when arguing against vulgar economic determinism of the Second International. The essence of totality principle is to eliminate the priority of economic conditions, for the power of the bourgeoisie in reality compelled them to seek proletarian “class consciousness.” The threat of Fascism to the common fate of humankind in the 1920s and 30s made human nature and humanism once the subjects that Western Marxism took an active part in reestablishing. Marxism is exactly humanism, the humanism that makes critical and active interferenc in human existence reality and that was revealed to the utmost extent in Frankfurt School’s integrated criticism of contemporary capitalism. On the whole, the inherent base of Western Marxist humanism is precisely modern Western neo-humanism.
The mainstream of the development of contemporary Western humanism is, so to speak, neo-humanism. However, today the latest advances in both natural science and social practice are leading new breakthroughs in the development of Western humanism.
With in-depth logical analysis, it is not difficult to discover a new budding logical thread in the development of neo-humanism: the theoretical orientation to syncretize humanism with science. As it is known to us all, since its birth neo-humanism has been opposed to modern Western sciencism, supporting the general Western ideological pattern together with the latter at either extreme, which is the abnormal fission of general modern Western ideology! After Heidegger and subsequent Husserl, a new theoretical orientation appeared, referring to the attempt to represent the core category with scientific logic. In his life philosophy, Dilthey unconsciously revealed human subjectivity in scientific research approaches by attacking inhumanity of natural science. Gadamer’s hermeneutics demonstrated the construction of human historical noumena directly with scientific language and logic. In addition, humanism in the contemporary psychology, anthropology and ecology of Freud simply deveoped humanity from science. Surely, since the humanistic orientation was still unconscious so that it did not grow into an intact logic framework independent of neo-humanism, the fresh humanistic orientation deriving from both science and philosophy can only be regarded as “half a generation” which is not only against neo-humanism but also based on the old humanistic logic.
The first person to consciously raise up the new banner of contemporary humanism is Polanyi, the founder of philosophy of tacitness. The perspective of Polanyi’s humanistic theory appeared to share many similarities with that of Dilthey’s in that Polanyi also started with the denouncement of scientistic orientation in the 20th century. In Polanyi’s eyes, the contemporary orientation is the root of “frightful calamities” in the 20th century. The conception of objective experimentation and reductionism in science eliminate the human, the subject of science, reducing science to a kind of non-subjective material mechanical information processing. Polanyi believed that science is composed of individual knowledge with full humanity all along and that it is human creative activities rather than the static external projection of matter. Accordingly, Polanyi put forward a humanistic framework of individual scientific epistemology from which he further derived humanistic scientific ontology. Polanyi spared no effort to argue that science and man are combined into one and that science is, as far as it goes, filled with humanity. Of course, he made no effort to establish a new humanistic conception of the world, which mignt be the background to Maslow’s humanism.
As a psychologist, Maslow always liked relating himself to Polanyi, a physical chemist, thinking they “were propagandizing a common idea.” However, different from the latter, who still had a narrow Circumstance, Maslow consciously established a new humanistic logical framework for his psychological study from the beginning, which is the realistic and general scientific humanism incorporating science and value, reason and irrationality, ideal and reality in contemporary human general thought on the basis of humanism. That is what I call the fifth generation of modern Western humanistic orientation.
As we know, Maslow was a psychologist to a large extent, but he was usually excluded from “the regular register” of the traditional psychology, for his psychology attempts to deviate from both behaviourism within a framework of experimental psychology and Freud’s psychoanalysis and seek “the third road,” i.e. humanistic psychology. Maslow was famous in the world as the leading figure of the humanistic psychology. [Humanistic psychology is a psychological school arising in the USA in the middle 20th century. Other leading exponents are E. Fromm, C. R. Rogers and R. May. See Psychology of Personality (Hainan Publishing House, 1987); Human Potential and Value (Huaxia Publishing House, 1986)] However, according to the reviews on Maslow of the present psychological circles abroad, Maslow has been underestimated. Most reviewers simply ranked him parallel to other leading exponents of humanistic psychology, failing to realize that he was actually a humanistic thinker transcending experimental psychological data. It was Maslow who disclosed and systematically established the philosophical essence of humanistic psychologists. In this sense, he was quite adjacent in significance to E. Fromm, another celebrated humanistic psychologist in contemporary America. Fromm transcended psychology in virtue of the combination of Freud and Marxism, constructing an integrated humanistic system. But on the whole, Fromm’s humanistic attempt did not go beyond the logic of the fourth generation of Western humanism—neo-humanism. By contrast, taking a broader view, Maslow displayed fresh humanistic thought surpassing all traditional humanism, including neo-humanism, in his psychological study.
Therefore, instead of generally reevaluating Maslow’s place in modern psychology, the author attempts to disclose something neglected but valuable that Maslow provided for human thought, especially Western humanism. The present book is thereby philosophical with a immediate purpose of discovering the metaphysical “way” (humanism), i.e. the framework of scientific humanism, deep in psychological theories rather than systematically introducing and evaluating Maslow’s psychology. Thus, the main task of the book involves the complete and critical exploration into the logical base of Maslow’s humanism from a philosophical perspective, the ontological structure, the new cognitive theory and the ideal condition of humans constructed on the base, as well as the generalization and influence of his humanism in and on real life.