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tame them, we run the risk of seeing them reappear under the grotesque but
threatening guise of racism or totalitarianism.
Thus, new forms of expression for the repressed holistic values must
be found. Scientism could prosper only because it filled the void left by reli–
gion as a guide to behavior. This void must indeed be filled, but not by the
idolatry of science; the ethical principles on which democratic consensus is
based should be used to control both the applications of science and the ex–
cesses of ideology. Racialism codifies the existence of hierarchies among
individuals-it is pointless to deny the differences on which these hierarchies
are based and the need they fulfill, but we must avoid naive biologism and
openly acknowledge our own hierarchies, which are spiritual rather than
physical. Nothing compels us to embrace the relativistic idea that "it's the
same difference." Nationalism promotes membership in a group: it would be
dangerous to believe that such membership is useless or negligible (although
being uprooted from a group may have its own advantages); what can be
affirmed, however, is that a strong sense of cultural appurtenance is not the
same thing as civic patriotism, and that a given individual belongs to any
number of groups, which vary both in size and in nature: family, neighbor–
hood, city, region, country, and continent on the one hand; profession, age,
sex, and social milieu on the other.
In other words, it is not only possible but necessary to criticize modern
ideology by means of an ideal which is not foreign to it and does not imply
rejecting it out of hand. In order to denounce scientism, nationalism, and ego–
centrism, we are not obliged to renounce the principles that make up the hu–
manist ideal and are inherent in the idea of democracy. Our present govern–
ments are far from being a perfect embodiment of the latter-too often, they
have allowed themselves to be guided by principles profoundly incompatible
with it.
If
only for this reason, the humanist ideal still has a very promising
future ahead of it.
