Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences
Abraham H. Maslow
Chapter V. Hope, Skepticism, and Man's Higher Nature
The point of view that is rapidly developing now—that the highest
spiritual values appear to have naturalistic sanctions and that
supernatural sanctions for these values are, therefore, not necessary—raises
some questions which have not been raised before in quite this
form. For instance, why were supernatural sanctions for goodness,
altruism, virtue, and love necessary in the first place?
Of course the question of the origins of religions as sanctions
for ethics is terribly complex, and I certainly don't intend to
be casual about it here. However, I can contribute one additional
point which we can see more clearly today than ever before, namely
that one important characteristic of the new "third"
psychology is its demonstration of man's "higher nature."
As we look back through the religious conceptions of human nature—and
indeed we need not look back so very far because the same doctrine
can be found in Freud—it becomes crystal clear that any doctrine
of the innate depravity of man or any maligning of his animal
nature very easily leads to some extra-human interpretation of
goodness, saintliness, virtue, self-sacrifice, altruism, etc.
If they can't be explained from within human nature—and explained
they must be—then they must be explained from outside of human
nature. The worse man is, the poorer a thing he is conceived to
be, the more necessary becomes a god. It can also be understood
more clearly now that one source of the decay of belief in supernatural
sanctions has been increasing faith in the higher possibilities
of human nature (on the basis of new knowledge).[1]
Explanation from the natural is more parsimonious
and therefore more satisfying to educated people than is explanation
from the supernatural. The latter is therefore apt to be an inverse
function of the former.
This process, however, has its costs; especially, I would guess,
for the less sophisticated portions of the population, or at any
rate for the more orthodoxly religious. For them, as Dostoevsky,
Nietzsche, and others realized very clearly, "If God is dead,
then anything is permitted, anything is possible." If the
only sanction for "spiritual" values is supernatural,
then undermining this sanction undermines all higher values.
Especially has this been true in recent decades, as positivistic
science—which is for many the only theory of science—proved
also to be an inadequate source of ethics and values. Faith in
the rationalist millennium has also been destroyed. The faith
that ethical progress was an inevitable by-product of advances
in knowledge of the natural world and in the technological by-products
of these advances died with World War I, with Freud, with the
depression, with the atom bomb. Perhaps even more shaking, certainly
for the psychologist, has been the recent (61) discovery that
affluence itself throws into the clearest, coldest light the spiritual,
ethical, philosophical hunger of mankind. (This is so because
striving for something one lacks inevitably makes one feel that
life has a meaning and that life is worthwhile. But when one lacks
nothing, and has nothing to strive for, then...?)
Thus we have the peculiar situation in which many intellectuals
today find themselves skeptical in every sense, but fully aware
of the yearning for a faith or a belief of some kind and aware
also of the terrible spiritual (and political) consequences when
this yearning has no satisfaction.[2]
And so we have a new language to describe the situation, words
like anomie, anhedonia, rootlessness, value pathology, meaninglessness,
existential boredom, spiritual starvation, other-directedness,
the neuroses of success, etc. (See Appendix E.)
Most psychotherapists would agree that a large proportion of the
population of all affluent nations—not only America—are now
caught in this situation of valuelessness, although most of these
therapists are still speaking superficially and symptomatically
of character neuroses, immaturity, juvenile delinquency, over-indulgence,
etc.
A new approach to psychotherapy, existential therapy, is evolving
to meet this situation. But on the whole, since therapy is impracticable
for mass purposes, most people simply stay caught in the situation
and lead privately and publicly miserable lives. A small proportion
"returns to traditional religion," although most observers
agree that this return is not apt to be deeply rooted.
But some others, still a small proportion, are finding in newly
available hints from psychology another possibility of a positive,
naturalistic faith, a "common faith" as John Dewey called
it, a "humanistic faith" as Erich Fromm called it, humanistic
psychology as many others are now calling it. (See Appendix B.)
As John MacMurray said, "Now is the point in history at which
it becomes possible for man to adopt consciously as his own purpose
the purpose which is already inherent in his own nature."—
Quoted in Man and God, ed. V. Gollancz (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1951), p. 49. There is even a weekly journal, Manas,
which could be said to be an organ for this new kind of faith
and this new psychology.
Footnotes
1. For instance, my studies of "self-actualizing
people" i.e., fully evolved and developed people, make it
clear that human beings at their best are far more admirable (godlike,
heroic, great, divine, awe-inspiring, lovable, etc.) than ever
before conceived, in their own proper nature. There is no need
to add a non-natural determinant to account for saintliness, heroism,
altruism, transcendence, creativeness, etc. Throughout history,
human nature has been sold short primarily because of the lack
of knowledge of the higher possibilities of man, of how far he
can develop when permitted to. (back)
2. See the February, 1950, issue of the Partisan
Review on "Religion and the Intellectuals." See
also Franklin L. Baumer, Religion and the Rise of Skepticism
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1960). (back)