The ten tenets of Liberal Humanism

01. The first thing is holding an attitude to literature itself that good literature is of
timeless significance; that it somehow transcends the limitations and the
peculiarities of the age it was written in, and thereby speaks to what is constant in
human nature.
02. The literary text contains its own meaning within itself. It does not require any
elaborate process of placing it within a context, whether this be socio – political,
or literary – historical, or autobiographical. Liberal humanism’s insistence upon
the primacy and self – sufficiency of the words on the page commits it to the
process termed on-sight close reading; which removes the text from all the above
mentioned contexts and presents it unseen for unaided explication by the trained
mind.
03. Liberal humanism insists upon the true business of criticism being seeing the
object as in itself it really is. Therefore, the process of understanding the text
detaches from the above mentioned contexts to be studied in isolation. What is
deemed necessary is the close verbal analysis of the text without prior ideological
assumptions or political preconditions, or specific expectations of any kind.
04. Human nature is essentially unchanging. The same passions, emotions, and
situations are seen again and again throughout human history. It follows that
continuity in literature is more important and significant than innovation. Thus
good literature becomes something that is often thought but never so well
expressed.
05. The belief of transcendent subject that implies the individual is antecedent to, or
transcends the forces of society, experience, and language. That means,
individuality is something securely possessed within each of us as our unique
essence; which transcends the environmental influences, and though individuality
can change and develop, it just cannot be transformed (the personality cannot shift
into a new dimension by force of circumstance.)
06. The purpose of literature is essentially the enhancement of life and the
propagation of human values; but not in a programmatic way. If literature and
criticism, become overtly and directly political they necessarily tend towards
propaganda, and such literature is to be distrusted.
07. Form and content in literature must be fused in an organic way, so that the one
grows inevitably from the other. Literary form should not be like a decoration
which is applied externally to complete a structure. Poetic forms such as imagery
which is detachable from the substance of the work in this way, rather than being
integrated with it, is merely fanciful and not truly imaginative.
08. Sincerity is an essential quality that resides within the language of such literature.
Sincerity comprises of truth to experience, honesty towards the self, and the
capacity for human empathy and compassion. It is neither a fact nor an intention
behind the work which can be gleaned by comparing a poet’s view of an event
with other more factual versions, or from discovering independent external
information about an author’s history or conduct. Rather, it is to be discovered
within the text in such matters as the avoidance of cliché or hyperbole. Sincerity is
expressed in the use of first hand individualistic description, in the understated
expression of feeling, whereby the emotion is allowed to immerge implicitly from
the presentation of an event. When language achieves these qualities, the truly
sincere poet can transcend the sense of distance between the language and the
material and can make the language seem to enact what it depicts, thus apparently
abolishing the necessary distance between words and things.
09. What is valued in literature is the silent showing and demonstrating of something,
rather than explaining or saying of it.
10. The job of criticism is to interpret the text, to mediate between it and the reader.
 Recurrent ideas in Critical Theory

1. Many of the notions regarding existence that people take as the basic ‘givens’, for
example, things such as gender identity or individual selfhood are actually fluid
and unstable, rather than fixed and reliable essences. Instead of being solidly there
in the real world of fact and experience, they are socially constructed. That means,
these things are dependent on social and political forces and on shifting ways of
seeing and thinking. In philosophical terms, all these are contingent categories
rather than absolute ones, and thus, no overreaching fixed truths can ever be
established. The results of all forms of intellectual enquiry are provisional only.
There is no such thing as a fixed and reliable truth. The position on these matters
that theory attacks is essentialism as theories are often in nature, anti-essentialist.
2. Theorists usually believe that all thinking and investigation is necessarily affected
and largely determined by prior ideological commitment. The notion of
disinterested enquiry is therefore untenable: they would argue that none of us is
capable of standing back from the scales and weighing things up dispassionately.
Rather, all investigators have a thumb on one or the other side of the scales. Every
practical procedure presupposes a theoretical perspective of some kind, to deny
which is simply to try to place our own theoretical position beyond scrutiny as
something which is common sense or simply given.
3. Language itself conditions, limits, and predetermines what we see. Therefore, all
reality is constructed through language. So, nothing is simply there in an
unproblematic way - everything is a linguistic / textual construct. Language does
not only record reality, it rather creates, shapes, and reshapes it, so that the whole
of our universe is textual. Further, for the theorists, meaning is jointly constructed
by reader and writer. It is not just there to be discovered but requires the reader’s
contribution to be constructed.
4. Hence, any claim to offer a definitive reading would be futile. The meanings
within a literary work are never fixed and reliable, but always ambiguous, multi-
 faceted, and shifting. In literature, as in all writing, there is never the possibility of
establishing fixed and definite meanings. It is the characteristic of language to
generate infinite webs of meaning. All texts are thus self-contradictory, as the
process of deconstruction reveals. There is no final court of appeal in these
matters, since literary texts, once they exist, are viewed by the theorists as
independent linguistic structures whose authors are always either dead or absent.
5. Theorists distrust all totalising notions. For instance, the notions of great books as
an absolute and self-sustaining category is to be distrusted, as books always arise
out of a particular socio-political situation, and this situation should not be
suppressed, as tends to happen when they are promoted to greatness. Likewise, the
concept of human nature, as a generalised norm which transcends the idea of a
particular race, gender, or class, is to e distrusted too, since it is usually in practice
Eurocentric, as well as Androcentric. Thus, the appeal to the idea of a generalised,
supposedly inclusive, human nature is likely in practice to marginalise, or
denigrate, or even deny the humanity of women, or disadvantaged groups.
To sum up the five points discussed above, for theory:
Politics is pervasive.
Language is constitutive.
Truth is provisional.
Meaning is contingent.
Human nature is a myth.