On Being Human
By Woodrow Wilson
Foreword by David Aikman
(2008)Discussion Guide Included
The future President sets out his vision for the good life in this personal essay, which also offers insight into his later policies and illustrates how a leader’s assumptions can change a nation—and the world.
As an educator—and a person of deep faith—Woodrow Wilson held strong convictions on the centrality of the humanities to human flourishing and freedom. His exultation in a broad and liberal democratic education stands in marked contrast to the current academic emphasis on hyper-specialization—and sheds some insight on his later enthusiasm, as President, for spreading democracy around the world.
The piece was written for the Atlantic Monthly in 1897, just after Wilson had achieved tenure as a professor at Princeton and thus before he assumed the burdens of public office. “On Being Human” is among the most personal of Wilson’s public writings and reveals an enthusiastic nature not often associated with the former President. While it makes little direct reference to faith, the essay opens a window on Wilson’s view of the good life, which is both hopeful and historical, drawing upon both Aristotle’s notion of “the golden mean” and Augustine’s view of the ordo amorum (the order of the loves)—specifically, that the good life consists largely in a well-balanced, harmonious ordering of one’s passions and priorities. As the reader will see, Wilson’s ideal is “the truly human man: a man in whom there is a just balance of faculties, a catholic sympathy—no brawler, no fanatic, no Pharisee, not too credulous in hope, not too desperate in purpose, warm, but not hasty, ardent, and full of definite power, but not running about to be pleased and deceived by every new thing.”
The coming decades would test Wilson’s hopes and ideals. Whether he was credulous in his hopes or mistaken in his reasoning may be debated, but the sympathies and effervescence on display in this little-known piece give insight into how the formation of a leader’s view of human nature and the world can eventually flower into large-scale initiatives, institutions, and movements. Had Wilson’s view of human nature differed, so would his conception of the League of Nations. Above all else, “On Being Human” illustrates the manner in which an emerging leader’s assumptions may be imprinted on national and international policy.
The foreword by Senior Fellow David Aikman, a journalist and professor of history, sets the reading in the context of Wilson’s life and accomplishments. A discussion guide helps the reader consider the implications and assumptions of the article and the appeal of its vision more than a century later.
Once—it is a thought which troubles us—once it was a simple enough matter to be a human being, but now it is deeply difficult; because life was once simple, but is now complex, confused, multifarious. Haste, anxiety, preoccupation, the need to specialize and make machines of ourselves, have transformed the once simple world, and we are apprised that it will not be without effort that we shall keep the broad human traits which have so far made the earth habitable.
. . . But the age changes, and with it must change our ideals of human quality. Not that we would give up what we have loved: we would add what a new life demands. In a new age men must acquire a new capacity, must be men upon a new scale, and with added qualities. We shall need a new Renaissance, ushered in by a new “humanistic” movement, in which we shall add to our present introspective study of ourselves . . . a rediscovery of the round world, and of man’s place in it, now that its face has changed.
