The Status of Inanimation in the Philosophy of Neohumanism

By Shrii P.R. Sarkar

Neohumanism includes within its scope not only human beings and animate creatures, such as plants and animals, but all inanimate entities as well, for the scope of Neohumanism extends down to the smallest particles of sub-atomic matter.

What is Neohumanism? Neohumanism is newly-explained humanism. ‘Humanism’ and ‘humanity’ have been very popular words for the last century, but only human beings have come within the scope of humanism and humanity. This explanation [of the concept] is not sufficient – it cannot quench the thirst of the developing human society. Why should the love and affection of developed human minds be restricted to human beings only? Why should it not include all living beings, including plant life? This is the new explanation of humanism – Neohumanism – for within Neohumanism the entire animate world is included.

But what is the status of inanimation [the inanimate world] in Neohumanism? Fundamentally there is hardly any difference between the world of animation and the world of inanimation. Some people explain that when there is a characteristic of movement within a structure it is animate, otherwise it is inanimate. But this explanation is not sufficient, because there is a characteristic of movement within both animate and inanimate objects. Others say that if the source of this internal characteristic of movement is the unit mind, it is animation, otherwise it is inanimation. But this is not a perfect interpretation either.

Even within inanimate objects as minute as the atom and smaller particles, there are still smaller particles that maintain their structural unity and struggle against their internal and external fissiparous tendencies. If the scope of Neohumanism is extended in this way from an extensive scope to an intensive scope, then we should go deeper into matter – not only into composite structures of animation and inanimation, but within the subtlest and smallest assembling structuresⁱ. And within the smallest assembling structures, where the point is nadir, the assembling body is the perfect status. But that perfect status can be reached only theoretically, never in the realm of practicality.

So in Neohumanism our movement, our progress, must be not only be extensive – that is, bringing within its scope the whole world of animation; it should also be intensive, a never-ending movement from the imperfect world of humanism to the perfect world of the unit assembling body, to the original primordial phase of perfection.

And that golden day is sure to come when that perfect stage of structure, that is, unit existence in the intra-atomic world, will be reached, when human intuition will realize that the essence in the sub-atomic world is pure Consciousness.

31 May 1983, Anandanagar,
Published in: Neohumanism in a Nutshell Part 1

ⁱ The smallest essential sub-atomic particles. –Eds