Sarah Bakewell

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry and Hope

You may have some affinity with humanism, even if you don’t think of yourself in those terms. You may be drawn to literature and the humanities. You may prefer to base your moral choices on fellow-feeling and responsibility to others rather than on religious commandments. Or you may simply believe that individual lives are more important than grand political visions or dogmas. If any of these apply, you are part of a long tradition of humanist thought. Award winning biographer Sarah Bakewell asks what humanism is and why it has flourished for so long, despite opposition from fanatics, mystics and tyrants.