Out of Compassion for Humanity – Mohammad Kawrani, 2026.08.14
Toward Rebuilding the Humanities by Recognizing the Reality of the Human Being Before the Entire Universe.
A large part of modern humanities is built around making the human being a central object of knowledge: psychology studies human beings and their behavior; sociology studies human beings within groups; economics studies their choices and needs; political science studies power and institutions; anthropology studies human beings and their cultures; and modern humanistic philosophy does so as well—and this is good and natural.
This focus on the human being is not, in itself, a mistake; rather, it is a scientific necessity. But the problem begins when “the human being as an object of study” becomes “the human being as the ultimate criterion of truth,” and when methodological anthropocentrism becomes absolute ontological anthropocentrism, so that the human being appears to be the origin from which everything is explained, rather than himself being an object that requires explanation.
Here a deeper question emerges:
What happens to the humanities if they take the human being himself as an object of knowledge, with complete neutrality, without presupposing that he is self-sufficient?
The result may be radically different.
First: The Problem Is Not Studying the Human Being, but Assuming His Self-Sufficiency
From a scientific and rational perspective, there is no objection to making the human being the central subject of the humanities; he is their direct object of study.
But there is a difference between two propositions:
The first: The human being is a fundamental subject of the humanities.
The second: The human being is the center of existence, the source of value, and the ultimate reference for truth.
The first is methodological.
The second is a philosophical and ontological claim that requires proof.
The humanities can tell us how human beings behave, how they learn, how their personalities develop, how societies are formed, and how the environment, culture, and economy affect their behavior.
But merely describing these phenomena cannot lead them to conclude that:
The human being is the ultimate reality in existence.
Indeed, studying the human being with scientific rigor may lead to exactly the opposite conclusion: the human being is a profoundly dependent being.
Second: Modern Science Itself Has Revealed Human Fragility
The more precise the humanities have become, the more the naïve conception of the human being as an independent master and a self-sufficient intellect has receded.
The human being is born incapable of independence.
He needs parents.
He needs a language that he did not invent.
He needs society.
He needs education.
He needs culture.
He needs food, water, and air.
He needs the natural environment.
He needs knowledge produced by others.
Moreover, a large part of his psychological and behavioral decisions is influenced by factors of which he is not fully conscious.
Modern humanities have therefore produced a long series of discoveries that have stripped away the illusion that human beings possess complete transparency regarding themselves.
Sigmund Freud, for example, made the unconscious a fundamental element in understanding human beings, demonstrating that people are not absolute masters of their psychological lives.
Then schools of social psychology demonstrated the extent to which groups, environments, and social expectations influence behavior.
Behavioral economics challenged the image of the completely rational economic human being.
And research in cognitive psychology showed that human beings systematically fall into cognitive errors and biases.
Thus, we can observe an important paradox:
The more our knowledge of the human being increases, the more our knowledge of his limitations increases.
This is not a defeat for humanity; rather, it is the beginning of genuine knowledge of the human being.
Third: Freud and the Collapse of the Illusion of Human Transparency to the Self
One of the most important transformations in the history of modern humanities was the discovery that human beings do not directly know all of their own motives.
Within psychoanalysis, the unconscious became a fundamental element in understanding human behavior.
Regardless of how much we accept or reject Freud’s theories today, the philosophical impact of the idea of the unconscious remains profound:
The human being is not completely transparent to himself.
This places an important limit on any arrogant conception of the human being as an intellect capable of completely knowing itself and the world.
If a human being does not even know all of his own internal motives, how can he be the absolute criterion of truth?
Fourth: Cognitive Psychology: The Mind Itself Is Limited
Research in cognitive psychology has provided a more complex picture.
Human beings do not perceive reality in a completely neutral manner. Rather, they rely on limited cognitive mechanisms, use mental shortcuts, are influenced by context, and may repeatedly fall into biases.
The concept of human cognitive limitations has become an important idea in this field.
This means that the human mind, despite its extraordinary capabilities, is not an absolute mind.
It is a mind that is:
limited in information;
limited in time;
limited in computational capacity;
capable of error;
susceptible to influence;
and capable of reshaping itself.
Hence came Herbert Simon’s concept of Bounded Rationality.
Human beings do not always make the optimal decision after calculating every possibility, because they simply do not possess complete cognitive capacity to do so.
Here an important philosophical conclusion emerges:
A mind that recognizes the need to acknowledge its limitations is more rational than a mind that denies its limitations.
Fifth: Behavioral Economics Destroyed the Image of the Perfectly Rational Human Being
In traditional economics, the model of Homo economicus emerged: the human being who behaves rationally in pursuit of his interests.
But behavioral economics, particularly through the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, demonstrated that human beings make systematic errors and exhibit systematic biases when making decisions.
The human being does not always behave like a perfect calculating machine.
This discovery is extremely important for the humanities.
If the human being is:
limited in knowledge + limited in calculation + influenced by context + capable of error,
then constructing an entire philosophy of existence on the basis that “the human being is the ultimate reference” requires serious reconsideration, because it is an extremely dangerous proposition.
Sixth: Darwin Removed the Human Being from His Exceptional Position in Nature
Then the Darwinian transformation placed the human being within the natural history of life.
This brought about a profound revolution in the Western conception of humanity.
The human being was no longer studied as a creature completely separate from the rest of living beings, but as part of a long biological history.
Regardless of the philosophical and religious debates surrounding certain aspects of evolution, the human lesson here is clear:
The human being is not self-sufficient apart from nature.
He depends upon a vast ecological system that he cannot do without.
Food, water, oxygen, climate, soil, plants, animals, microorganisms, and the cycles of nature are all conditions of his existence.
Therefore, even the human being who believes himself to be the “master of nature” cannot live outside a network of relationships that he did not create himself.
Imagine the wheelchair-bound Stephen Hawking caught in the whirlwind of Darwin’s theory!?
Seventh: Sociology Revealed That the Human Being Does Not Create Himself Alone
One of the most important lessons of sociology is that the human being is not an isolated individual who enters the world and then builds himself entirely by himself.
Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu, and others studied how human actions are formed within social, cultural, and symbolic networks.
Bourdieu, in particular, demonstrated the importance of the concept of Habitus: the idea that human beings carry within themselves patterns of perception and behavior formed through a long social history.
A person may sometimes believe that he chooses with absolute freedom, while his choices are actually influenced by his social, cultural, and economic history.
Thus the question:
Who am I?
becomes far more complex than it appears.
Eighth: Anthropology Broke the Illusion of a Single Human Model
Modern anthropology has shown that human beings live within an enormous variety of forms of organization, cultures, symbols, and values.
This has led to the realization that much of what a particular society considers “natural” may actually be the product of historical and cultural processes.
Here the need for epistemic humility becomes apparent.
Human beings do not see the world from a neutral “zero point”; they see it from within a language, culture, history, and society.
Consequently:
Even the way a human being thinks about truth is partially influenced by the place where he was born and the time in which he lived.
Ninth: The Great Paradox: The Science That Studies Humanity Reveals Its Poverty
If we bring these discoveries together, we find a highly significant picture:
The human being is rational, but not an absolute intellect.
The human being is free, but influenced by biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors.
The human being knows, but he makes mistakes.
The human being chooses, but he does not choose the original conditions of his existence.
The human being creates civilization, but he is born into a civilization that existed before him.
The human being discovers the laws of nature, but he does not establish those laws.
The human being uses the universe, but he cannot create the fundamental conditions of his own existence.
And the human being thinks about truth, but he is not the one who created truth.
Here emerges a concept that can be called philosophically:
Epistemic Humility
That is, for the intellect to know the limits of its own knowledge.
This is not a weakness of the intellect; rather, it is one of the conditions of its maturity.
Tenth: What If We Take This Conclusion to Its Philosophical End?
Here begins the point at which the Islamic worldview can contribute something to the humanities.
If we discover that the human being is:
contingent, limited, changing, needy, poor, and not self-sufficient,
then it is philosophically legitimate to ask:
What does this poverty point toward?
Poverty is not merely an economic attribute.
The human being is existentially poor:
He did not give himself existence.
He did not choose his body.
He did not choose the time of his birth.
He did not choose the laws of nature that govern him.
He did not create the intellect with which he thinks.
He did not create the truth he seeks.
And he does not encompass the other worlds with his knowledge.
This dependence lies at the very origin of existence.
Eleventh: “The Human Being as the Focus of Study” Does Not Mean “The Human Being as the Origin of Existence”
Here, Islamic humanities can offer an important methodological correction.
We can say:
Make the human being the focus of study, but do not necessarily make him the center of existence.
Study the human being as he is.
Study his weakness.
Study his fear.
Study his needs.
Study his instincts.
Study his ignorance.
Study his mistakes.
Study his capacity to learn.
Study his ability to transcend himself and his own intellect.
Study his need for love and meaning.
Study his constant search for truth.
Then ask the question at which the materialist model may come to a halt:
Why does this limited being possess a longing for the Absolute?
Why does the human being search for complete truth?
Why does he seek absolute justice?
Why does he long for perfect goodness?
Why does he resist death?
Why does he search for a meaning that transcends his individual life?
These questions cannot all be resolved simply by describing behavior.
Knowing the self is not merely knowing personality, memories, and motives. It is also:
knowing the existential reality of the human being.
That the human being should know that he is:
not absolute, not independent, not eternal, not perfect, and not the source of truth.
And that he should recognize, in contrast, that he is:
contingent, limited, changing, poor, needy, and capable of perfection.
This kind of self-knowledge can lead to a deeper knowledge of the source of its existence.
Twelfth: Humility Is Not Opposed to Human Development; It Is Its Condition
There is a common misunderstanding of humility.
Humility does not mean that a human being should despise himself.
It does not mean abandoning knowledge.
It does not mean accepting ignorance.
It may mean exactly the opposite.
The person who knows that he is incomplete becomes more willing to learn and to seek truth.
The person who believes that he has reached the final truth closes the door to learning and moves toward the complete truth.
Therefore, acknowledging one’s own deficiency can become a source of epistemic strength.
The true scientist says:
Perhaps I am mistaken.
The true researcher asks:
What are the limits of my knowledge?
The true philosopher asks:
What makes truth truth?
And the person who truly knows asks:
Who am I? What is the source of my existence? And what is the purpose of my existence?
Here the humanities are transformed from merely studying the human being into a project for perfecting the human being.
Thus, Islamic humanities can become our path toward more humble humanities.
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