Stephen Fry Explains Humanism in 4 Animated Videos: Happiness, Truth and the Meaning of Life & Death

Answers to life’s big ques­tions don’t come cheap, but they very often come free, or at least we feel they should. Which answers you find com­pelling among your avail­able options is up to you. In the wide­ly plu­ral­ist parts of the world—or at least in their urban centers—the answers come as often in the form of sec­u­lar human­ism as they do in any oth­er vari­ety, and they gen­er­al­ly come with a cer­tain amount of sat­is­fac­tion that it is human­ism, in part, that makes such vari­ety pos­si­ble. So what is human­ism and why is it some­times so proud of itself? You could do much worse than ask Stephen Fry, the genial Eng­lish actor, come­di­an, writer, and pas­sion­ate activist and advo­cate.

Fry nar­rates the video series here, “That’s Human­ism,” for the British Human­ism Asso­ci­a­tion. He begins in “How do we know what is true?” at the top of the post by telling us what human­ism is not. It is not a belief that knowl­edge comes from a super­nat­ur­al source, from rev­e­la­tions, prophet­ic visions, or divine­ly inspired books. While many a human­ist has found poet­ic inspi­ra­tion in such things, as Fry explains, it’s only the sci­en­tif­ic method that pro­vides us with reli­able infor­ma­tion about the nat­ur­al world.

In the video just above, Fry takes an evi­dence-based approach to the ques­tion of ques­tions: what hap­pens when we die. The human­ist answer, as he plain­ly states, seems per­fect­ly obvi­ous to anyone—everyone dies, and every­one can live on in the lives of the peo­ple who’ve loved them. We leave the work we’ve done behind, and our bod­ies return to the ele­ments from which they came. Any­thing else, he sug­gests, is wish­ful think­ing.

The third video con­fronts the ques­tion that runs neck and neck with fear of death as a rea­son peo­ple seem to believe in the super­nat­ur­al. “What makes some­thing right or wrong?” Fry asks, then goes on to con­trast in layman’s terms two moral the­o­ries: divine com­mand and a gen­er­al­ly altru­ist, proso­cial eth­i­cal stance. Not all human­ists sub­scribe to his ethics and not all, as Fry does above, would describe empa­thy as the prime motive of moral choice. He also cites “Rea­son,” “Expe­ri­ence,” and “Respect for Oth­ers” as meth­ods by which human­ists deter­mine right from wrong, and he touch­es super­fi­cial­ly on the role of cul­ture as a con­tain­er of moral­i­ty, though he avoids the many thorny issues implied in that asser­tion.

The fourth video of the series, below, takes on the much more clas­si­cal­ly philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion, “How can I be hap­py?” For Fry, who has can­did­ly dis­cussed his strug­gles with bipo­lar dis­or­der and sui­ci­dal depres­sion, the ques­tion is not a pure­ly abstract one. His answers eschew grand cos­mic nar­ra­tives for the val­ue of the nat­ur­al, the famil­ial, and the observ­able. Through­out the series, Fry remains upbeat and con­fi­dent, but if you think him inno­cent of life’s cru­el­ties, I invite you to read the brief biog­ra­phy in this Guardian arti­cle.

If this seems like evan­ge­lism, per­haps it is. The British Human­ist Asso­ci­a­tion is, after all, the orga­ni­za­tion behind Richard Dawkins’ athe­ist bus cam­paign in Eng­land, which plas­tered signs on “bendy bus­es” around Lon­don say­ing “There’s prob­a­bly no God. Now stop wor­ry­ing and enjoy your life.” But Fry is a much more approach­able, avun­cu­lar face of human­ism than the can­tan­ker­ous, some­times cal­lous, Dawkins (or the con­fronta­tion­al Sam Har­ris). What these videos don’t address are the spe­cif­ic advo­ca­cy goals and pro­grams of the British Human­ist Asso­ci­a­tion, which include such peren­ni­al­ly con­tro­ver­sial sub­jects as assist­ed dying and abor­tion rights. Learn more about the association’s cam­paigns, goals, and out­reach attempts at their web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.