The Book of Chivalric Humanism: A Virtue Based Moral Framework for Atheists
If you enjoy the books Good Without God by Greg Epstein, Humanism: A Very Short Introduction by Stephen Law, and The Good Book: A Secular Bible by A.C. Grayling, then you you'll enjoy The Book of Chivalric Humanism.
- Are you interested in learning how to become a better, more successful person?
- Do you want to obtain wisdom so you can make better decisions in your life?
- Do you desire the strength of will to endure and overcome hardships?
Chivalric Humanism offers a path to all of this, and more.
Chivalric Humanism is a branch of naturalism philosophy; that is, it is rooted in the belief that only natural forces operate in the world. Chivalric Humanism is characterized by its emphasis on virtue and excellence while also stressing that its adherents become champions for the rights of others in order to serve the common good. It is a form of humanism that explains the role of humans in the world and prescribes a rewarding purpose for our lives.
What Chivalric Humanism seeks to do is create a new kind of chivalry for the modern age which promotes the sense of civic duty that is greatly lacking in other varieties of humanism philosophy books. It is through the purpose of civic duty that old and new chivalry can be linked together.
It must be noted that Chivalric Humanism is not a form of Christianity, as it does not promote metaphysical ideas. It does however use a variant of the cardinal virtues of Christianity, which themselves were based on the virtues of Greco-Roman philosophies. As a naturalistic philosophy, Chivalric Humanism provides logical reasons for why virtues should be cultivated in a person and how they promote the common good.
Atheists who were formerly Christians will find that Chivalric Humanism promotes many of the same moral behaviors that Christianity does, without metaphysical justifications for why these behaviors are good. Instead, Chivalric Humanism promotes the use of logic and the employment of the scientific method to validate its moral beliefs.
Chivalric Humanism also promotes that atheists should strive to live a virtuous life. Virtues serve as some of the most important rules for Chivalric Humanists; these rules being necessary because attempting to calculate the consequences of actions during the moment one needs to make decisions will frequently result in a person making hasty decisions that result in less than optimal courses of action being pursued. In summary it is difficult to remember the many rules of proper conduct a person should abide by in order to be a good person.
By instead following the principles of virtues that describe the type of character a person should strive for then an individual has a very flexible rule structure that can accommodate many different kinds of scenarios. Essentially by focusing on being a good person then the right actions will follow.