Can Philip Larkin be called a Humanist?Give reasons for your answer with specific references to his poems. Explain Humainsm clearly. Is there...

Humanism has grown over the past several decades to include an immense number of varieties. For example, someone can be a "Secular Humanist" or a "Christian Humanist" of develop a completely different "strain" of Humanism.  That being said, in general, Humanism promotes the belief in mankind, science and logic. Most Humanists see no need for any type of god because man possesses the power to change, evolve, and discover.  Many Humanists believe that if humans simply work together, then problems will be solved without any type of supernatural help or faith. The philosophy stresses concepts such as relative truth and relative morality.

In regards to Larkin, his poetry overall does not represent Humanism.  He is far too cynical and matter of fact to promote such a positive worldview.  Moreover, when Larkin began studying Thomas Hardy's poetry, he developed a kinship with Hardy's style and themes.  Hardy's works generally focus on Existentialism and Naturalism, both rather bleak views of the world; so Larkin's agreement with Hardy also implies that his perspective was much more in line with the negative views of life rather than with the positive philosophies of Humanism or Idealism.  Below are two excerpts from his poems "This Be the Verse" and "Church Going" which demonstrate his rather fatalistic worldview.

From "This Be the Verse": "Man hands on misery to man. / It deepens like a coastal shelf. / You get you out as early as you can / And don't have any kids yourself."

The above excerpt demonstrates the Naturalist belief that man is fated to suffer and that there is no escape from that suffering.  According to Larkin, humans choose not to have more chidren because they know that their children would face the same doomed life that they are "forced" to live.

From "Church Going": "Yet stop I did: in fact I often do, / And always end much at a loss like this, / Wondering what to look for; wondering, too, / When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into . . ."

This quote from the second stanza of "Church Going" does not represent Humanism because while many Humanists would agree with Larkin that church or religion is unnecessary for mankind, they would not share his bleaker view that his propensity for visiting churches even when he does not know what to do when he goes inside is natural to him.  Larkin demonstrates in this poem that for some reason he keeps going to churches to look around but is at a loss when he goes inside.  For that reason, he believes that churches will eventually be unused.  This idea that God might be out there (Afterall, what makes the poet want to keep going into churches?) but that He is not involved in churches or in humans' lives is very similar to Hardy's Existentialist perspective that a spectator god looks down on the human race but does nothing to help or hinder it.