Jane Ellen Harrison’s Visionary Ideas Resurge in 2025: Embrace Change, Connection, and the Courage of Heresy

Jane Ellen Harrison, a pioneering classical scholar and thinker, remains one of the most visionary yet underappreciated intellects of the early twentieth century. Her work not only transformed the study of ancient Greek religion and ritual, but also offered a radical reimagining of faith, change, and the nature of human connection—ideas that remain strikingly relevant in 2025. At the heart of her philosophy lies the profound assertion: “By contacts we are saved.” This phrase encapsulates her belief in the redemptive power of human connection, intellectual courage, and the ongoing, necessary heresy of questioning received wisdom[2].

The Courage of Heresy

Harrison’s life was itself a testament to intellectual and personal heresy. She challenged the academic establishment not only as one of the first women to hold a career academic post in England but also by boldly interrogating the origins and functions of religion, ritual, and myth[1][9]. In her own words, “To be a heretic today is almost a human obligation,” reflecting her unwavering commitment to questioning authority—be it in theology, academia, or society at large[2].

Her refusal to conform was not merely rebelliousness for its own sake. For Harrison, heresy represented the courage to think freely, to embrace what she saw as our duty: “the duty of questioning, the necessity of compassion, and the ultimate responsibility of human beings to work out a practical morality”[9]. This ethos permeated both her scholarship and her approach to life.

Change and the Evolution of Faith

Harrison’s intellectual landscape was shaped by the burgeoning evolutionary theory of her era. She urged everyone to read Darwin, seeing in evolutionary ideas not just a scientific revolution but a new lens for understanding the soul and society[2]. She observed that, much like species, individuals and cultures are always in a state of becoming, never fully complete. Change, for Harrison, was not a threat to faith but its very essence—the movement from old forms to new, the ongoing negotiation between the known and the unknown.

This attitude led her to a nuanced view of religion. She did not blame religion for the divisions and dogmas that fractured humanity; rather, she saw these as reflections of our social nature—our need to belong and to feel “right together,” even at the risk of excluding others[2]. Harrison wrote at a time of growing nationalism and herd mentality, but her insights feel uncannily prescient in today’s era of social media polarization: “the only human will to which we bow nowadays is the collective will of the people of which we are ourselves a part.” Righteousness, she warned, is just another form of certainty—a salve for our discomfort with the unknown.

The Meaning of Faith

For Harrison, faith was not dogma, but an attitude: “that commerce with the unseen and unknown” that arises from our imagination and our capacity for free thought[2]. She drew a sharp distinction between religion—the imaginative engagement with mystery—and theology, which she regarded as an attempt to rationalize the unknown and domesticate it with names and doctrines. The true heart of faith, she argued, lies in our relationship with what cannot be fully comprehended or controlled.

This approach to faith was radically inclusive. Harrison found wisdom in sources as diverse as St. Paul, Darwin, Whitman, and Tagore, weaving together a vision that saw “the value of each individual manifestation of life” yet insisted that our greatest joys and ecstasies arise from “the merging of the two [science and spirituality] in the strange new joy, and even ecstasy, that comes of human sympathy”[2].

By Contacts We Are Saved

The phrase “by contacts we are saved” is the lodestar of Harrison’s philosophy. She believed that human salvation—if it exists—comes not through isolation, purity, or dogmatic certainty, but through the messy, exhilarating work of connection: with other people, with the past, with ideas that challenge and unsettle us. Love, for Harrison, was the supreme act of “unselfing,” the great cathedral of mystery that both science and religion strive to address but never fully contain[2].

She saw learning and specialization as potentially divisive, severing us “from all but a few”—but love, she wrote, “reunites us. Such is the mystery of life.” In an age that often fetishizes expertise and boundaries between disciplines, Harrison’s call to break down artificial barriers and recover the wholeness of reality is more urgent than ever.

Legacy for 2025 and Beyond

A century after her death, Jane Ellen Harrison’s ideas are still rippling through the humanities, social sciences, and even public discourse. Her insistence on the value of questioning, the necessity of compassion, and the animating power of human connection offers a counterpoint to the tribalism and certainty of our time[2][9]. She reminds us that heresy is not a crime but a virtue, that faith is not the enemy of reason but its complement, and that change is not to be feared but embraced as the signature of life itself.

In a world hungry for meaning and connection, Harrison’s vision is no longer forgotten—it is, perhaps, more necessary than ever. By contacts we are saved: through empathy, courage, and the ongoing adventure of thought and love.

Original source: The Marginalian – By Contacts We Are Saved: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Change, the Meaning of Faith, and the Courage of Heresy