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Humanism
The term humanism over the past several centuries
of Western thought has been used to express
two different concepts. It is not too much to say
that humanism in its original form created the intellectual
foundation of the Renaissance. In modern
times, humanism has most often come to mean
an approach that characterizes all things in a
human, rather than theistic, framework and emphasizes
human rationality and experience in contrast
to classic authority. It is arguable, however,
that the adversarial relationship between theism
and the human, including scientific knowledge
and rationality, that is often imputed to modern
humanism is unnecessarily simplistic, ignoring, for
example, today’s Christian humanists. Moreover, it
is possible to detect the evolution of a new, more
integrative, humanism as a response to a world
whose natural cycles and processes are increasingly
dominated by the human.
Humanism in its original sense meant simply
the rediscovery and study of classic Greek and
Latin language and texts, and the use of them to
assess the work of doctrinal Scholastics and secondary
commentaries of late Medieval Europe. Humanism
during this time was more a cultural attitude
and an academic program than a formal
conceptual framework or a particular philosophy.
Indeed, the first self-conscious humanist, the Italian
poet Francis Petrarch (1304–1374), is notable
for urging a new curricula based on original classical
sources—the studia humanitatis, consisting of
grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.
During this period, the term humanist
had no ideological content and simply referred to
anyone, layperson or Church official, who had a
competence in classical Greek, Latin, and to a
lesser extent Hebrew, and some familiarity with
classical texts.
Early humanism led to the recovery of the direct
study of the Bible. Many early medieval
Church figures such as Thomas Moore (1478–1535)
and Desiderius Erasmus (1469–1536), and a number
of reformers, strongly supported the humanist
approach. In general, however, early humanism
was stronger in Italy than in the more medieval
north of Europe. Thus, Pope Nicholas V
(1447–1455) is referred to by Bertrand Russell in A
History of Western Philosophy (1945) as “the first
humanist Pope” (p. 498). Nicholas’s apostolic secretary
was the epicurean humanist Lorenzo Valla
(1407–1457). Reflecting their culture, the vast majority
of humanists were practicing Christians, although
they tended to react against the medieval
Scholastic veneration of authority. Valla, for example,
wrote a long treatise somewhat inelegantly titled
Restructuring of All Dialectic with the Foundations
of the Whole of Philosophy, in which he
purported to demonstrate the invalidity of Aristotelian
logic, a foundation of Scholasticism.
As Western culture evolved, however, humanism
inevitably began to challenge medieval worldviews
in fundamental ways. Rather than the authority
of Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), Augustine of
Hippo (354–430), and Thomas Aquinas (c.
1225–1274), humanists rediscovered and began to
teach classical texts of all types. These not only
greatly broadened the knowledge base available to
scholars and the educated, but stimulated both increased
curiosity about the world in general and a
different concept of validity. During the early medieval
period, reference to accepted authority was
the highest demonstration of truth; humanism over
time led to increased reference to the physical
world as the ultimate source of validity in argument.
The authority of Galen (c. 130–201 C.E.) in
medicine or Aristotle in physics was increasingly
challenged by data and argument derived not from
accepted texts but from observation of the world
itself. In doing so, humanism created the foundations
for the profound ontological shift from the
otherworldliness of medieval faith to scientific
knowledge that characterized the Enlightenment
and, subsequently, modernity.
The Enlightenment is often characterized as a
conflict between faith and reason, but that is misleading.
Major Enlightenment figures, including on
the nascent rationalist side Francis Bacon
(1561–1626) and, later, Isaac Newton (1642–1727),
clearly viewed their scientific work as aligned with
the Christian faith, even mandated by it. On the literary
side, the Romantic project was seen by many
of its leading figures as an effort to modernize and
humanize Christian theology in light of Enlightenment
science, which had come to represent an independent
and in some ways equally powerful ontology.
Thus, the poet John Keats (1795–1821) saw
his goal as creating “a system of Salvation which
does not affront our reason and humanity” (quoted
in Abrams, p. 33), a goal that can be broadly attributed
to the Romantic movement in general.
Attitudes toward modern humanism mirror the
distortions of the Enlightenment characterization.
In particular, the attacks by Christian fundamentalists
on “secular humanism” in the United States, especially
regarding the teaching of evolution, have
created an impression that humanism is necessarily
opposed to religion. Secular humanism, a tradition
flowing from eighteenth-century Enlightenment
rationalism and subsequent freethinking
movements, is indeed characterized by a
Promethean suspicion of theism and religious authority,
and a belief that humans are the measure
of all things; it is, however, but one branch of the
humanist project. Modern humanists fall into many
categories, including literary humanism, characterized
by a devotion to the humanities; cultural
humanism, the rational, empirical tradition derived
from ancient Greece and Rome that forms the basis
of modern Western societies; and philosophic humanism,
systems of thought focused on human
needs and realities.
Of particular interest, however, are the schools
of humanism that explicitly integrate religious and
scientific worldviews. Thus, Christian humanism,
the philosophy that posits the self-fulfillment of humans
within the framework of Christian principles
and beliefs, has evolved from Moore and Erasmus
through elements of the Anglican and German
pietist traditions and philosophers such as Immanuel
Kant (1724–1804). It is represented by
modern theologians such as Jacques Maritain,
Hans Kung, Paul Tillich, and James Luther Adams.
More explicitly, the Unitarian Universalist tradition
includes among its seven Principles three that are
obviously humanist; they affirm (1) the “inherent
worth and dignity of every person,” (2) justice, “equity
and compassion in human relations,” and (3)
a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”
The Unitarian Universalists also identify as
among the sources of their tradition humanist
“teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance
of reason and the results of science, and warn us
against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”
This integration of faith and rationality will become
increasingly important in light of the recognition
that, as a result of the Industrial Revolution,
population and economic growth, and globalization,
the dynamics of most major natural systems
are increasingly influenced by human activity.
Since this results in a world where teleologies and
belief systems are increasingly reified in natural
systems through intentional human activity, a rational
humanistic understanding, combined with
the religious faith that is central to the human experience—
perhaps an “Earth systems” humanism—
may well be a future evolutionary path of
humanism.
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