History of Humanism

Contemporary humanism can be traced back through the Renaissance back to the Islamic Golden Age to its ancient Greek roots. Humanism can also be traced back to the time of Gautama Buddha (563-483 BCE) and Confucius (551–479 BCE) and the Warring States Period, though the term "humanism" is more widely associated with Western philosophers.

The term "humanism" was coined in 1808, based on the 15th century Italian term umanista, which was used to designate a teacher or student of classic literature. The evolution of the meaning of the word humanism is fully explored in Nicolas Walter's Humanism — What's in the Word.

Greek humanism
Main article: Greek philosophy
Sixth century BCE pantheists Thales of Miletus and Xenophanes of Colophon prepared the way for later Greek humanist thought. Thales is credited with creating the maxim "Know thyself", and Xenophanes refused to recognize the gods of his time and reserved the divine for the principle of unity in the universe. Later Anaxagoras, often described as the "first freethinker", contributed to the development of science as a method of understanding the universe. These Ionian Greeks were the first thinkers to recognize that nature is available to be studied separately from any alleged supernatural realm. Pericles, a pupil of Anaxagoras, influenced the development of democracy, freedom of thought, and the exposure of superstitions. Although little of their work survives, Protagoras and Democritus both espoused agnosticism and a spiritual morality not based on the supernatural. The historian Thucydides is noted for his scientific and rational approach to history

Islamic humanism
Main article: Islamic ethics
Many medieval Muslim thinkers pursued humanistic, rational and scientific discourses in their search for knowledge, meaning and values. A wide range of Islamic writings on love poetry, history and philosophical theology show that medieval Islamic thought was open to the humanistic ideas of individualism, occasional secularism, skepticism and liberalism.[11] Certain aspects of Renaissance humanism has its roots in the medieval Islamic world, including the "art of dictation, called in Latin, ars dictaminis," and "the humanist attitude toward classical language.

Renaissance humanism
Main article: Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was a movement that affected the cultural, political, social, and literary landscape of Europe. Beginning in Florence in the last decades of the 14th century, Renaissance humanism revived the study of Latin and Greek, with the resultant revival of the study of science, philosophy, art and poetry of classical antiquity.(see Burckhard The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy) The revival was based on interpretations of Roman and Greek texts, whose emphasis upon art and the senses marked a great change from the contemplation on the Biblical values of humility, introspection, and meekness. Beauty was held to represent a deep inner virtue and value, and an essential element in the path towards God.[citation needed]

Humanism's divergence from orthodox Christianity can be identified with the condemnation of Pelagianism by Jerome and Augustine. Like the Humanists, Pelagius perceived humans as possessing inherent capacity for developing the qualities that the church perceived as necessitating the gift of grace from God. Pelagius rejected the doctrine of original sin. The Humanists likewise recognize humans as born not with a burden of inherited sin due to their ancestry but with potential for both good and evil which will develop in this life as their characters are formed. The Humanists therefore reject Calvinistic predestination, and understandably therefore arouse the hostility of Protestant fundamentalists.[citation needed]
Renaissance humanists believed that the liberal arts (music, art, grammar, rhetoric, oratory, history, poetry, using classical texts, and the studies of all of the above) should be practiced by all levels of wealth. They also approved of self, human worth and individual dignity.[citation needed]

Noteworthy humanist scholars from this period include the Dutch theologian Erasmus, the English author (and Roman Catholic saint) Thomas More, the French writer Francois Rabelais, the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch and the Italian scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.[citation needed]

Modern era
One of the earliest forerunners of contemporary chartered humanist organizations was the Humanistic Religious Association formed in 1853 in London. This early group was democratically organized, with male and female members participating in the election of the leadership and promoted knowledge of the sciences, philosophy, and the arts.[citation needed]

In February 1877, the word "Humanism" was publicly used, apparently for the first time in America, to apply to Felix Adler, pejoratively. Adler, however, did not embrace the term, and instead coined the name "Ethical Culture" for his new movement — a movement which still exists in the now Humanist-affiliated New York Society for Ethical Culture.[citation needed]

Active in the early 1920s, F.C.S. Schiller considered his work to be tied to the Humanist movement. Schiller himself was influenced by the pragmatism of William James. In 1929 Charles Francis Potter founded the First Humanist Society of New York whose advisory board included Julian Huxley, John Dewey, Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann. Potter was a minister from the Unitarian tradition and in 1930 he and his wife, Clara Cook Potter, published Humanism: A New Religion. Throughout the 1930s Potter was a well-known advocate of women’s rights, access to birth control, "civil divorce laws", and an end to capital punishment.

Raymond B. Bragg, the associate editor of The New Humanist, sought to consolidate the input of L. M. Birkhead, Charles Francis Potter, and several members of the Western Unitarian Conference. Bragg asked Roy Wood Sellars to draft a document based on this information which resulted in the publication of the Humanist Manifesto in 1933. The Manifesto and Potter's book became the cornerstones of modern humanism. Both of these sources envision humanism as a religion.[citation needed]

In 1941 the American Humanist Association was organized. Noted members of The AHA included Isaac Asimov, who was the president before his death, and writer Kurt Vonnegut, who followed as honorary president until his death in 2007. Robert Buckman was the head of the association in Canada, and is now an honorary president.[citation needed]

Modern humanist philosophies
There are many people who consider themselves humanists, and much variety in the exact type of humanism to which they subscribe. There is some disagreement over terminology and definitions, with some people using narrower or broader interpretations. Not all people who call themselves humanists hold beliefs that are genuinely humanistic, and not all people who do hold humanistic beliefs apply the label of humanism to themselves.[citation needed]

All of this aside, Humanism can be divided into secular and religious types, although some Humanists, including the International Humanist and Ethical Union, reject the addition of any adjective at all to "Humanist," and instead intended the word to have universal application.[citation needed] Some have argued against the International Humanist and Ethical Union’s attempts to define Humanism and its various types.[citation needed]

Secular humanism
Main article: Secular humanism
Secular humanism is the branch of humanism that rejects theistic religious belief and adherence to belief in the existence of a supernatural world. It is often associated with scientists and academics, though it is not limited to these groups. Secular humanists generally believe that following humanist principles leads to secularism, on the basis that supernatural beliefs cannot be supported using rational arguments and therefore the supernatural aspects of religiously associated activity should be rejected.[citation needed]

When people speak of Humanism in general, they are sometimes referring to secular humanism as a default meaning.[citation needed] Some secular humanists take this even further by denying that less anti-religious humanists qualify as genuine humanists. Others feel that the ethical side of humanism transcends the issue of religion, because being a good person is more important than rejecting supernatural beliefs. The Humanist Manifestos, which represent consensus statements of Humanists, present Humanism as an ethical process and a religion through which we can move above and beyond both the divisive particulars of older religious stances and the negation of these.[citation needed]

Some secular humanists prefer the term Humanist (capital H, and no adjective), as unanimously endorsed by General Assembly of the International Humanist and Ethical Union following universal endorsement of the Amsterdam Declaration 2002.

The secular humanist movement, by that name, hardly existed prior to 1980. In 1979, Paul Kurtz lost his position as editor of The Humanist. Departing the American Humanist Association, he then launched his own publication, Free Inquiry, and founded the Council for Secular Humanism independently of the American Humanist Association yet pursuing essentially similar goals.

Religious humanism
Religious humanism is the branch of humanism that considers itself religious (based on a functional definition of religion), or embraces some form of theism, deism, or supernaturalism, without necessarily being allied with organized religion, frequently associated with artists, liberal Christians, and scholars in the liberal arts. It holds appeal for a number of Unitarian Universalists, Quakers, Anglicans and Lutherans. Subscribers to a religion who do not hold supernatural assertions as a necessary source for their moral values may be religious humanists. The central position of human beings in humanist philosophy goes with a humane morality; the latter alone does not constitute Humanism. A humanitarian who derives morality from religious grounds does not make a religious Humanist.[citation needed]

A number of religious humanists feel that secular humanism is too coldly logical and rejects the full emotional experience that makes humans human. From this comes the notion that secular humanism is inadequate in meeting the human need for a socially fulfilling philosophy of life. Disagreements over things of this nature have resulted in friction between secular and religious humanists, despite their commonalities.[citation needed]

Religious Humanism was studied and developed by the late Rev. Paul Beattie during his tenure as editor of Religious Humanism, a periodical which became Unitarian rather than Humanist after his death and continues as such today.[citation needed]

A Jewish form of religious Humanism was developed by the late Rabbi Sherwin Wine, who founded the Society for Humanistic Judaism, now a worldwide movement with 40,000 adherents.[citation needed]