Humanism

:"Humanistic" redirects here. For the 2001 album by Abandoned Pools, see Humanistic (album).

Related Topics:
Abandoned Pools - Humanistic (album)

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Humanism is an active ethical, and philosophical approach to life, focusing on human solutions to human issues through rational ("reasonable") arguments, without recourse to a god, gods, sacred texts or religious creeds. Humanism, born in European Renaissance universities, originally referred to a student or teacher of Greco-Roman literature. The first "humanists" were orators, or poets of Biblical, or philosophical ideas.

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Many early doctrines calling themselves "humanist", were based on Protagoras's famous claim that "man is the measure of all things." In context, this asserted that people are the ultimate determiners of value and morality— not objective or absolutist codices. In its time, Protagoras' statement was a radical, and "objective" view of the human condition, which has "convincingly" refuted "absolutism", for much of Western philosophical history, since. Subsequent interpretations of this "principle" became split between "relativism" and "universalism" —the former, views all ethics as being derived from the individual ("individualism"), while the latter, views ethics as meaningful "only if they are "(universally) applicable to all". While relativism gained prominence during the Industrial Era, global communication and transculturation have deprecated relativism in favor of the now-dominant universalist view of humanism.

Related Topics:
Protagoras - Absolutism - Relativism - Universalism - Individualism - Industrial Era

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The evolution of the meaning of the word 'humanism' is fully explored in Walter, Nicolas: Humanism - What's in the Word (Rationalist Press Association, London, 1997, ISBN 0-301-97001-7).

Related Topics:
Walter, Nicolas - Rationalist Press Association

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