Question 2

Posted by Shikha

Humanism refers to a set of presuppositions that assigns a special position to human beings in the scheme of things. It is a world view, a broad perspective which received gradual and persistent articulation at several points in history and continues to furnish a central leitmotif of western civilization. There are two contrasts to it, which in turn help us to explain it: first, is the emphasis on the supernatural, transcendent domain, which considers humanity to be radically dependent on the divine order. Secondly, it resists the tendency to treat humanity scientifically as part of the natural order, on par with other living organisms. Occupying a middle position, humanism discerns in human beings unique capacities and abilities to be cultivated and celebrated for their own sake.
 The word ‘humanism’ became popular in the 19th century but was applied to the cultural and intellectual developments in previous eras. Humanity, with all its distinct capacities, talents, worries, problems, possibilities – was the centre of interest. The medieval thinkers philosophized on their knees, bolstered by new studies; they dared to stand up against the church’s authority. Instead of devotional church’s Latin, the mother tongue became the medium of expression. Poetical, lyrical, self expression gained momentum. New paintings showed great interest in human form. The humanist mode of thinking deepened and widened its tradition with the 18th century thinkers like Voltaitre, Diderot, Rousseau and other European and American figures like Bentham, Hume, Lessing, Kant, Franklin and Jefferson. With a range of differences among themselves, this set of thinkers formed a family in support of values like freedom, equality, tolerance, secularism and cosmopolitanism. Although they championed untrammeled use of mind, they also wanted it to be applied in social and political reform, encouraging individual creativity and exalting the active over the contemplative life. They believed in the perfectibility of the human nature, the moral sense and responsibility and the possibility of progress.
Humanists attributes great importance to education, conceiving of it as an all around development of personality and individual talent, marrying science to poetry and culture to democracy, two cultures, in words of C P Snow. They promoted freedom of thought, opinion and expression. They believed in a world free from metaphysics or religious certainty and that all opinions are open to criticism, modifications, revision and correction. They saw human flourishing as dependent on open communication, discussion, criticism, and unforced consensus,           
Tracing the emergence of humanism
1. Many people think that social change occurs when innovative thinkers formulate new ideas which then gain widespread acceptance. In the history the social change occurred whenever new inventions changed the way that people interacted, or when new discoveries changed the way that people see their place in the wider world.
Before the modern era, technological advancement was slow and new discoveries were rare. Cultures stayed the same or changed so slowly that the change was barely noticeable. Without having witnessed any significant change or even being able to imagine how change might happen, people formed the impression that the world would remain more or less the same forever. Any hope for change rested on the anticipation of divine intervention.
On the rare occasion when noticeable change did occur, and when this change led to advances in comfort or knowledge, people began to develop a sense that civilization was slowly but steadily improving and they grew hopeful of further change in the future.
Renaissance humanism was a cultural movement in Europe beginning in central Italy (particularly Florence) in the last decades of the 14th century. It revived and refined the study of language (First Latin, and then the Greek language by mid-century), science, philosophy, art and poetry of classical antiquity. The "revival" was based on interpretations of Roman and Greek texts. Their emphasis on art and the senses marked a great change from the medieval values of humility, introspection, and passivity. Beauty was held to represent a deep inner virtue and value, and an essential element in the path towards God. As a result, the production of art in this period is particularly rampant. The crisis of Renaissance humanism came with the trial of Galileo, for it forced the choice between basing the authority of one's beliefs on one's observations or upon religious teaching. The trial made the contradictions between humanism and religion visible to all and made humanism a dangerous doctrine.
Renaissance humanism was an aristocratic movement, not at all a democratic one, by which is meant that it was primarily practiced by the upper levels of society (merchant and patriarchal or aristocratic classes), but its tenets hardly extended towards the populous masses. On the other hand, humanist reform of the educational system did contribute to at least a certain diffusion of the basics of humanist ideals to any child who attended grammar school. Some of humanism's opponents saw it as a corrupting, luxurious doctrine. Nevertheless, the appeal of humanist accomplishment has always been strong, and its patronage of the arts assured that it would find a place in the artisan class. With the spread of printing and the appearance of the intellectual writer, a middle-class humanist also appeared, and the Age of Enlightenment can be viewed as the spread of humanist values beyond the aristocracy. The Enlightenment tended to present science and reason, more than art, as the defining trait of human dignity. Enlightenment humanists, perhaps more than any other group, took their Protagoras straight and did not offer many qualifiers to his principle.
Gould claims the breach formed during the Renaissance, when some people claimed there was more to learn from new knowledge, through observation and experimentation. This was in contradiction to the long-held view that the path to knowledge lay in studying ancient wisdom. Of course, there is knowledge to be gained in both, which is why we study the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Michelangelo in addition to Newton, Galileo, and Darwin
2. In the Modern Age, the invention of gunpowder revolutionized warfare. The invention of the printing press in Europe gave people exposure to ideas other than those presented in the Bible. The invention of the magnetic compass and other navigational aids allowed European ships to explore the world. Improvements in the manufacture of lenses for reading glasses led to the invention of the telescope. Gravity was soon discovered by observing the orbits of the planets around the sun and this led to the formulation of scientific laws describing the motion of objects.
While discovery, invention, and economic growth were generally welcomed, conservative thinkers did not trust the social changes that often accompanied them. Organizations like the church and the aristocracy claimed that any change to the traditional way of living might lead to disaster. But their real motive for resisting change was that they feared losing their privileged positions of power and wealth.
By the middle of the 1600s, the Catholic Church had lost its grip on power. Over the following century, as the colonization of America fuelled an expansion of trade and commerce, the aristocracy began losing its grip on power too.
The momentum of scientific, technological, and economic progress now seemed unstoppable, and this caused a longing for political change, culminating in the American and French revolutions. The fate of the modern world was then sealed with the invention of the steam engine and the beginning of the industrial age.
3. Questioning God: By the end of the 1800s, science was providing answers to many of the great mysteries of nature. Everything from the creation of the world to the workings of the human mind was gradually being explained without any reference to God. Science seemed to be successfully replacing religion as the final authority for truth. Among those who were fortunate enough to learn about science and were able to understand it, many became convinced that we should only believe in explanations that can be proven to be true by scientific methods.
In Europe and America, the picture of the universe painted by Christianity and its understanding of human nature had been completely discredited by science. As the influence of the churches began to decline, church leaders became fearful of scientific discovery and they struggled to resist social change.
Despite being seen by many as stubborn, outdated, and hypocritical institutions committed to a failing mythology, the churches continued to be supported by conservative community leaders. There was a constant reinforcement of moral authority, community and family values like generosity, self-sacrifice, and self-restraint.
Progressive churches struggled to compromise with scientific explanations, but the interpretation of religious scripture can only be stretched so far before people begin losing faith and start looking for new beliefs. Without any intellectual credibility and with their moral authority under serious question, conservative churches maintained their following by reinforcing herd conformity and hatred of difference, especially in rural communities. Even when the Renaissance scholars sought a ‘rebirth’ , they believed that everything worth knowing has been ascertained by the great intellects of the classic world, but either not transcribed or lost to the West during a thousand Dark ages. As libraries burnt and decayed and new dogmas surrounded the spirit of liberal learning, the recovery of ancient wisdom and not the discovery of novel data became the primary task of scholarship. The effort was directed to maintain the supremacy of what exists with massive and lavish publications of accounts of the transmission over the first hand experience. A handful of people were beginning to feel that if the idea of God was not yet dead, then it was the duty of modern science and philosophy to kill him.
4. Existentialism: After centuries of groundbreaking scientific discovery, many scientifically minded people now see the universe as working like a mindless cosmic machine. Every component in the machine, from the smallest subatomic particle to the largest galaxy, is constrained to follow the laws of nature, and these laws can never be broken.
From a purely scientific point of view, human beings could be described as self-preserving, self-replicating, biological machines, responding to stimulus and adapting to change. An accident of nature sparked the first replication billions of years ago, and then through an accumulation of advantageous mutations, the unbroken chain of generations led to the rise of modern humans. In evolutionary terms, it could be said that we are still little more than clever monkeys clinging to a piece of space rock, floating near the edge of a galaxy, several billion years after the dawn of time. We come from nothingness, each of us being born by mere chance. And at the end of our short and often miserable lives, our bodies decay and our minds dissolve away and become nothing, Rather than surrendering to feelings of despair and depression over the meaninglessness of it all, existentialist philosophers tell us that our mission must be to find a way to give our lives some meaning by embracing those activities that generate a sense of value in our lives.
Science alone was unable to provide people with a sense of universal purpose and guidance using logic and reason, but most people responded to shallow emotional sensationalism rather than cold logical reasoning. Most people believed in magical spirits than in mathematical relationships, and they would rather think that some mystical guru knew the answers to everything rather than try to make sense out of the conflicting opinions of skeptical academics. But with existentialism, the seeds of giving significance to oneself in the gamut of conflicting ideas were thus sown.
5. Humanism: In the search for an alternative to traditional religious morality, the existentialist philosophers declared that we are all free to decide what is right and wrong for ourselves. They said that personal experience is the only reliable guide for our actions. But they also warned of the risks and responsibilities that come from being free to make our own choices. We define ourselves through our actions, and we all have to live with wherever our decisions lead us.
While some people wanted complete freedom from moral restraint, others anticipated the rise of a new moral order based upon a rational belief in the common good. As the industrialized world began to embrace political freedom, a new foundation for morality did emerge, widely known as ‘humanism’. Humanism was described as an unquestioning faith in the inherent value of every human life and a belief in the fundamental rights of every person.
Humanism promotes all of the positive caring and sharing values that civilized society has developed over the centuries through the lessons of human experience and the power of human reason. Humanist values were justified as being in the best long term interests of both the individual and the wider community by enhancing the quality of relationships and reducing the risk of conflict.
Different forms of humanism were gaining ground at different times. For many people, ‘secular humanism’ offered an agreeable alternative to traditional religion. While rejecting religious superstition, secular humanists embrace the compassionate and caring values once preached by religion. In reaction to accusations by some religious groups that non-believers can have no real faith in universal goodness, secular humanists point out that virtues like kindness, justice, and generosity often work better when they are not associated with religious beliefs.
The secular humanist tradition has been growing steadily over the centuries, and like a religion, it has its own set of inspired writings, its own version of history, and its own collection of myths and heroes. But attempts by some secular humanist groups to define universal principles and values have only resulted in shallow and unconvincing documents that seem to change with the politics of the times.
Although secular humanism has gained an enormous following, especially among scientifically minded people, it still rests entirely upon blind faith in some convenient concept of goodness rather than solid reasoning based on scientific facts. Unless consciousness evolved for a higher purpose, then human life can only be said to have value if we choose to believe so.
6. The Power Politics: Despite ongoing attempts to construct a cooperative moral philosophy based entirely upon reason rather than faith, no such philosophy has yet survived the scrutiny of the critics. It was rather easy to make bold statements about right and wrong but almost impossible to prove them to be true. It’s not easy to convince people to restrain themselves against their own selfish interests unless some higher authority has the power and is prepared to use it to enforce restraint.
Nietzsche argued that unless our assertions about morals and values are based upon solid metaphysical foundations then they are just meaningless rhetoric. Now that the idea of God is dying, he wrote, we should abandon any sentimental notions of right and wrong. Such notions are merely the residual effects of baseless religious and philosophical moralizing. He said that the only solid foundation upon which we can build a system of morals and values is on the conscious struggle for power.
Without any cosmic plan to give us purpose, our lives become nothing more than the complex interactions between atoms and molecules. If there is no ultimate goal for these interactions, then any attempt to make moral judgments about human behavior would be the same as saying, “this chemical reaction is good, and this one is bad”. Without having been carved into the bedrock of existence by some ultimate authority, any ideas about right and wrong can only be described as whatever was in our best interests at the time.
But what is best for one person is not always best for others was one of the newly emrging conflict with humanism. The claim that we can make the best of our situation by seeking the greatest happiness for the most number of people might sound good to most people, but why should it be accepted by someone who would gladly seek their own happiness at the expense of everyone else?
The conflicting interests of competing groups often lead to differences of opinion about right and wrong, and could easily escalate into political power struggles. The winners of these struggles usually get to impose their own ideas about right and wrong upon everyone else.
Philosophers in the 1700s wrote that all men are equal and have a right to be free. The American Declaration of Independence states that all men have a right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. Such claims might have sounded good, and they did give inspiration to the oppressed masses struggling to free themselves from tyranny, but without being able to explain why we have these rights, other than arguing that they are ‘self-evident’ or using some other hollow form of logic, then they can only really be described as persuasive political propaganda.
The idea of ‘human rights’, which emerged after the two world wars is a manifestation of humanism as an ideal Claims about equality, fairness, and the inherent value of each human life might be influential in the struggle for power, but when they are tested, they cannot be proven to be true. Having them as slogans embedded in the culture, or as political declarations written into national constitutions might give them extra power, but not everlasting legitimacy.
Humanism extended by progressivists: Conservative thinkers believed that selfishness is the key to progress and that competition is nature's way. They believed that history has clearly shown that only greed and fear can be relied upon to motivate and restrain us. Progressive thinkers, on the other hand, have more faith in the power of human reason. They believe that we should always use our knowledge and historical experience to think carefully and make informed judgments about the direction in which the world is heading. They believe that planning and cooperation must always be employed to oversee the blind competition for resources and profit. Greed must be restrained in order to minimize destructive outcomes. Economic growth works best when it benefits everyone and not just the aggressive few.
Before the emergence of democracy, political disagreements were resolved through naked power, often unrestrained by reason or morality. Changes of government required popular uprisings, military coups, or foreign invasions. Short periods of violence were often followed by long periods of oppression. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of those whose ancestors had wreaked the most terror and plundered the most riches. The only way for the poor to change this seemingly unfair arrangement was to overthrow the ruling class and redistribute the wealth. The beauty of democracy is that it allows a nonviolent management of this power struggle. Brute force is replaced by the delicate art of persuasion. Whenever the capitalists forget that the masses need to have enough money to consume the junk that the supermarkets sell, then the socialists will be elected to redistribute the wealth. And when the socialists start throwing money away, and the greed and jealousy of the masses reaches a threshold, then the capitalists will be reelected to reward the profitable and punish the lazy.
This democratic tug of war between two selfish political ideologies, capitalism and socialism, results in a self adjusting system where national economies maintain the best possible balance of tax rates, corporate regulations, minimum wages, and welfare payments; providing conditions for maximum economic success as we continue to ride the highs and lows of the global economic rollercoaster towards some uncharted technological wonderland.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, advancements in science and technology were inspiring a universal optimism for the coming of a golden age. But it soon became apparent that knowledge and invention do not always bring peace and prosperity, as many had anticipated, but sometimes also tyranny and slaughter. For much of the world's population, the wars, genocides, and oppressions of the twentieth century destroyed any comforting faith in man's inherent goodness or the healthy outcome of his passions.
With every advance in technology came the inevitable development of deadlier weapons. Military strength is a powerful temptation, and like all temptations, it has an irresistible quality that makes it impossible to restrain. After the Second World War, Europe's cities were in ruins, its empires had collapsed, and its commanding influence on the world stage had come to an end; too weak now to resist the ominous expansion of the Russian communist empire, the closing of the iron curtain, cold war spy games, and a massive buildup of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the capitalist industrial military machine was growing dangerously powerful. Driven by unrestrained greed and arrogance, it was lying to its people, starting wars for profit, poisoning the earth in a desperate bid to exploit every possible resource, and assembling enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over.
By the second half of the century, there was a growing loss of faith in mankind's ability to manage his own destiny. In spite of improving education, it was beginning to appear that our cultural and spiritual development was not keeping pace with our technological advancement. Fortunately for us, this troublesome imbalance began to change when improvements in electronics led to the mass production of affordable televisions.
With the spread of democracy through social revolution and the end of institutionalized racism, governments around the world started becoming increasingly cooperative; and increased communication, trade, travel, and migration between nations has led to an intermingling of diverse cultures, and a growing acceptance that we are all citizens of a global community.
Even the values that gave rise to the modern world, values like ‘progress’ and ‘science’ were condemned by some special interest groups as being oppressive and dogmatic. By the end of the twentieth century, the rejection of any claims about absolute truths or values, even modern values, had evolved into a popular academic philosophy called ‘postmodernism’.
At its best, postmodernism provides a theoretical framework for describing diverse cultures, beliefs, and historical perspectives without discounting the value of any one group's experience. And it allows skeptical intellectuals to tactfully ignore the claims of Christian fundamentalists, Marxist academics, and other ideological absolutists without appearing rude or provocative. According to some postmodern relativists, the modern world is no better than the prehistoric world, and scientific theories have no greater value than religious myths.
Despite its excesses, postmodernism is the philosophical embodiment of our democratic freedom to be skeptical and criticize everything. It plays a vital role in helping to prevent ideological extremism from gaining popular momentum and silencing all opposition like it has throughout most of human history.
Many different kinds for modern humanisms were precipitate of the conflicting ideologies of the changing time. The two other branches that emerged were: Religious humanism stemming from the Renaissance-Enlightenment tradition. It had many artists, mainline Christians, and scholars in the liberal arts. Their view tends to concentrate on the dignity and nobility of human achievement and possibility. The second kind was Secular humanism reflecting the rise of globalism, technology and the collapse of religious authority. It too acknowledged an individual's dignity, worth and capacity for self-realization through reason and logic.
Educational humanism:
Humanism as a current in education began to dominate school systems in the 19th Century. It held that the studies that develop our intellect are those that make us most truly human. Assimilationist, stern, and rigorous, the aim was to bring the affective and psychomotor natures under the control of the intellect. The practical basis for this was faculty psychology, or the belief in distinct intellectual faculties such as the analytical, the mathematical, the linguistic, etc. Strengthening one faculty was believed to help other faculties as well (transfer of training). A key player in the late 19th century educational humanism was U.S. Commissioner of Education W.T. Harris, whose "Five Windows of the Soul" (math, geography, history, grammar, and literature/art) were believed especially appropriate for development of the faculties. Educational humanists believed that the best studies for the best kids are the best studies for all kids. While humanism as an educational current was largely discredited by the innovations of the early 20th century, it still holds out in some elite preparatory schools and some high school disciplines (especially, of course, literature).
Significance: Clearly, "Humanism" is a term assigned with different and often contradictory meanings by different authors at different times. Nevertheless, humanism is an active ethical and philosophical approach to life focusing on human solutions to human issues through rational arguments without recourse to a god, gods, sacred texts or religious creeds. It places human in the centre of all the sensations happening around us. Broadly, humanism has become a kind of implied ethical doctrine ("-ism") whose sphere is expanded to include the whole human ethnicity, as opposed to traditional ethical systems which apply only to particular ethnic groups. Protagoras' famous claim "man is the measure of all things”, captures the essence of human in humanism.
We witnessed that the history of humanism is complex but enlightening. It was first employed (as humanismus) by 19th-century German scholars to designate the Renaissance emphasis on classical studies in education. Humanitas meant the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent. The historicity of ‘humanism’ began with the emphasis on an individual and those qualities associated with the modern concept of  humanity—understanding, benevolence, compassion, mercy—but also such more aggressive characteristics as fortitude, judgment, prudence, eloquence, and even love of honour.
Human is the possessor of humanitas, not merely a sedentary and isolated philosopher or man of letters but a participant in active life. Just as action without insight was held to be aimless and barbaric, insight without action was rejected as barren and imperfect. It claimed that human beings are a fine balance of action and contemplation, a balance born not of compromise but of complementarity although the goal of such fulfilled and balanced virtue was political, in the broadest sense of the word.
Humanism called for the comprehensive reform of culture, the transfiguration of what humanists termed the passive and ignorant society of the “dark” ages into a new order that would reflect and encourage the grandest human potentialities. Humanism had an evangelical dimension: it sought to project humanitas from the individual into the state at large. So the onus and recipient of all change was an individual. 
There is little doubt that humanism emerged through a conflict with organized religion. But there is so much more to humanism than that. It is not a secular cult of man but an open-ended perspective that seeks to grasp the truth through human experience. As Sartre argued, humanism is not a static project, but an orientation realized through the exercise of human subjectivity
Humanism, lately has expanded manifold to the realm of proposing humanistic personality theories, the pioneers of which are Carl Rogers- (“The organism has one basic tendency and striving- to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing organism”, 1951, p. 487).  Ed Deci (Self-Determination as Autonomy, 1975), Maslow (Hierarchy of needs 1970, 1987). It has turned into a philosophical movement that emphasizes the personal worth of the individual and the centrality of human values.  The Humanistic approach rests on the complex philosophical foundations of existentialism, and emphasizes the creative, spontaneous and active nature of human beings. This approach is very optimistic and focuses on noble human capacity to overcome hardship and despair. 
Humanism and Science:
The notion that humanism and science are inevitably seen as opposed to one another in their goals, content and method has origins in the history as the two have been treated as ‘two cultures’. While one can trace the fear that ‘scientism’ would undermine traditional morality and mythology, the segregation between classical studies and scientific and technical training since 19th century depicts the gulf between them (Owen Hannaway). The cultural bias engendered by this split made historians like Sarton and Thorndike to conclude that Renaissance humanism, with its concern for elegant style and ancient books was inevitably antithetical to the skills of observation, experimentation, and mathematization in which the science was built. But the credit of thinking independently, unfolding with the evolution of humanism, is considered to be a holding ground for the medieval seeds of the Scientific Revolution. 
"God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science."
--Bertrand Russell

Until the last 200 years very few people were interested in scientific research. This probably explains why it was easy for religions to influence the majority of the world's population. There is ample evidence that since the dawn of thinking people have wondered where they came from, why they are here, and what is going to happen to them. There were no scientific answers available because there was little research, and what limited scientific knowledge was developed was controlled by religious rulers and withheld from the general populace. The only answers to the mysteries of life came from religions and were designed to keep people in ignorance and psychological bondage.
Some understanding of the scientific method and at least a basic knowledge of the various fields of science is important to becoming an effective humanist. Atheism, the denial of a belief in god, and agnosticism, the lack of knowledge about god, are both negative philosophical attitudes based primarily on a non-belief system. Humanism is a positive philosophical attitude based on a belief in the scientific method. A humanist believes that accurate scientific research has provided convincing evidence that animate and inanimate objects exist naturally. Even humanists without a formal education in basic science believe that scientific research is a valuable tool for discovering truth and put their faith in scientific evidence. For persons who are humanists by faith to become humanists by knowledge requires that they become familiar with the scientific method. Once they have that understanding, they would gain a stronger feeling of scientific accuracy with personal in-depth studies in the various fields of science. Consequently, the more a humanist understands science, the stronger will be their conviction of the humanist philosophy. Organized humanism can best ensure its future growth by encouraging the teaching of the sciences in all grades of public education. School children should be taught the art of reasoning and learn the basis of the scientific method of inquiry as early as possible. A person taught the scientific method will be less vulnerable to the many philosophies based on supernaturalism. Then, as adults, they would also be more apt to intelligently question even the assumptions and conclusions of scientists. It seems reasonable to assume that one educated in the details of evolution is less likely to accept the claims of creation; one educated in the orderly process of astronomy is less likely to believe the claims of astrology; one educated in the natural systems of the human body is less likely to believe the claims of a supernatural influence.
However, the conceptual tension between humanism and science is open to debates and critical scrutiny even today, whether the developments in science walk hand in hand with humanism or there is a need to revisit the notion of humanism itself. 

References:
1.    The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed Robert Audi
2.    Gaarder, J; Sophie’s World, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux Inc., 1995
3.    Gould, S.J.; The Hedgehog, The Fox and the Magister’s Pox, Vintage, 2004
4.    Schrodinger, E; Nature and the Greeks and Science and Humanism, Cambridge University Press, 1996
5.    Furedi, F; Putting the human back into humanism, Spiked, Nov 2006
6.    Hoenigswald, R;  On Humanism,  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Sep., 1948), pp. 41-50
7.    Blair, Ann; & Grafton, Anthony, Reassessing Humanism and Science,: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1992), pp. 535-540
8.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism
9.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism
10.    http://www.evolutionary-metaphysics.net/modern_materialism.html
11.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages
12.    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497731/Renaissance/284229/Origins-and-rise-of-humanism
13.    http://www.bookslut.com/nonfiction/2003_06_000457.php
14.    http://www.johnreilly.info/hfm.htm
15.    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/275932/humanism
16.    http://wilderdom.com/personality/L10-2Humanistic.html
17.    http://www.humanistsofutah.org/1995/artsept95.htm

•   Humanist scholars shaped the intellectual landscape throughout the early modern period. In the 1440s, Johannes Gutenberg created a printing press with movable type. This revolution in communication greatly assisted in the spread of Renaissance ideals throughout Europe, allowing the ideas to be printed in mass for the first time in history.
•    Political philosophers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More (1478 – 1535) revived the ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers, and applied them in critiques of contemporary government. Machiavelli's contribution, in the view of Isaiah Berlin, was a decisive break in western political thought allocating a unique reasoning to politics and faith and perhaps making him the father of the social sciences.
•     Pico della Mirandola wrote what is often considered the manifesto of the Renaissance, a vibrant defence of thinking, the Oration on the Dignity of Man.
•     Matteo Palmieri (1406-1475), another humanist, is most known for his work Della vita civile ("On Civic Life"; printed 1528) which advocated humanism. Strongly committed to a deep and broad education Palmieri believed this would dispose people to public engagement and enhance the human capacity to do good deeds and contribute to the community. The dialogues concern how children develop mentally and physically, how citizens can conduct themselves morally, how citizens and states can ensure probity in public life, and an important debate on the difference between that which is pragmatically useful and that which is honest.
•     Sir Francis Bacon advocated the restoration of man's original empire of knowledge, which required collecting information from the New World, but he was unsure whether colonisation was the best method for its achievement. This was the first anxiety. Bacon's ideal of restoring man's empire of knowledge also sheds light upon his humanist attitude towards colonisation, from which his second set of anxieties stem. Bacon reconfigured humanist anxieties about the morality of colonisation in an epistemological frame; he was concerned with the influence of greed and corruption upon knowledge. Bacon's science and his humanist politics come together in his views on colonisation.

submitted by Shraddha

 Humanism can be interpreted in several ways. In historical writings, it is usually taken to mean the new interest in Greek and Roman civilization by scholars in Europe, and seen as synonymous with the Renaissance which was the "re-birth" of an interest in this Classical world. It is certainly true that scholars began to study enthusiastically the works of Classical writers such as Cicero (the "father of the Latin eloquence" , Aristotle and Plato, and wanted to emulate their elegant and eloquent style. John Stevens and Peter Burke argue, Humanism was far more than a scholarly movement. It was also a value system, embodying ancient values, or what were believed to be ancient values. This gave rise to a whole new attitude towards politics and human social behavior. In politics however, perhaps the humanist outlook was the most conservative. A sound education, incorporating language, geography and history, was seen as the basis of all good government. It ensured that leaders were fully prepared for their role, and intellectually capable of coping with decision making. Yet although the ideal Renaissance Prince was to embody all these qualities , he was to avoid extremes in anything. He was to keep to Aristotle's "golden mean", by keeping his activities and interest varied. Humanists firmly rejected the Machiavellian principles as advocated in the "The Prince", which suggested that rulers should be exploitative, self seeking, shrewd, and opportunists. The qualities expected in a ruler were also expected in those occupying positions of power in society, and there developed a whole new concept of gentility. In the middle ages, military prowess or wealth were considered to be the main qualifications, but in the sixteenth century, this was increasingly questioned. Civility was becoming all important. To be a brave warrior in the monarch's service was still much esteemed, as was physical agility and fitness, but to use physical force in the settling of personal feuds was increasingly frowned upon. Now personal disputes were expected to be settled by more civilized methods by courts or by monarchical intervention. Also the notion of "service" changed. Factors which gave rise to Humanism: Fall of the “dark ages” The term "Dark Ages" was originally intended to denote the entire period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance also understood as the rise of Humanism; the term "Middle Ages" has a similar motivation, implying an "intermediate" period between Classical Antiquity and the Modern era. In the 19th century scholars began to recognize the accomplishments made during the period, thereby challenging the image of the Middle Ages as a time of darkness and decay.The term "Dark Ages" is now rarely used in scholarship,and when used is often restricted to the Early Middle Ages. On the rare occasions when the term "Dark Ages" is used by historians today, it is intended to be neutral, namely, to express the idea that the events of the period often seem "dark" to us only because of the scarcity of artistic and cultural output, including historical records, when compared with both earlier and later times. Petrarch: father of humanistic tradition The concept of a Dark Age was introduced by Petrarch in the 1330s. Writing of those who had come before him, he said: "Amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius; no less keen were their eyes, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom". Roman successors in Greece The democracy propounded by the Greeks enjoyed a short span of life. The Romans, successor to Greek ideas and institutions, at first seemed to embrace Athenian democratic principles. The regime of the Romans was a mixture of kingship, aristocracy and democracy. Its aim was the collective welfare of the society. But the exigencies of governing an expanding empire led to the corruption of individual rights by the power and expediency of monarchy and aristocracy. For a few hundred years, the Empire ruled by well-disciplined Roman legions maintained conditions of relative peace and security throughout much of Europe. With the decline of the Empire, Europe became more vulnerable to an increasing frequency and intensity of barbarian attacks. Without Roman legions to protect them, local populations fell back on feudal system in which trained warlords and their horse soldiers protected the people in exchange for loyalty and serfdom. Physical security and subsistence level existence were purchased at the cost of individual freedom. Fear and ignorance compelled submission to arbitrary authority. The people’s existence was made subordinate to the rights and arbitrary rule of monarchs, feudal lords and priests. Surrounded by an infallible Pope on one side and a divinely ordained monarch on the other, the population was denied fundamental rights and privileges. A rigid structure of governance, economic activity controlled by feudal lords and thought defined by religion ruled society. Economically, land was the basis of wealth. Socially, heredity was the determinant of position and opportunity. Intellectually, theological doctrine was the sole arbiter of truth. In short, economic, religious and civil liberties, which are the core of democracy, were suppressed by forces of religious and political absolutism, and did not re-emerge until the 15th century. The Rise of political institutions in Italy Centuries of relative physical security and stability under the feudal system led to the re-emergence of long suppressed human energies and aspirations. The feudal system maintained a delicate balance between the rights and power of feudal lords and those of the central monarch. The growth of guild crafts and trade created new centers of wealth and power concentrated in cities. The rise of city-states undermined the power of rural, land-based feudal kingdoms and created an alternative source of support for the monarch. The merchant class that rose to power in these city-states utilized the power of their new found wealth to leverage greater economic freedom and political independence from the monarch in exchange for financial support. As early as the 11th century, the bishops lost control over the Italian city of Lombardy to self-governing communes, whose members were appointed by their citizens. By the end of the century, the commercially active Italian cities of Venice, Florence and Genoa enjoyed a considerable degree of political freedom. Local independence created a rivalry of cities in the fields of art, literature and philosophy. In their attempt to bring themselves to the forefront, aristocrats and princes took over the patronage of literature and art from the Pope. Academies were founded by patron princes in Florence, Naples, Venice, Milan and Padua. Through these academies the influence of new learning infiltrated the late medieval society. The new humanistic education and economic prosperity of the Italian city-states brought into greater prominence the role of the individual in social advancement. The growth of commerce spurred the rise of money as a new center of wealth. The shift from a land-based to a money-based social system laid the economic foundation for the emergence of individualism by according status and privileges to those who acquired wealth by effort and merit rather than restricting it to a hereditary aristocracy. It undermined the power of the feudal lords and transferred power to a new merchant class. The organization of agriculture also underwent tremendous changes. It was found that free laborers who paid rent or worked for wages produced more crops and generated more profits than enserfed laborers. The shift to a new system of wage payments for agricultural labor not only increased agricultural productivity, but also freed peasants from permanent ties to their feudal rulers. The decline of feudalism that resulted led to an increase in individual economic freedom. This new economic freedom became the breeding ground for the rebirth of Greek ideas. It was the wealth gathered from commerce that financed the Renaissance. Cities became fertile soil for the spread of humanistic thought, social aspirations and individual enterprise, leading to the rebirth of classical learning and literature in Renaissance Italy. The rise of vernacular languages acted as a channel for the spread of humanistic ideas to all sections of the society. Humanism tried to free intellect from the control of religion. The new humanism transformed the medieval ideal of a man with a sword to that of individual attaining worth by absorbing the culture of the Greeks and Romans. Study of the Classics was no longer confined to the clergy and aristocracy. Humanism opened the gates of secular learning to layman. The hereditary base of social privilege began to give way. The new economic, political and intellectual environment contributed to religious reformation. The Reformation was a direct attack on the suppression of individualism by a despotic church organization. The Reformation transmitted new humanistic ideas to all parts of Europe. It shifted authority in the sphere of religion from the institution of the church to the individual. It sowed the seeds of freedom that later sprouted in the economic, political and social spheres. Origins of Democracy in England The fall of the Roman Empire in the West (476 A.D) and barbarian invasions that followed marked the beginning of the Middle Ages in England. Feudalism and Catholicism spread as remedies for the resulting insecurity, fear and poverty. In the absence of a strong protective government, people surrendered their lands and labor to local warlords in return for shelter and support. The quest for physical security resulted in economic subjection and military allegiance to those who could organize defense and agriculture. Wars, famine and plague forced the peasant and serf to accept the suzerainty of temporal and spiritual lords. Every family had a lord to protect or subject it. This gave rise to a landed aristocracy and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Under the feudal system, ownership of land was the principle source of wealth and power. In the realm of religion, the Papacy reigned supreme. In the Middle Ages, to be literate meant to know Latin, because the Holy Scripture and anything else of importance were written down in that language. Commoners were not taught Latin and were not allowed to read the Bible. The church controlled people’s intellectual horizons through a hierarchy of parish priests, monks and preaching friars and created its influence on all walks of human life. Papal taxation on the land was very high. By 1279, the Church of England had amassed enormous wealth in the form of taxes and land. In order to enhance their power, the Popes themselves used war as an instrument of policy. Politically, the Divine Right theory of kingship prevailed. According to this doctrine, the king was considered the representative of God on earth. In the early Middle ages, kings were chosen or accepted by the great barons and ecclesiastics. Their direct power was limited to their own feudal domain or manors. The serf and the vassal swore loyalty to the lord who protected them, rarely to the king whose small and distant forces could not reach out to guard the remote areas of his realm. The kings, lacking the machinery for imperial taxation, could not pay for standing armies, so their dependence on the lords further strengthened feudalism. In an age of faith, kings were also compelled to accept the suzerainty of the papacy. Moreover, the monarchs needed the support of the church in their fight against feudal barons. These conditions limited the power of the monarch. The rigid social hierarchy severely restricted human freedom. People lived in a closed society that left little scope for individual advancement. By the dawn of the 11th century, the cessation of attacks from barbarian invaders and the stability of the feudal system provided a sense of physical security. The energy expended in self-defense was diverted to other walks of life. The rise of a money economy, the revival of commerce, the rise of guild and communes, the decline of feudalism and the accumulation of agricultural surpluses provided the basis for economic recovery and significant material progress. Physical security released aspirations for economic freedom. This economic advancement strengthened the liberalizing forces in the agrarian society. Power shifts from land to money The rise of a money economy sounded the death knell of feudalism. "Feudal customs and practices completely decayed by 1500. Personal unfreedom and the status of villeinage were eradicated by 1640." Land, the basis of power in the medieval period, lost its importance. It took centuries for this process to reach completion. But the seeds were sown with the birth of money. With the growth of a money economy, the feudal lords found the serf labor less competent than free labor. So they commuted the old feudal dues into fixed money payments. Lands were leased to free peasants in return for rent. Serfdom lost its foundations and gave way to peasant proprietorship. The peasantry achieved a degree of freedom and prosperity that it had not known in the last thousand years. The lessening of the old seignorial relations between lord and the cultivator coupled with the continued disintegration of the manorial system further spurred the social position of the individual citizen. The decline of feudalism opened the doors for agricultural development. In the feudal period, agricultural production was aimed only to meet the needs of the lord and his manor. The profit motive released by the money economy transformed feudal subsistence production into commercial agriculture. The new commercial agriculture helped change the unreflecting peasant of the 13th century into an individualistic and enterprising farmer. The freedom and emergence of individual as a result of the breakdown of feudalism and shift from a subsistence economy to a market economy prepared the grounds for the growth of humanism in England. Waves of inflation that swept through England during the 15th century provided additional impetus for the new agrarian economy. The rise in population and increase in the flow of silver and gold from America and Spain were important causes for inflation during this period. The price rise stimulated the commercial exploitation of land. It shattered the financial stability of the Crown, though the extent of the damage to the Crown only became fully apparent two centuries later. By depressing royal income deriving from fixed land rents and taxes and by increasing royal expenditure, the price rise made the king increasingly dependent on the Parliament for finance. The loss of the Crown’s financial independence was one of the most important reasons for the growth of political democracy. The price rise redistributed national income among the rising class of gentry and merchants. This redistribution of national wealth undermined the medieval concentration of wealth that had contributed to the suppression and serfdom of peasants. The economic changes rendered possible by the forces of inflation and market economy brought to the forefront new classes in English society – gentry and yeomen. Along with the merchant class, the gentry and yeomen gradually replaced the old baronial families in the political and social life. This new landed aristocracy based more on wealth than on birth, became the nucleus for the governing class in the counties. Backed by the power of money, these classes gained the power to voice their political and religious disagreements with the government. Rise of commerce creates urban power centers The growth of commerce stimulated the liberation of cities from feudal control. The cities were more democratic than the countryside. Though they began as humble enclaves in a feudal world, the towns began to assume the proportions of a challenger and a competitor, helping to sustain governments and competing in their interests with the feudal lords. They changed the basis of the whole medieval society from agrarian to urban, from one dominated by a military aristocracy to one dominated by an aristocracy of wealth. The main factor in the growth of towns was the merchant. Through the organization of guilds merchants fought for the rights of the city and their leadership was rarely challenged. The towns acquired new forms of government in the shape of a mayor and council or some similar instruments of action. Many merchants demanded communal freedom of the towns from the feudal lords. The English monarchs granted the communes charters of limited self-government in return for their support against the nobility. Alongside the increase in the power of towns, commerce gained momentum. The increase in the volume of trade, local and foreign, gave the merchants a prominent position. The revival of commerce rejuvenated the guilds. The guilds were formed to protect the mercantile community from feudal barons and kings. The Lord Mayor of London was chosen by the city guilds and not by the king or priest. The revival of guilds and commerce gave rise to institutions for commercial credit and banking. The merchants who played the role of creditors to the monarchs utilized money as an instrument to gain more privileges from the State. This continued until the whole power of finance fell into the hands of the English parliament. In the words of Will Durant, "For the first time in a thousand years, the possession of money became again a greater power than the possession of land." The rising merchant class became stronger, more self-assertive and dissatisfied with arbitrary rule of the monarch. The idea of economic liberalism was projected by this group as a challenge to political absolutism. Economic growth of England in the 16th and 17th Centuries and the resultant distribution of wealth further spurred the rise of economic liberalism. Economic development helped dissolve the old bonds of service and obligations and created new relationships based on the operations of the market. The entrepreneurial activities of the newly rich exerted tremendous influence on the society. There was a massive shift of wealth away from the church and the Crown, away from both the very rich and the very poor and towards the upper middle and middle class. It is this section of society that brought into being forces of change and fought against the conservative hierarchical order of society. They clamored for more rights – rights to trade freely and for freedom of expression. "For the first time in history men were demanding something more from the State than merely law and order and security against foreign enemies ", says Will Durant. Religious freedom laid the foundations for political freedom New forces arose to threaten the old patterns of religious life. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, Roman Catholicism was moving towards its peak, with the old ways more and more in disharmony with new forces. Individualism, nationalism and secularism contributed to a climate of opinion hostile to the continuation of privileges and abuses in the church. They had been tolerated so long because they were bound up with feudal traditions. The Lords and the Commons were more hostile to the papal authority than the king. Reformers like John Wycliffe emphasized the importance of the individual and his ability to effect direct contact with God. He attacked the intermediary role of the priest between individual and God. The Reformation reduced the prestige of the Roman papacy and heightened that of the monarchy. Reformation was at its core a fight for freedom from religious oppression. By drawing a line of demarcation between polity and religion, it paved the way for the establishment of humanistic temper. Further, the Protestant theology appealed to the individualism of the middle class. The phrase ‘the individual’ in its modern sense dates from the late 16th or early 17th centuries. By raising the voice of the laity against that of the clergy, Protestantism contributed to the development of democratic thinking. Individual liberties, which were asserted first with respect to man’s dealings with God, came to be regarded as important in human beings’ dealings with each other as well. Spread of secular education The latter half of the Middle Ages saw the rise of universities and the shift of emphasis from monasteries to schools. The ideal of education changed from the training of priests and scholars to the training of accomplished persons to serve the state. Secular education spurred social leveling. In 200 years from 1480 to 1660, fifteen grammar schools, with places for 1,500 boys, were founded in London alone. By the end of HenryVIII’s reign, almost every market town standing had a grammar school. The Reformation freed education from the hands of religion and stimulated development of a national education system. It was also a more socially integrated education system. Sons of the gentry, who would previously have been taught in monasteries, now sat side by side with the sons of small families in village and grammar schools. The Protestant emphasis on secular education broadened men’s outlook and sowed the seeds of political freedom. Ancient forces of conservatism were pushed to the background and new ideas of democracy and equality flourished in an atmosphere of free discussion and debate. The educational advance of the period also was responsible for the growth of theories of popular sovereignty. Demands made for parliamentary reform, including manhood suffrage, the sweeping away of all manner of privileges, and the rise of liberal opinion can be attributed to the rising level of literacy in England during this period. The revolution of 1688 gave power to the merchants and landed aristocracy. The financial and constitutional conflicts of the 17th century ended in the establishment of the power of the parliament. The shifting of power over finance from king to parliament was one of the central factors that helped in the steady extension of political liberties. Power shifted from the king to those who possessed money, but economic and political benefits were not spread uniformly to sections of the society. However, from this point onwards we observe increasing evidence of mental quest by European intellectuals for a new social order that will distribute the economic and political benefits to all sections of the society. This quest expressed itself in the realm of knowledge as the rise of modern science; in the field of economics as the rise of capitalism and money economy; in the sphere of industry as successive technological revolutions; and in the political sphere as democratic revolution and the progressive affirmation of the individual human rights. These interrelated movements gradually led to the rising value of the individual in society and the spread of humanism. Rise of “New World” The fifteenth century saw the discovery of the "New World", and this influenced beliefs and intellectual understandings of Europeans, shattering the familiarity and certainly of their lives, while at the same time exciting their curiosity and hunger for knowledge. The sixteenth century brought in its wake a whole new religious outlook which challenged almost every aspect of life. The Reformation played an important role in creating a new attitude to education as Protestantism was a far more intellectually demanding religion than Catholicism, requiring a sound knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures. The need for competent clerics became all the more important, and as the standards of the Catholic and early Protestant clergy were not particularly high, it became apparent that a higher standard of education was necessary. On a lay level, to be able to fully participate in Protestant culture, it was necessary to be literate, and to be literate demanded at least a rudimentary education. Another very significant development of the fifteenth century, which was not really felt in Western Europe until the sixteenth century, was the coming of the Printing press. This "German invention" revolutionized the nature of communication in Europe. Not only did it make the mass production of texts so much easier by requiring far less man power, it also made the mass production of identical texts possible. This was significant for education and in particular scholarship. It made textual criticism simpler and more practical, enabling scholars to communicate with each other simply by referring to the edition and page number of texts. The simultaneous development of paper also helped to reduce the cost of books, and these too developments combined allowed individual scholars to buy their own books. This undoubtedly helped their understanding of intellectual theories and debates, and also implicitly encouraged a move away from the oral/aural, scholastic education that predominated in the universities. Humanism and place of man Emphasis on liberty and the studies related to man were the main tenets of humanism. Humanism celebrates some finer qualities of the human beings and finding in them some kind of inspiration for a worthy life. Humanism suggests a recognition of something importantly special and distinctive about human beings. What is it that we tend to think of as special and distinctive about human beings? Intellectual capacities our mental life constructed more broadly our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, feelings, experiences, sensations, hopes, fears, wishes, desires, choices and decisions what we also think os as important is not just we have these mental states and experiences but that they are conscious experiences, the possession of consciousness (awareness of our own mental state and experiences) is what makes us distinctly human. One reason why consciousness is important is that it is a precondition of our capacity to appraise our own mental states, that is, our ability to stand back from them and think about them and evaluate them. We need to do this in order to make rational decisions about our future actions, by whom large claims are made, and it may be that they possess something closer to human consciousness. This is not a dogmatic claim about the uniqueness of a human character but possession of behavior: the language of our beliefs, emotions and desires describes our behavior. Without these no action could be explained. Dualism Humans have conscious mental stares and experiences, and are aware of them in a way quite different from the way in which we might observe physical things in our environment, including physiological processes in our own or others body. Dualism, with apparent plausibility, infers that mental states and physical states must be states of two quiet distinct kind of things, mind and body. And hence we get two kind of states -mental sate and the physical sate assigned to two kind of worlds. Descartes philosophy of mind-body dualism, prompted by the rise of modern science, provides a way of reconciling the two worlds. Science gives us knowledge of the physical world, in which everything can be understood as mechanical processes consisting in the movements of the matter in space, leaving the mental realm for the soul, which Descartes identifies with the mind and which he think can exist independently of any body.(he also thinks that non-human animals since they do not have consciousness, do not possess soul). State of consciousness is a distinctive feature of the human beings, distinctive in the sense that most perhaps all other species of living things lack it and distinctive also in the sense that the possession of consciousness seems to be a n essential precondition for the things that give our lives value and purpose. Possession of “self” what we a call the self, according to Hume is a collection of different perceptions. Each individual physically embodied human being is aware of his/her own thoughts, feelings and experiences in the special way which differentiates from the thoughts, feelings and experiences of others. The concept of man acquires a place of particular prominence in the 18th century, when works such as Hume's A treatise of human nature and Helvetius's de I' Homme employ the idea of human nature as the synthesizing concept around which knowledge can be organised. An account of the sources and the limits of human knowledge and of passions which drive all human action, directs into generalising a universal human nature, judging human beings by the standard of one particular section of humanity.the danger of this is the masking of historically specific experiences of oppression and marginalization which depart from the assumed paradigm of human nature, labelling some groups of human beings as less than fully human or even sub human. The shared universal features of human condition should not obscure the specific facts and to understand why they matter. The growth of scientific understanding has tried to dethrone the human species from his lordly position. True, the universe does not exist for our benefit. We occupy a tiny position of of a universe which is immense in space and time. A recognition of our insignificance in relation to the rest of the universe is properly humbling, but it need not render our existence pointless, and it does not require us to deny what we take to be important features of our nature- the capacity for consciousness of our own mental sates, for assessing them and making choices in the light of our own evaluations. References: On Humanism by Richard Norman Humanism: The new Critical Idiom by Tony Davies