Humanism

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HISTORY OF HUMANISM WITH ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

Although the term "humanism" was not applied to a philosophy or belief system until the European Renaissance, those early humanists were inspired the ideas and attitudes which they discovered in forgotten manuscripts from ancient Greece. This Greek humanism can be identified by a number of shared characteristics: it was materialistic in that it sought explanations for events in the natural world, it valued free inquiry in that it wanted to open up new possibilities for speculation, and it valued humanity in that it placed human beings at the center of moral and social concerns.

THE THEORISTS

Perhaps the earliest person we might be able to call a "humanist" in some sense would be Protagoras, a Greek philosopher and teacher who lived around the 5th century BCE. Protagoras exhibited two important features which remain central to humanism even today.
First, he appears to have made humanity the starting point for values and consideration when he created his now-famous statement "Man is the measure of all things." In other words, it is not to the gods that we should look when establishing standards, but instead to ourselves.
Secondly, Protagoras was skeptical with regards to traditional religious beliefs and traditional gods - so much so, in fact, that he was accused of impiety and exiled from Athens. According to Diogenes Laertius, Protagoras claimed that: "As to gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life." This is a radical sentiment even today, much less 2,500 years ago.
Protagoras may be one of the earliest of whom we have records of such comments, but he was surely not the first to have such thoughts and to try to teach them to others. He also wasn't the last: despite his unfortunate fate at the hands of Athenian authorities, other philosophers of the era pursued the same lines of humanist thinking.
They tried to analyze the workings of the world from a naturalistic perspective rather than as the arbitrary actions of some god. This same naturalistic methodology was also applied to the human condition as they sought to better understand aesthetics, politics, ethics, and so on. No longer were they content with the idea that standards and values in such areas of life were simply handed down from previous generations and/or from the gods; instead, they sought to understand them, evaluate them, and determine to what degree any of them were justified.

Socrates, the central figure in Plato's Dialogues, picks apart traditional positions and arguments, revealing their weaknesses while offering independent alternatives. Aristotle tried to codify standards not only of logic and reason, but also of science and art. Democritus argued for a purely materialistic explanation of nature, claiming that everything in the universe is composed of tiny particles - and that this is the true reality, not some spiritual world beyond our present life.

Epicurus adopted this materialistic perspective on nature and used it to further develop his own system of ethics, arguing that the enjoyment of this current, material world is the highest ethical good towards which a person can strive. According to Epicurus, there are no gods to please or who might interfere with our lives - what we have here and now is all that should concern us.

THE ART OF HUMANISM

Of course, Greek humanism was not located merely in the musings of some philosophers - it was also expressed in politics and art. For example, the famous Funeral Oration delivered by Pericles in 431 BCE as a tribute to those who died during the first year of Peloponnesian War makes no mention of gods or souls or an afterlife. Instead, Pericles emphasizes that those who were killed did so for the sake of Athens and that they would live on in the memories of its citizens.

Greek dramatist Euripides satirized not only Athenian traditions, but also Greek religion and the nature of the gods who played such a big role in many people's lives. Sophocles, another playwright, emphasized the importance of humanity and the wondrousness of humanity's creations. These are but a few of the Greek philosophers, artists, and politicians whose ideas and actions not only represented a break from a superstitious and supernaturalistic past, but also posed a challenge for the systems of religious authority in the future.

Source: about.com

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Humanism

HUMANISM

The intellectual and social movement which historians call humanism is what lies at the base of the period we call the Renaissance. Humanism and its ideals came to pervade the art, literature, learning, law, and civic life, first in Italy, then in all of Europe. But what is humanism? Scholars are still debating this issue, but there is a consensus on a basic definition. Simply put, humanism is a rediscovery and re-evaluation of the aspects of classical civilization (ancient Greece and Rome) and the application of these aspects to intellectual and social culture. It is also in many ways a reaction against scholasticism, the dominant intellectual school of the Middle Ages. Scholasticism, while a vital and dynamic method in its early days in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had, in the eyes of its detractors, by the fourteenth century become little more than organized quibbling over minor points of philosophy and theology.
In contrast, the early humanists espoused a return to study of the original texts, rather than a reliance on the glosses and commentaries produced by the scholasticists. This break was by no means clear--many of the later humanists continued to admire and make use of the works of scholastic scholars, while forging ahead with their own examination of the sources.
As the grip of medieval supernaturalism began to diminish, secular and human interests became more prominent. The facts of individual experience in the here and now became more interesting than the shadowy afterlife. Reliance upon faith and God weakened. Fortuna (chance) gradually replaced Providence as the universal frame of reference. The present world became an end in itself instead of simply preparation of a world to come. Indeed, as the age of Renaissance humanism wore on, the distinction between this world (the City of Man) and the next (the City of God) tended to disappear.
Beauty was believed to afford at least some glimpse of a transcendental existence. This goes far to explain the humanist cult of beauty and makes plain that humanism was, above everything else, fundamentally an aesthetic movement. Human experience, man himself, tended to become the practical measure of all things. The ideal life was no longer a monastic escape from society, but a full participation in rich and varied human relationships.
The dominating element in the finest classical culture was aesthetic rather than supernatural or scientific. In the later Middle Ages urban intellectuals were well on the road to the recovery of an aesthetic and secular view of life even before the full tide of the classical revival was felt. It was only natural, then, that pagan literature, with its emotional and intellectual affinity to the new world view, should accelerate the existing drift toward secularism and stimulate the cult of humanity, the worship of beauty, and especially the aristocratic attitude.

WHY ITALY?

Humanism's roots were in a rediscovery of classical antiquity. For the early pioneers of humanism, this meant the Latin language. Italy, unlike so much of Europe, had never completely lost Latin literacy. Latin was still taught in the schools and universities, most significantly to laymen in training to become notaries. Thus, Latin literacy was not confined mainly to churchmen as it was elsewhere in Europe. In the schools, potential notaries learned the specialized legal language of law, known as the _ars dictaminis _ . This was indirectly based on the rhetorical works of Cicero, though it had become rather rigid and rule-bound over the years. However, it meant that potential notaries were exposed to certain of Cicero's works. Gradually, people began to reexamine these works.

WHO WAS THE FIRST HUMANIST?

Most scholars would say that Petrarch, an Italian poet and writer of the Trecento (1300's), would best fit this label. His influence continued to be felt throughout the entire humanistic movement, and his successors called him their spiritual father. Petrarch was a great admirer of Cicero, and rediscovered and translated much of his correspondence. He strove to learn from Cicero and use his style in his own Latin writing. Petrarch also wrote in the vernacular-- a style which would finally gain acceptance among scholars in the Renaissance. We also remember him as the first man since antiquity to be awarded a laurel crown for his poetry.

WHAT DID THEY BELIEVE?

The humanists believed that the Greek and Latin classics contained both all the lessons one needed to lead a moral and effective life and the best models for a powerful Latin style. They developed a new, rigorous kind of classical scholarship, with which they corrected and tried to understand the works of the Greeks and Romans, which seemed so vital to them.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ancients
Both the republican elites of Florence and Venice and the ruling families of Milan, Ferrara, and Urbino hired humanists to teach their children classical morality and to write elegant, classical letters, histories, and propaganda. In the course of the fifteenth century, the humanists also convinced most of the popes that the papacy needed their skills. Sophisticated classical scholars were hired to write official correspondence and propaganda; to create an image of the popes as powerful, enlightened, modern rulers of the Church; and to apply their scholarly tools to the church's needs, including writing a more classical form of the Mass. The relation between popes and scholars was never simple, for the humanists evolved their own views on theology. Some argued that pagan philosophers like Plato basically agreed with Christian revelation. Others criticized important Church doctrines or institutions that lacked biblical or historical support. Some even seemed in danger of becoming pagans. The real confrontation came in the later sixteenth century, as the church faced the radical challenge of Protestantism. Some Roman scholars used the methods of humanist scholarship to defend the Church against Protestant attacks, but others collaborated in the imposition of censorship. Classical scholarship, in the end, could not reform the Church which it both supported and challenged.

Scholarship Challenges Tradition
In the end, it proved impossible to consummate the marriage of humanism and the Catholic condition. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a few humanists thought they could use their skills as scholars to reanimate the church. Humanist theologians insisted that the formal theology of the universities was far less valuable than a direct knowledge of the biblical text, and that the documents that supported the church's priveleges should be subjected to critical scrutiny, like any others. But even in the early Renaissance, these men came under fire from the professionals they criticized. And in the later sixteenth century, as the Protestants mounted their radical challenge to papal supremacy and Catholic orthodoxy, the Roman church became a center not only of scholarly inquiry but of systematic censorship. Even the staff of the library took part in suppressing facts and ideas that proved inconvenient--like the fact that important documents of the canon law were fakes. By the end of the sixteenth century, the church was less interested in wedding humanism than in taming it.

Linguistic Correctness
The humanists of the Renaissance believed that their mission was to revive the high Roman style of writing pure and eloquent Latin. When that flourished, "painting, sculpture, modelling, and architecture" would flourish as well--so Lorenzo Valla told the readers of his great treatise on Latin usage. But this program had powerful implications for the church. Scholars at the curia translated the Fathers of the Church into elegant classical Latin. They wrote Latin letters and histories on behalf of the popes. And they even tinkered with the church's traditional liturgy, trying to make prayers and hymns attractively classical. Humanist secretaries and popes wrote dazzling Latin. But when they insisted on calling the Christian God "Jupiter" and Christian churches "temples," they raised serious questions in many onlookers' minds. Even Erasmus, the great Dutch classical scholar who loved Latin and wrote it brilliantly, thought the curia tried too hard to be classical and wrote a brilliant satire of the Roman followers of Cicero.

Confronting the Original Texts
The humanists dedicated themselves to reviving antiquity--that is, to searching for, copying, and studying the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Poggio Bracciolini, a long-time employee of the church, was the most brilliant of the early fifteenth-century manuscript hunters. He braved what he described as the squalid, neglected libraries of Germany, Switzerland, and England in his quest for new texts. Later in the century, curial scholars began to collate--and digest--the new mass of material, and to translate vital Greek sources, like the works of Herodotus and Thucydides. Not all of these texts were clearly acceptable to Christians, or even consistently moral. But Roman intellectuals prized problematical works like the epigrams of Martial as well as moral ones like most of the dialogues of Plato. Vatican manuscripts enable us to follow the humanists at work, writing in the margins of their texts and then collecting and publishing their notes as scholarly works. These glimpses of how texts passed from script to print are among the Vatican's most remarkable--and revealing--holdings.


Sources: comp.dit.ie
historyguide.org
loc.gov

[Angel]

Introduction to greek humanism and pre-socratic philosophy

INTRODUCTION TO GREEK HUMANISM AND PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY

"Greek Culture has a distinctive style that enables us to see it as an organic whole. … [The] common thread that runs through Greek philosophy, literature, and art is “a sense of the wholeness of things” – the conviction that the universe contains an inherent order, that law govern both nature and human affairs, and that this law can be comprehended by human reason.”
- Perry in Sources of the Western Tradition, pg 47

I. Greek Humanism

“The Greeks originated the Western humanist tradition. They valued the human personality and sought the full cultivation of human talent. In the Greek view, a man of worth pursued excellence, that is, he sought to mold himself in accordance with the highest standards and ideals. …. [Homer’s] great epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, contain the embryo of the Greek humanist tradition: the concern with man and his achievements.”
- Perry in Sources of the Western Tradition pgs 46/48

Homer’s humanism –

“He who wins of a sudden, some noble prize
In the rich years of youth
Is raised high with hope; his manhood takes wings;
He has in his heart what is better than wealth
But brief is the season of man’s delight.
Soon it falls to the ground;
Some dire decision uproots it.
- Thing of a day! Such is man: a shadow in a dream.
Yet when god-given splendor visits him
A bright radiance plays over him, and how sweet is life.”

- The Greek poet Pindar (c. 518 – 438 B.C.) praising a victorious athlete

“[Man] the skilled, the brilliant! He conquers all, taming with his techniques the pretty that roams the cliffs and wild lairs, training the stallion, clamping the yoke across his shaggy neck, and the tireless mountain bull. And speech and thought, quick as the wind, and the mood and mind for law that rules the city – all these he has taught himself. … Never without resources, never an impasse as he marches on the future – only Death, from Death alone he will find no rescue, but from desperate plagues he has plotted his escapes.

Man the master, ingenious past all measure, past all dreams, the skills within his grasp – he forges on, now to destruction, now again to greatness. When he weaves in the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods that binds his oaths together, he and his city rise high – but the city casts out that man who weds himself to inhumanity thanks to reckless daring. Never share my hearth, never think my thoughts, whoever does such things.”
- Sophocles (c. 460 – 406 B.C.) in a famous passage from his play Antigone


II. Greek Philosophy:

Philosophy is the inquiry into the nature of things around us and the processes whereby they had come into being and by which they changed. Philosophy is traditionally divided pre and post Socrates (469-399). Inquiring into the nature of the world was not new, all societies attempt to explain the natural world, why it exists and what the role of man was; the Greeks, though, took this inquiry to the next level.

The basic three questions of Greek, and subsequent, philosophy:

1) The Problem of Reality: what exists and how it came into being / what is the world made of?
2) The Problem of Knowledge: How can we know and what does it mean to know?
3) The Problem of Ethics: How should we behave/what should we do?



EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY


THE COSMOLOGISTS

“Winds occur when the finest vapours of the air are separated off and when they are set in motion by congregation; rain occurs from the exhalation that issues upwards from the things beneath the sun, and lightning whenever wind breaks out and cleaves the clouds…. [All] these things occur [thunder, lightning, thunderbolts, whirlwinds and typhoons] as a result of wind: for whenever it is shut up in a thick cloud and then burst out forcibly, though its fineness and lightness, then the bursting makes the noise, while the rift against the blackness of the cloud makes the flash…”
- Anaximander (c. 611-547 B.C.)

“[The Pythagoreans] saw that the attributes and the ratios of the musical scales were expressible in numbers; since, then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be modeled after numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of natures, they supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number. And all the properties of numbers and scales which they could show to agree with the attributes and parts and the whole arrangement of the heavens, they collected and fitted into their scheme.”
- Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.) writing on Pythagoras (c. 580 – 507 B.C.) and his followers


EXPANSION OF REASON AND INQUIRY

“I am about to discuss the disease called ‘sacred.’ It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men’s inexperience, and to their wonder at its peculiar character. … My own view is that those who first attributed a sacred character to this malady were like magicians, purifiers, charlatans and quacks of our own day, men who claim great piety and superior knowledge. Being at a loss, and having no treatment which would help, they concealed and sheltered themselves behind superstition, and called this illness sacred, in order that their utter ignorance might not be manifest.”
- A follower of Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.) writing on epilepsy excerpted from The Sacred Disease.

“In investigating past history … [people] are inclined to accept all stories of ancient times in an uncritical way – even when these stories concern their own native countries…. Most people, in fact, will not take trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear. However, I do not think that one will be far wrong in accepting the conclusions which I have put forward. It is better evidence than that of the poets, who exaggerate the importance of their themes, or of the prose chroniclers, who are less interested in telling the truth than in catching the attention of their public, whose authorities cannot be checked, and whose subject-matter, owing to the passage of time is mostly lost in the unreliable streams of mythology.”
- Thucydides (c. 460 – 400 B.C.) writing about his method of historical inquiry in his History of the Peloponnesian War.


THE SOPHISTS

“There was a time when the life of men was unordered, bestial and the slave of force, when there was no reward for the virtuous and no punishment for the wicked. Then, I think, men devised retributory laws, in order that Justice might be dictator and have arrogance as its slave, and if anyone sinned, he was punished. Then, when the laws forbade them to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear (of the gods) for mortals, that there might be some means of frightening the wicked, even if they do anything or say or think it in secret. Hence he introduced the Divine (religion)….”
- An excerpt from a surviving fragment of a play by Critias (c. 480 – 403 B.C.)

Physis

Nomos

“Man is the measure of all things”
- Protagoras

“If you ask one of them a question, they draw out enigmatic little expressions from their quiver, so to speak, and shoot one off; and if you try to get hold of an account of what that one meant, you’re transfixed by another novel set of metaphors. You’ll never get anywhere with any of them.”
- Socrates (469 – 399 B.C.) railing against the followers of Heraclitus of Ephesus.

source: writewellgroup.com

[Angel]

New Humanism

New Humanism

A critical movement in the United States between 1910 and 1930, based on the literary and social theories of the English poet and critic Matthew Arnold, who sought to recapture the moral quality of past civilizations in an age of industrialization and materialism. Reacting against the scientifically oriented philosophies of literary realism and naturalism, New Humanists refused to accept deterministic views of human nature.
They argued that:
(1) human beings are unique among nature's creatures;
(2) the essence of experience is fundamentally moral and ethical;
(3) the human will, although subject to genetic laws and shaped by the environment, is essentially free.
With these points of contention, the New Humanists—Paul Elmer More, Irving Babbitt, Norman Foerster, and Robert Shafer, to name only a few—outlined an entire program and aesthetic to incorporate their beliefs. By the 1930s the New Humanists had come to be regarded as cultural elitists and advocates of social and aesthetic conservatism, and their influence became negligible.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica