We are independent & ad-supported. We may earn a commission for purchases made through our links.
Advertiser Disclosure
Our website is an independent, advertising-supported platform. We provide our content free of charge to our readers, and to keep it that way, we rely on revenue generated through advertisements and affiliate partnerships. This means that when you click on certain links on our site and make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn more.
How We Make Money
We sustain our operations through affiliate commissions and advertising. If you click on an affiliate link and make a purchase, we may receive a commission from the merchant at no additional cost to you. We also display advertisements on our website, which help generate revenue to support our work and keep our content free for readers. Our editorial team operates independently of our advertising and affiliate partnerships to ensure that our content remains unbiased and focused on providing you with the best information and recommendations based on thorough research and honest evaluations. To remain transparent, we’ve provided a list of our current affiliate partners here.
Philosophy

Our Promise to you

Founded in 2002, our company has been a trusted resource for readers seeking informative and engaging content. Our dedication to quality remains unwavering—and will never change. We follow a strict editorial policy, ensuring that our content is authored by highly qualified professionals and edited by subject matter experts. This guarantees that everything we publish is objective, accurate, and trustworthy.

Over the years, we've refined our approach to cover a wide range of topics, providing readers with reliable and practical advice to enhance their knowledge and skills. That's why millions of readers turn to us each year. Join us in celebrating the joy of learning, guided by standards you can trust.

What is Humanism?

Tricia Christensen
By
Updated: May 23, 2024
Views: 33,471
Share

Humanism is an enormous term encompassing various movements in the arts, philosophical stances, and broad applications to disciplines like psychology and education. You can boil down the term to a philosophy that asserts the worth of the individual, the human, essentially. Each human is gifted with the ability to think (rationality) and to make rational determinations, like differentiating bad from good, so that each person may become a more moral self. “Moral” in this sense is not used to preference one set of religious beliefs but refers to a more universal concept of morality that allows for the belief that all people have an intrinsic worth.

You see the ideas of humanism as expressed by the Greek philosophers. In particular Plato’s Socrates advocates the unfolding of the human to a better self, and does so through the Socratic method, questioning people intensively to help them understand how they think and to promote greater capacity for wisdom and rationality. These philosophies were picked up by Aristotle, and in conjunction, the rediscovery of these Greek works in the 14th century CE define the humanist movement we often refer to as the Renaissance.

It’s important to note that even under this concept of self-worth, not every human got a fair deal. Though the middle ages was ending, and more people were learning to read, learning to rationalize and get their own ideas about the self, religion, and the like, there were many who were ignored and many who were illiterate: serfs and many of the tradesmen. Similarly in Greek teachings, Plato and Aristotle often miss the abuses of the common man, the slaves or servants, and speak to a particular class of people — for the most part, those who had access to education.

Although the Humanist movement of the Renaissance could not cure all ills of society, it certainly began to provoke debate about how society dealt with its people. Large organizations that had controlled the flow of education, particularly the Church, began to be increasingly criticized. From the humanist movement, we get the rise of interest in an individual interpretation of God and a rejection of corruptions in the church that did not serve the individual.

What tends to be rejected most is belief without a reason. Instead of turning to mysticism and faith, people turned to their own ability to reason. This could lead to the individual who concludes a God exists, or who rejects God altogether. Christian humanists paid particular attention to Christ, as expressing many of the thoughts in common with the humanist. In particular, Christ asserts the importance of the individual in many key places in the New Testament books.

Humanism in education can refer to specific “humanist” teachings designed to train the rational mind, or it can be a philosophy, as is more current, asserting the right for all to learn, and to a degree direct their own learning, such as in Montessori schools. Traditional humanist education trained the mind by studying a variety of disciplines: languages, literature and art, mathematics, history and geography.

In psychology some principles of humanism were adopted in the 1950s, which are now still reflected in many modern “counseling settings.” The goal of therapy was to create a strong self, sometimes called “self-actualized.” Humanism rejected the ideas of behaviorism in preference to talk therapy. Today many therapists use a combination of humanist approach, and also some behavioral therapy called cognitive behavioral, which integrates the reasoning process with evaluation of behavior.

In all, many people may find the term humanism large and unwieldy because of its numerous definitions and huge numbers of practical applications. It continues to affect our thinking process and world view today in a lot of unseen currents. It is interesting to go back to the Greek classic philosophers to see how humanism has affected history, been variously applied through a number of disciplines, and how it has seeped into many of society’s modern systems.

Share
Language & Humanities is dedicated to providing accurate and trustworthy information. We carefully select reputable sources and employ a rigorous fact-checking process to maintain the highest standards. To learn more about our commitment to accuracy, read our editorial process.
Tricia Christensen
By Tricia Christensen
With a Literature degree from Sonoma State University and years of experience as a Language & Humanities contributor, Tricia Christensen is based in Northern California and brings a wealth of knowledge and passion to her writing. Her wide-ranging interests include reading, writing, medicine, art, film, history, politics, ethics, and religion, all of which she incorporates into her informative articles. Tricia is currently working on her first novel.
Discussion Comments
Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen
With a Literature degree from Sonoma State University and years of experience as a Language & Humanities contributor,...
Learn more
Share
https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-humanism.htm
Copy this link
Language & Humanities, in your inbox

Our latest articles, guides, and more, delivered daily.

Language & Humanities, in your inbox

Our latest articles, guides, and more, delivered daily.