Having discussed the subject of Humanism in my entry Humanism As A Dirty Word, in the Religion section (see my mega-entry Religion And Culture, posted on January 15, 2011, of which it is a part), it would have been strange for me to ignore it here as philosophy, particularly after having discussed the meaning of deism and theism, which all seem to suffer from similar ailments.
Once again, we are confronted with an improper definition of the term, with multiple meanings in multiple contexts. It is a poor excuse for the more honest users of philosophical terms to complain that dictionaries, with their simplistic definitions, are of little value in the study of philosophy (others would not even bother to issue such a caveat). My insistence on dictionary definitions is a direct revolt against the lawlessness of terminological usage, against the inevitable descent into chaos, as soon as we allow ourselves to be swayed by such arguments.
Rather than join the chorus of these lamenters, I am determined to find out how these different definitions of one and the same term have come about, whether or not they are mutually contradictory, and, if they are not, how they can be reconciled.
According to my old Webster’s Dictionary, Humanism (with the capital H) is “the intellectual and cultural movement that stemmed from the study of classical Greek and Latin culture during the Middle Ages, and was one of the factors (according to most of the encyclopedic sources, it was the main factor!) giving rise to the Renaissance. It was characterized by an emphasis on human interests, rather than on the natural world or religion.”
This definition is consistent with the actual history of the word humanitas, and with the following opening passage in Britannica’s entry for humanism:
"Humanism is an attitude of mind attaching prime importance to man and human values often regarded as the central theme of the Renaissance civilization. Renaissance humanism is traceable to the fourteenth-century’s Italian humanist Petrarch, whose scholarship and enthusiasm for classic Latin writings, the humanities, gave great impetus to a movement that eventually spread from Italy to all of western Europe. Although humanism gradually became identified with classroom studies of the classics, it more properly embraced any attitude exalting man’s relationship to God, his free will and his superiority over nature… An excitement over Latin sources touched off a widespread search for ancient documents, which led in time to the Greek and Hebrew studies. Textual criticism and philology were born and with them a new look at Aristotle and the Scriptures. The arts found patrons, and flourished in conscious imitation of classical ideals and forms…In its return to antiquity, humanism found inspiration in man’s personal quest for truth and goodness. Seeds were sown for the flowering of Reformation thought…"
From the history of European humanism it is perfectly clear that no rift whatsoever resulted from the rule of Renaissance values with the personal religiosity of the humanists, and, on the contrary, religious values won as a result, in their welcome liberation from some ridiculous restrictions, imposed on the human spirit by the constraints of Medieval scholasticism. Already in the 20th century, the eminent Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth reaffirmed the close connection between humanism and Christianity, saying that no humanism was possible without the Gospel. Similar views have been held by Roman Catholic theologians, who have claimed that Catholic Christianity has represented humanism, as it emphasized man’s unique role in God’s Creation.
And yet, just as with deism, only even much worse, humanism had become a dirty word, particularly among the millions of American Evangelical Christians, courtesy of people like Tim La Haye and Jerry Falwell, who started their anti-secularist campaign by first identifying humanism with atheistic secularism, obediently following the clever cue of the atheistic American Humanist Association, which happily appropriated the use of the word humanism for its secularist purposes and got away with it, thanks to zealots like La Haye and Falwell. As early as in 1933, the Association published the Humanist Manifesto, and later proceeded with the publication of the quarterly magazine The Humanist, first catering to a tiny, and both politically and intellectually insignificant audience, but eventually making it big, by being blown out of proportion by its Christian detractors, who chose to surrender the beautiful word humanism to the atheists, as if the latter had been the first to come up with it all along.
This new, perverted understanding of humanism has brought about a noticeable shift in standard dictionary definitions of the term.
The smaller and newer Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary adds this new age babble: “A doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values especially a philosophy that asserts the dignity and worth of man and his capacity for self-realization through reason, and that often rejects supernaturalism.”
There is a lot to say concerning the new fight between Christianity and “humanism,” purposely defined as secularist and anti-Christian, to the sick delight of both sides. But we have already spent too much time on this sickness, and now is the good time to move on.
The most apparent conflict of humanism and humanism is in its two senses (forget the two other meanings, such as the study of the Graeco-Roman classics, and, especially, the improper use of this word, both by the authors of the Humanist Manifesto and by their illiterate critics), as, first, the standpoint, that distinguishes man from animals (and provocatively expressed by the famous Protagoras dictum that “man is the measure of all things”), and secondly, the view, which emphasizes specifically human, that is, “natural,” rather than “supernatural,” ethics.
In the context of this distinction, and as applied to the Greeks, for instance, the humanism of Hesiod would belong to the first type.
“To birds and to beasts, writes Hesiod, Zeus, the son of Kronos, gave one law, that they should devour one another, but to man he gave another law: a law of justice, which was for the best.”
This is the same position as the one later held by Christian humanist theologians, who have defined morality in terms of God’s law, and man’s duty to obey it. It is consistent with, and even implied in, Genesis 1:26:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
The view that man is the measure of all things does not exclude God from consideration, but posits man as the principle actor within God’s Creation, and it can only be interpreted this way.
In so far as natural versus supernatural ethics are concerned, Aristotle’s humanism is usually cited as an example of the ‘natural’ type of humanism. In Aristotle’s humanist view, the moral law of humanity was not placed outside the human nature, but well inside it, according to the principle of man’s rationality. So, what is the irreconcilable discrepancy here, if any? I see none. There is, of course, a difference between a revealed moral code and an instilled, or inspired, one, which by no means makes one a religious code and the other secular, especially, with my use of the Biblical word inspired; and man’s reason and rationality may indeed be judged as such inspired qualities. Incidentally, by the very same token as both rationality and irrationality belong to God’s nature and man’s nature ("And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness"), revelation and inspiration are mutually complementary forms of ethics, as well as of everything else, either “supernaturally” revealed, or “naturally” instilled in the human nature.
Once again, we are confronted with an improper definition of the term, with multiple meanings in multiple contexts. It is a poor excuse for the more honest users of philosophical terms to complain that dictionaries, with their simplistic definitions, are of little value in the study of philosophy (others would not even bother to issue such a caveat). My insistence on dictionary definitions is a direct revolt against the lawlessness of terminological usage, against the inevitable descent into chaos, as soon as we allow ourselves to be swayed by such arguments.
Rather than join the chorus of these lamenters, I am determined to find out how these different definitions of one and the same term have come about, whether or not they are mutually contradictory, and, if they are not, how they can be reconciled.
According to my old Webster’s Dictionary, Humanism (with the capital H) is “the intellectual and cultural movement that stemmed from the study of classical Greek and Latin culture during the Middle Ages, and was one of the factors (according to most of the encyclopedic sources, it was the main factor!) giving rise to the Renaissance. It was characterized by an emphasis on human interests, rather than on the natural world or religion.”
This definition is consistent with the actual history of the word humanitas, and with the following opening passage in Britannica’s entry for humanism:
"Humanism is an attitude of mind attaching prime importance to man and human values often regarded as the central theme of the Renaissance civilization. Renaissance humanism is traceable to the fourteenth-century’s Italian humanist Petrarch, whose scholarship and enthusiasm for classic Latin writings, the humanities, gave great impetus to a movement that eventually spread from Italy to all of western Europe. Although humanism gradually became identified with classroom studies of the classics, it more properly embraced any attitude exalting man’s relationship to God, his free will and his superiority over nature… An excitement over Latin sources touched off a widespread search for ancient documents, which led in time to the Greek and Hebrew studies. Textual criticism and philology were born and with them a new look at Aristotle and the Scriptures. The arts found patrons, and flourished in conscious imitation of classical ideals and forms…In its return to antiquity, humanism found inspiration in man’s personal quest for truth and goodness. Seeds were sown for the flowering of Reformation thought…"
From the history of European humanism it is perfectly clear that no rift whatsoever resulted from the rule of Renaissance values with the personal religiosity of the humanists, and, on the contrary, religious values won as a result, in their welcome liberation from some ridiculous restrictions, imposed on the human spirit by the constraints of Medieval scholasticism. Already in the 20th century, the eminent Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth reaffirmed the close connection between humanism and Christianity, saying that no humanism was possible without the Gospel. Similar views have been held by Roman Catholic theologians, who have claimed that Catholic Christianity has represented humanism, as it emphasized man’s unique role in God’s Creation.
And yet, just as with deism, only even much worse, humanism had become a dirty word, particularly among the millions of American Evangelical Christians, courtesy of people like Tim La Haye and Jerry Falwell, who started their anti-secularist campaign by first identifying humanism with atheistic secularism, obediently following the clever cue of the atheistic American Humanist Association, which happily appropriated the use of the word humanism for its secularist purposes and got away with it, thanks to zealots like La Haye and Falwell. As early as in 1933, the Association published the Humanist Manifesto, and later proceeded with the publication of the quarterly magazine The Humanist, first catering to a tiny, and both politically and intellectually insignificant audience, but eventually making it big, by being blown out of proportion by its Christian detractors, who chose to surrender the beautiful word humanism to the atheists, as if the latter had been the first to come up with it all along.
This new, perverted understanding of humanism has brought about a noticeable shift in standard dictionary definitions of the term.
The smaller and newer Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary adds this new age babble: “A doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values especially a philosophy that asserts the dignity and worth of man and his capacity for self-realization through reason, and that often rejects supernaturalism.”
There is a lot to say concerning the new fight between Christianity and “humanism,” purposely defined as secularist and anti-Christian, to the sick delight of both sides. But we have already spent too much time on this sickness, and now is the good time to move on.
The most apparent conflict of humanism and humanism is in its two senses (forget the two other meanings, such as the study of the Graeco-Roman classics, and, especially, the improper use of this word, both by the authors of the Humanist Manifesto and by their illiterate critics), as, first, the standpoint, that distinguishes man from animals (and provocatively expressed by the famous Protagoras dictum that “man is the measure of all things”), and secondly, the view, which emphasizes specifically human, that is, “natural,” rather than “supernatural,” ethics.
In the context of this distinction, and as applied to the Greeks, for instance, the humanism of Hesiod would belong to the first type.
“To birds and to beasts, writes Hesiod, Zeus, the son of Kronos, gave one law, that they should devour one another, but to man he gave another law: a law of justice, which was for the best.”
This is the same position as the one later held by Christian humanist theologians, who have defined morality in terms of God’s law, and man’s duty to obey it. It is consistent with, and even implied in, Genesis 1:26:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
The view that man is the measure of all things does not exclude God from consideration, but posits man as the principle actor within God’s Creation, and it can only be interpreted this way.
In so far as natural versus supernatural ethics are concerned, Aristotle’s humanism is usually cited as an example of the ‘natural’ type of humanism. In Aristotle’s humanist view, the moral law of humanity was not placed outside the human nature, but well inside it, according to the principle of man’s rationality. So, what is the irreconcilable discrepancy here, if any? I see none. There is, of course, a difference between a revealed moral code and an instilled, or inspired, one, which by no means makes one a religious code and the other secular, especially, with my use of the Biblical word inspired; and man’s reason and rationality may indeed be judged as such inspired qualities. Incidentally, by the very same token as both rationality and irrationality belong to God’s nature and man’s nature ("And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness"), revelation and inspiration are mutually complementary forms of ethics, as well as of everything else, either “supernaturally” revealed, or “naturally” instilled in the human nature.
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