Putting the Individual First
Humanism was a cultural movement that developed in Europe starting from the second half of thirteen hundreds. It reached its peak in fourteen and fifteen hundreds, most remarkably in Florence (Italy), during that period which goes under the label of Renaissance.
Humanism affected all the arts and sciences as well as politics, religion, and societal organization. Sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, history are among the areas in which humanists gave their most significant contributions, with auhors such as Petrarch, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli.
Putting Humans at the Center
The predominant hierarchy of values of the Middle Ages accorded to God the role of protagonist; also, and most importantly, it suggested that earthly existence was a transitory phase for humans and that any intellectual endeavor while on earth unavoidably moved from an imperfect perspective. During the Middle Ages, indeed, theology was the most important subject to be studied.
Humanistic movement came as a bomb amidst the medieval intellectual climate. As the term itself suggests, Humanism placed the human being at center stage in the universe. No longer God is the protagonist of intellectual endeavors: everything is now seen from the perspective of human beings. God created humans, beings with reason, and it is from the human perspective that we should understand worldly phenomena; after all, no other perspective is really possible.
Humanism and Western Culture
The importance of Humanism to the definition of Western culture can hardly be underestimated. Humanists such as Petrarch and, later on, Angelo Poliziano as well as artists, scientists, poets at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent were the first to rediscover Ancient Greek culture, translate it, and promote a cult for Athenian socio-political and cultural atmosphere in the time of Plato and Aristotle. The respect and admiration that Western culture still tributes to Ancient Greek culture is thus owed to the effort of humanists, who recognized their mission in continuity to the one of their Greek ancestors. Later on, authors such as Machiavelli will also promote the importance of Roman civilization in the development of Florentine and, more broadly, European society.
Influence on Western Philosophy
Humanism is directly correlated to liberalism, although the connection often goes undetected. The importance that the individual assumes in Western philosophy starting from authors such as Descartes and < a href="http://philosophy.about.com/od/Major-Philosophers/p/John-Locke-1632-1704.htm">Locke much owes to the humanistic emphasis over the centrality of human reason in the universe. Under this light, a work such as Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy ought to be recognized as the culmination of a three-centuries endeavor to place reason and the self at the center of the world.
The emphasis on the individual rights and duties, on freedom and responsibility, that much characterizes Western culture, hence developed from Humanism. For a deeper understanding of the very idea of the West and of its chief aspects it is thus momentous to study this philosophical period.
Humanism Today
Last century humanistic thinking flourished in a new guise, thanks especially to the 1933 Humanist Manifesto published by Roy Wood Sellars and Raymond Bragg. The basic idea was to replace supernatural religion with a cult of the human, restituting to the human subject a centrality that – according to the authors – had been overlooked.
In 1973 Paul Kurtz and Edwin Wilson published a second humanist manifesto, followed by a new document composed by a special committee and circulated in 2003. Humanistic thought in contemporary ages is remarkable for an emphasis on the evolutionary and pragmatic character of human knowledge and ethics. To attest the significance of the movement it will suffice to say that, among the signatories of the 2003 document, twenty-one were Nobel laureates.
Further Online Readings
A useful collection of texts and images curated by the Institute for Renaissance Studies and the Center for Computer Research in the Humanities at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy.
A list of remarkable works of the early humanists as well as Machiavelli.
The 1933 Humanist Manifesto.
The 1973 Humanist Manifesto.
The Genesis of a Humanist Manifesto by Edwin Wilson.
