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Humanism
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Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports the maximization of individual liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice. Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes human beings as a part of nature and holds that values—be they religious, ethical, social, or political—have their source in human experience and culture. Humanism ... derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions, and asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny. • The Humanist Magazine
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Humanism is, in sum, a philosophy for those in love with life. Humanists take responsibility for their own lives and relish the adventure of being part of new discoveries, seeking new knowledge, exploring new options. Instead of finding solace in prefabricated answers to the great questions of life, Humanists enjoy the open-endedness of a quest and the freedom of discovery that this entails.
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Humanism has had a long and notable career, with roots reaching far back into the past and deep into the life of civilizations supreme in their day. It has had eminent representatives in all the great nations of the world. As the American historian Professor Edward P. Cheyney says, Humanism has meant many things: "It may be the reasonable balance of life that the early Humanists discovered in the Greeks; it may be merely the study of the humanities or polite letters; it may be the freedom from religiosity and the vivid interests in all sides of life of a Queen Elizabeth or a Benjamin Franklin; it may be the responsiveness to all human passions of a Shakespeare or a Goethe; or it may be a philosophy of which man is the center and sanction. It is in the last sense, elusive as it is, that Humanism has had perhaps its greatest significance since the sixteenth century."
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All of the articles which purport to be about IHEU, or Humanism in general should have a by-line saying who was the author and when it was first published. This particular article is completely misleading because without either it appears to be current and it is totally inaccurate.
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Humanism, which began as a movement to revive ancient literature and education, soon turned to other fields as well. Humanists tried to apply ancient lessons to areas as diverse as agriculture, politics, social relations, architecture, music, and medicine. In the book on display, the minor humanist Roberto Valturio has tried to gather the military wisdom of the ancients for the use of his patron, the condottiere Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini. Sigismondo was the nemesis of Pius II, who accused him of monstrous crimes and, in a unique action, "canonized" him to Hell after his death. But military secrets, in the fifteenth as in the present century, do not remain secret for long, and the present volume was in the hands of Sigismondo's great rival, Federigo da Montefeltro, within a dozen years of its composition. The text of the treatise is considered the most important Renaissance forbear of Machiavelli's Art of War, while the rather fanciful illustrations are thought to have influenced some of Leonardo da Vinci's designs for war machines.
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Humanism became a truly international movement at mid-century. The American Humanist Association (AHA) was formed in 1940, and groups in other countries soon followed suit. Ethical Culturists slowly came to see themselves as essentially humanistic, and began to cooperate more and more with humanists on common causes. The British Humanist Association was founded in 1963 through the union of the Ethical Culture groups and the RPA. Earlier, in 1952, American and British humanists had met with like-minded groups in Western Europe, America, and India and formed the International Humanist and Ethical Union. In a number of European countries, the combination of a high percentage of unchurched citizens with a state-church tradition created conditions quite favorable to the spread of humanism.
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