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Humanism – with Special Reference to Renaissance and Enlightenment IF : 4.547 | IC Value 80.26 VOLUME-6, ISSUE-9,Volum Speciale : 3 | IssueIssue :September-2017 11 | November 2014 • ISSN • ISSN No N 2277o 2277 - 8160- 8179 Original Research Paper History Humanism – With Special Reference to Renaissance and Enlightenment Dr. K. Dayasagar M.A MA., M.A., M.Ed., Ph.D, HOD of History, SKBR College, AMALAPURAM Babu ABSTRACT Humanists are everyday people who espouse the principles of humanism. The principles of humanism include helping others, concern for our environment, meeting in community with others of like mind, making connections and growing by connection with others who hold diverse beliefs, and building a legacy that makes our world a better place. Humanists believe that we humans are the only species thus far to have evolved the capacity for constructing reliable knowledge of our surroundings, and about ourselves. Therefore we no longer need to resort to myths of revelation from on high or to ctions about mysterious intuitive messages from unknowable forces beyond what is accessible to human experience. We can concentrate instead on the natural origin and use of our evolved instruments for observing and explaining experience and for testing those explanations: instruments such as reason, language and the senses. It is only by these means that humans have built knowledge with the power to predict, and thus to inuence the course of events. Other so-called sources of truth have led invariably to costly error for, unlike science, they contain no self-correcting mechanism. KEYWORDS : Community, Mankind, Self-correcting INTRODUCTION: affairs or human nature. The movement developed from the Humanism is an attitude of thought which gives primary rediscovery by European scholars of many Greek and Roman texts. importance to human beings. Its outstanding historical example Its focus was on human dignity and potential and the place of was Renaissance humanism from the fourteenth to sixteenth mankind in nature; it valued reason and the evidence of the senses centuries, which developed from the rediscovery by European in understanding truth. The humanist emphasis upon art and the scholars of classical Latin and Greek texts. As a reaction against the senses marked a great change from the contemplation on the religious authoritarianism of Medieval Catholicism, it emphasized biblical values of humility, introspection, and meekness that had human dignity, beauty, and potential, and affected every aspect of dominated European thought in the previous centuries. Beauty was culture in Europe, including philosophy, music, and the arts. This held to represent a deep inner virtue and value, and an essential humanist emphasis on the value and importance of the individual element in the path towards God. inuenced the Protestant Reformation, and brought about social and political change in Europe. Renaissance humanism was a reaction to Catholic scholasticism which had dominated the universities of Italy, and later Oxford and There was another round of revival of humanism in the Age of Paris, and whose methodology was derived from Thomas Aquinas. Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a Renaissance humanists followed a cycle of studies, the studia reaction against the newly prevalent dogmatic authoritarianism of humanitatis (studies of humanity), consisting of grammar, rhetoric, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, and the Counter-Reformation poetry, history, and moral philosophy, based on classical Roman from around the end of the sixteenth century to the seventeenth and Greek texts. Many humanists held positions as teachers of century. During the last two centuries, various elements of literature and grammar or as government bureaucrats. Humanism Enlightenment humanism have been manifested in philosophical affected every aspect of culture in Europe, including music and the trends such as existentialism, utilitarianism, pragmatism, and arts. It profoundly inuenced philosophy by emphasizing rhetoric Marxism. Generally speaking, Enlightenment humanism was more and a more literary presentation and by introducing Latin advanced than Renaissance humanism in its secular orientation, translations of Greek classical texts which revived many of the and produced atheism, Marxism, as well as secular humanism. concepts of ancient Greek philosophy. Secular humanism, which denies God and attributes the universe entirely to material forces, today has replaced religion for many The humanist emphasis on the value and importance of the people. individual was not necessarily a total rejection of religion. According to historians such as Nicholas Terpstra, the Renaissance was very Secular humanism, in its neglect of God the source of human values, much characterized with activities of lay religious co-fraternities risks an impoverishment of meaning. Yet humanism is an inevitable with a more internalized kind of religiosity, and it inuenced the reaction to theism when it is authoritarian and dogmatic. For Protestant Reformation, which rejected the hierarchy of the Roman human beings created in the image of God, the values of humanism Catholic Church and declared that every individual could stand express human beings' God-given nature. Hence, while secular directly before God. Humanist values also brought about social and humanism is antithetical to theism, religious humanism and theism political change by acknowledging the value and dignity of every are complementary. individual regardless of social and economic status. Renaissance humanism also inspired the study of biblical sources and newer, HUMANISM IN RENAISSANCE AND ENLIGHTENMENT more accurate translations of biblical texts. Renaissance humanism: Renaissance humanism was a European intellectual and cultural Humanist scholars from this period include the Dutch theologian movement which began in Florence, Italy, in the last decades of the Erasmus, the English author Thomas More, the French writer fourteenth century, rose to prominence in the fteenth century, and Francois Rabelais, the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch, and the spread throughout the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century. The Italian scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. term "humanism" itself was coined much later, in 1808, by German educator F.J. Niethammer to describe a program of study distinct Enlightenment humanism: from science and engineering; but in the fteenth century, the term The term, "Enlightenment humanism," is not as well known as "umanista," or "humanist," was current, meaning a student of human "Renaissance humanism." The reason is that the relationship of GJRA - GLOBAL JOURNAL FOR RESEARCH ANALYSIS X 108 VOLUME-6, ISSUE-9,Volum Speciale : 3 | IssueIssue :September-2017 11 | November 2014 • ISSN • ISSN No N 2277o 2277 - 8160- 8179 IF : 4.547 | IC Value 80.26 humanism to the Enlightenment has not been as much claried by himself was inuenced by the pragmatism of William James. In historians than that between humanism and the Renaissance. But, 1929, Charles Francis Potter founded the First Humanist Society of there actually existed humanism in the Enlightenment as well, and New York whose advisory board included Julian Huxley, John quite a few historians have related humanism to the Enlightenment. Dewey, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Mann. Potter was a minister Enlightenment humanism is characterized by such key words as from the Unitarian tradition and in 1930, he and his wife, Clara Cook autonomy, reason, and progress, and it is usually distinguished from Potter, published Humanism: A New Religion. Throughout the Renaissance humanism because of its more secular nature. While 1930s, Potter was a well-known advocate of women’s rights, access Renaissance humanism was still somewhat religious, developing an to birth control, civil divorce laws, and an end to capital punishment. internalized type of religiosity, which inuenced the Protestant Raymond B. Bragg, the associate editor of The New Humanist, Reformation, Enlightenment humanism marked a radical departure sought to consolidate the input of L. M. Birkhead, Charles Francis from religion. Potter, and several members of the Western Unitarian Conference. Bragg asked Roy Wood Sellars to draft a document based on this The Enlightenment was a reaction against the religious dogmatism information which resulted in the publication of the Humanist of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The religious Manifesto in 1933. It referred to humanism as a religion, but denied dogmatism of that time in Europe had been developed in three all supernaturalism and went so far as to affirm that: "Religious domains: 1) Protestant scholasticism by Lutheran and Calvinist humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created." So, divines, 2) "Jesuit scholasticism" (sometimes called the "second it was hardly religious humanism; it was rather secular humanism. scholasticism") by the Counter-Reformation, and 3) the theory of The Manifesto and Potter's book became the cornerstones of the divine right of kings in the Church of England. It had fueled the modern organizations of secular humanism. They dened religion bloody Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the English Civil War in secular terms and refused traditional theistic perspectives such as (1642-1651). The Enlightenment rejected this religious dogmatism. the existence of God and his act of creation. In 1941, the American The intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment regarded themselves Humanist Association was organized. Noted members of The AHA as courageous elite who would lead the world
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