Introduction to Humanism by COHE - Lesson 1: A brief history of humanist thought

Introduction to Humanism is a free course. A useful inline glossary is provided.

Lesson 1: A brief history of humanist thought:-

• Overview
• Humanism is a fairly new name for a very old philosophy. The basic principles of humanism -- skepticism of supernatural claims and an emphasis on living a fulfilling and ethical life without religion -- have been embraced by a wide variety of thinkers in different cultures for thousands of years. But not until the twentieth century did the word "humanism" become the common term for this worldview.
  
  Elements of humanist thought can be seen throughout human history. Just as human societies have always held a wide range of beliefs in gods and supernatural forces, it seems too that they have always included skeptics who have doubted these gods and sought to explain the world solely in natural terms. Similarly, human communities have always developed moral codes, and these have often been justified in non-religious terms.
  
  Unfortunately, religious skepticism and philosophical naturalism (the view that the world can be fully explained in natural terms without any need for supernatural claims) have been persecuted throughout history. Attempts to develop morality in humanist terms have frequently been attacked as threats to religious orthodoxy. Thus, public expressions of humanist ideas have often been suppressed and destroyed, and, at other times, such ideas have probably been voiced only in private.
  
  Nevertheless, there do exist accounts of humanist thought in many different cultures over many thousands of years. These accounts are often incomplete: sometimes the strongest remaining indications of humanist thinking in a society are seen in the work of artists or in the arguments of apologists who are defending religious orthodoxy against the skeptics of the day. (An interesting example still quoted today is the Old Testament statement that "The fool hath said in his heart that there is no god" [Psalm 14]. This insult suggests that even in Bronze-age Jewish society, atheist thinking was prevalent enough to motivate religious teachers to attack it!)
  
  Many of these humanist traditions have survived in some form to contribute to the humanist philosophies of the twenty-first century. Important humanist traditions include the great teachers and philosophical movements of Ancient China and India between three thousand and two thousand years ago; the philosophies of classical Greece and Rome, which survived in the Muslim world during the European Dark Ages and Medieval period, finally returning to Europe in the Renaissance; and the flowering of scientific and humanist thought in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.
  
• The humanist tradition in ancient Asia
• Humanism has often been portrayed as a Western invention, but in fact humanist ideas have arisen in cultures all over the world. India and China, for example, have a rich history of humanist and naturalistic philosophy dating back at least three thousand years.
  
  The Lokayata movement, which thrived in India around 1000 BCE, criticized the Hindu religion of the day and developed a naturalistic philosophy of the cosmos. Four hundred years later, in the sixth century BCE, the Charvaka school of thought maintained that Hindu scripture is false, that there are no gods, that there is no immortal soul, that the priests are worthless, and that pleasure should be the aim of life. In addition to their naturalistic view of the cosmos, the Charvaka promoted a moral philosophy centered on human welfare: in the Mahabharata (the ancient Hindu epic poem) one of the Charvaka is put to death for criticizing the king's warmongering!
  
  Chinese philosophers of the sixth century BCE were also notable for their development of humanistic ethical philosophies and their skepticism about the supernatural. Their criticism of supernatural claims was often sly. For example, the great Taoist teacher Lao Tse (early to middle of the sixth century BCE) indicated his skepticism about supernatural claims when he said, "If lightning is the anger of the gods, the gods are concerned mostly with trees."
  
  In general, Chinese philosophers suggested that nothing could be known about the spiritual realm, rather than denying that such a realm existed. This agnosticism about supernatural claims led to humanist conclusions. The great teachers of the sixth century BCE argued that since humans could have no clear knowledge of the supernatural realm, supernatural claims could never provide a sound foundation for morality. They maintained that the best foundation for morality was an understanding of the natural world, human nature, and society.
  
• The most famous of these teachers is Confucius. The Confucians tried to replace traditional religious beliefs with an ethical system focused on responsibility to family and society. Confucianism emphasizes benevolence, respect for others, and reciprocity as the foundations of social order. An early expression of the Golden Rule of ethics is found in The Analects (the collected sayings) of Confucius: "Do not do to others what you would not like for yourself." The Confucians dismissed questions about the spiritual realm, instead promoting a practical outlook that rendered the gods irrelevant. According to tradition, when Confucius was asked how one should serve ghosts and spirits, he replied, "Until you have learned to serve men, how can you serve ghosts?"
  
• The humanism of Buddha
• Some scholars argue that the Buddha -- in the late sixth century BCE -- was a thoroughly naturalistic and humanist thinker, but that the schools of Buddhism that developed after his death largely submerged the Buddha's revolutionary humanist ideas beneath the traditional supernaturalism of South Asian religion.
  
  Certainly the Buddha advanced many naturalistic and humanistic ideas. These are particularly clear in the Pali Literature which is thought to be the earliest of the Buddhist writings. For example, the Buddha rejected the doctrine of an immortal soul, saying, "Since neither soul nor aught belonging to soul can really and truly exist, the view which holds that this I who am 'world,' who am 'soul,' shall hereafter live permanent, persisting, unchanging, yea abide eternally: is not this utterly and entirely a foolish doctrine?"
  
• Classical Greece and Rome
• In the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, the Greek world experienced a cultural flowering that was to transform human civilization. Many of history's most influential philosophers, historians, dramatists, and statesmen lived in Athens and other Greek city-states within a period of just three or four generations. This explosion in human understanding played an essential role in creating the world we live in today.
  
  Classical Greece was extraordinary in many ways. Its drama and art are almost as influential in shaping the modern world as its philosophy and politics. In all of these areas, Greek culture is notable for its focus on humanity. Whether in statues celebrating the human body, in plays exploring the human condition, in politics that created the first democracies, or in philosophy that recognized that "man is the measure of all things," Greek culture explored and celebrated humanity.
  
  Like the Chinese philosophers of the same period, the Greek philosophers of the sixth century BCE did not so much deny the existence of gods, as argue that they were unknowable and irrelevant. Therefore, they tried to develop knowledge and morality in reference to humanity instead of divinity.
  
  The focus on the human rather than the divine is well illustrated by the philosopher Protagoras (ca. 481-411 BCE). In his work Of the Gods, Protagoras said, "About the gods I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist or what they are like to look at; many things prevent my knowing -- among others, the fact that they are never seen and the shortness of human life." Protagoras also made a statement often associated with humanism: "Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not."
  
  Protagoras may also have developed the questioning dialogue as a means of seeking truth. But this method of inquiry is most associated with Socrates (ca. 469-399.) The Socratic Method can be seen as profoundly humanistic in the way it encourages untrammeled inquiry that is open to all parties. The great religious prophets of human history claimed to bring "God's truth" and absolute commandments, whereas Socrates is famous for saying he knew nothing and brought not answers, but a method of questioning.
  
  Other naturalistic philosophers and schools, such as Aristotle, the Atomists, and the Stoics, developed crucial ideas about nature and humanity that still influence humanist thought to this day. The ancient thinker who may have been closest to the ideas and temper of modern humanism was Epicurus (ca. 341 - 271 BCE).
  
  Following the materialist philosophy of the Atomists, Epicurus argued that everything in the cosmos was ultimately composed of material atoms and that all of our knowledge of the world came from our senses. Epicurus suggested that two things prevent people from trying to live a full and happy life: fear of the gods and fear of an afterlife. But the materialist philosophy of the Atomists removed the fear of the supernatural and the fear of death. Death meant annihilation for the person, because the mind (or soul) is composed of atoms that disperse upon death. Epicurus spoke of his "Four Herbs" to relieve the maladies of life:
  
  There is nothing to fear from gods,
  There is nothing to feel in death,
  Good can be attained,
  Evil can be endured.
  
  Epicurus described the purpose of philosophy as "the art of making life happy." He argued that nature and reason both show that pleasure is the sole good and that pain is the sole evil. But, contrary to some caricatures, the Epicureans did not encourage wanton indulgence in sensual pleasures. Epicurus argued that intellectual pleasures were better than physical pleasures -- although both were necessary to live a full and happy life -- and that "tranquility of the soul" was a key component of pleasure. Hedonistic indulgences might lead to short-term gratification, but one avoids them if they will cause disturbance and suffering in the longer term.
• The Epicureans therefore argued for moderation and balance in all aspects of life. In one of Epicurus's few surviving writings, his "Letter to Menoeceus," he wrote, "It is impossible to live pleasantly, without living wisely, virtuously and justly, just as we cannot live wisely, virtuously and justly without living pleasantly."
  
  For seven hundred years, throughout the Greek and Roman world, the humanist philosophy of Epicurus was a popular and respected model for living. But with the rise of the new religion of Christianity and the decline of Rome, the works of most non-Christian thinkers were destroyed or lost in the West. Europe entered the Dark Ages. When learning did begin to recover in the medieval period, it was ruthlessly controlled by the Christian Church. The works of many of the great classical philosophers survived in the scholastic centers of the Muslim world. It was not until the fifteenth century that the great classical philosophies were reintroduced to Europe in the rebirth of learning known as "The Renaissance."
  
• Teaching humanity
• Perhaps the most important of the Classical Greeks' contributions to world culture was the idea that human excellence can be taught. The Greeks created the concept of "liberal education," which they saw as a way to bring out the best in each and every individual. The heart of the Greek concept of liberal education was a program of subjects that included philosophy, logic, rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, astronomy, literature, and drama. The Greeks called this educational program paideia. The Romans made paideia the foundation of Roman education, translating paideia into the Latin Studia Humanitas (the study of humanity.)
  
  The Renaissance scholars who revived the Studia Humanitas, almost one thousand years after the Fall of Rome, became known as "humanists." Our modern term "humanism" also ultimately derives from the Latin Humanitas. (Studia Humanitas is also the root word for "Humanities"-- the university subjects derived from the Greek paideia.)
  
• Renaissance and the birth of science
• The Renaissance started as a movement to regain the intellectual glories of the ancient world, but ended by giving birth to the modern world. The Renaissance (from the French term meaning "rebirth") describes the period in European history beginning in the late fourteenth century and continuing through to the early seventeenth century. The characteristic intellectual outlook of the period is known as "Renaissance humanism".
• "Renaissance humanism" marks the transition between medieval supernaturalism and the scientific and secular outlook of modernity. While modern humanism owes much to Renaissance humanism, there are some important distinctions between the two forms of humanism.
• Contemporary humanists do not believe in God or the supernatural, whereas most Renaissance humanists believed in a god, often the traditional Christian God. What both kinds of humanists have in common is a focus on the concerns of this world, a belief in the "dignity of man," and a commitment to developing human potential.
  
  As the Renaissance progressed, leading thinkers became increasingly skeptical of medieval Christian dogma. The Church's response to these new ideas was often brutal. The Italian scientist Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) defended Copernicus's view that the Earth orbited the sun, criticized Christian ethics, and called for tolerance of differing religious belief. In 1600 the Inquisition burned Bruno at the stake for refusing to recant these views.
  
  Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) also suffered at the hands of the Inquisition for promoting the Copernican view that the Earth orbited the sun. He avoided execution by renouncing this view. Galileo can be seen as the most important figure in the birth of modern science. His many discoveries revolutionized humanity's understanding of the cosmos. And he successfully argued that observation, experiment, and mathematically quantified measurement were the essential bases for scientific study of the world.
  
  At the same time as Galileo, the English philosopher Francis Bacon was arguing in favor of science based on reason and factual evidence. Bacon was not a great scientist like Galileo, but he played a crucial role in articulating and promoting the new empirical science. Bacon saw that in addition to increasing human understanding, science could be used to benefit humankind. In Novum Organum, his most important work, he argued that humanity should "Pursue science in order that the human estate may be advanced."
  
  It was this commitment to the scientific study of the world, combined with the increasing secularism and individualism of European culture, that gave birth to the Enlightenment -- the Age of Reason -- of the eighteenth century.
  
• The Age of Reason
• The Age of Reason, also known as "The Enlightenment", starts in the seventeenth century and reaches its high point in the middle of the eighteenth century. It marks humankind's emergence from the "Ages of Faith" into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and respect for humanity. The thinkers of the Enlightenment believed that human reason could discover the natural laws of the universe, determine the natural rights of humankind, and thereby achieve continuous progress in human knowledge, technology, and society.
  
  A major stimulus for the Enlightenment was the scientific discovery of universal natural laws. By the late 1600s, thanks to the work of scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, universal laws were established for mechanics, optics, and gravity. The thinkers of the Enlightenment focused on developing this knowledge of the natural world, and on trying to apply the scientific method to the study of humanity and society.
  
  Though still unusual and often dangerous, skepticism of religious claims became more common in eighteenth-century Europe, partly as a consequence of the development of a more scientific view of the universe. The Scottish philosopher, David Hume, wrote skeptically about miracles (in Section X of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and about religion in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (although he prudently delayed publication of this work until after his death).
  
  While some of the leading Enlightenment figures were atheists, and others were Christians, the most distinctive religious attitude of the Enlightenment was Deism. Deists believed in a "god of nature" that created the universe but then left the universe to run by itself. The Deist "Creator" could not contravene the laws of nature. Deism rejects the theistic belief in a personal god who answers prayers, talks to prophets, and intervenes in human affairs. Just as the philosophers of ancient China and Greece believed that gods and the supernatural were too unknowable to serve as a basis for human ethics and knowledge, the Deists believed that ethics and knowledge must be grounded in human reason and nature, not in claims of supernatural revelation. In most areas there is little or no practical difference between deists and godless humanists.
  
• Kant and the Enlightenment
• In Germany, the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) transformed the studies of metaphysics and ethics. Though a religious believer himself, Kant offered a rational basis for morality that required no reference to God or the supernatural.
  
  Although best known for his very dense and lengthy explorations of profound metaphysical problems, Kant once wrote a two page article for a monthly newspaper that had invited essays on the question "What is Enlightenment?" His opening paragraph is still worth quoting:
  
  Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!
  
  The Continuum of Humanist Education has adopted Kant's motto of the Enlightenment:
  
  Sapere Aude! - Dare to know!
  
• The Philosophes
• Enlightenment thought was championed by a group of influential French philosophers called the "philosophes." The high point of the French Enlightenment was the creation of the Encyclopedia -- the first comprehensive account of human knowledge -- compiled between 1751 and 1765 by Denis Diderot with the help of fellow philosophes such as D'Alembert, Rousseau, La Mettrie, Helvetius and D'Holbach. The Encyclopedia clearly expressed their naturalistic thinking and their skeptical attitude toward religion.
  
  Perhaps the most influential political thinker of the Enlightenment was Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. Montesquieu developed the concept of a democratic republic with a "separation of powers" to help guarantee individual freedoms. Another of the philosophes, Voltaire, became famous for his crusades against injustice and his stinging critiques of Christianity.
  
  The ideas of the philosophes influenced the French Revolution, especially its secularism and republicanism, and were articulated for the ages in the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789). Tragically, the intolerance and excesses of the revolutionary "Terror" went against the most basic principles of the Enlightenment champions of "the rights of man."
  
• The American Revolution
• Across the Atlantic, the intellectual leaders of the American colonies were drawn to the new thinking of the Enlightenment. Many of the most distinguished leaders of the American revolution -- Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Madison, and Thomas Paine -- were powerfully influenced by Enlightenment thought. Jefferson and Franklin both spent time in Paris absorbing the influence of the philosophes.
• Skeptical of religious authority, the leaders of the American revolution -- Deist and Christian alike -- believed separation of church and state was necessary to guarantee freedom of conscience. Montesquieu's idea of the separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government played the key role in the development of the "checks and balances" of the new republic's political structure. The Enlightenment concept of inalienable freedoms -- the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" -- underpinned the American revolution, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and has become woven into America's fundamental image of itself.
  
  The American Revolution can be viewed as the final chapter of the Age of Reason, when ideas that were once heretical came to form the basis of a new nation: a nation based not on ethnicity or religion, but on the promise of individual rights and freedom.
• Into the modern world
• In looking at the humanist tradition -- and the forerunners of modern humanist thought -- we have been focusing on a stream of thought which trickled through millennia otherwise dominated by superstition and unquestioned authority. But by the time we reach the Enlightenment, the trickle has turned into a torrent. Humanist thinking -- such as rejection of supernatural beliefs and a focus on human improvement in this world -- has become so widespread as to be commonplace, at least in intellectual life. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, humanist ideas have entered the mainstream of intellectual debate, and that intellectual debate is broader and more diverse than ever before.
  
  This brief history of the development of humanist ideas, therefore, ends with the Enlightenment and the birth of the modern world based on the humanist values of science, human rights, secularism, and free inquiry. The next stage in the development of humanism we will touch upon is the creation of humanist organizations.
• Organized humanism
• Some of the ancient schools of humanist thought, such as Epicureanism, were associated with organized movements. These schools of thought disappeared with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the rise to power of the Early Christian Church. The humanist organizations that exist in the world today have all been created in the last two centuries.
  
  In Western societies dominated by Christianity, usually enforced by the power of the state, it has been difficult and dangerous to criticize religious views or advance an alternative way of understanding the world. Historically, this has usually meant that humanist views have been hidden, or only expressed in coded language by small groups of people. While there are reports of secret societies of atheists and freethinkers in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- for example, among Freemasons -- public groups of freethinkers did not become widespread until the nineteenth century. The growth of humanist groups also corresponds with the general growth of civil society and the spread of voluntary organizations focusing on ideas and issues.
  
  The nineteenth-century humanist groups used a bewildering variety of names to describe their worldview. Descriptions included
  
  * Rationalist
  * Feethinker / Freethought
  * Non-Confessional
  * Atheist
  * Secularist (the term "Secularism" was coined by the English social reformer George Jacob Holyoake in 1841)
  * Naturalist
  * Laique (in the French-speaking world)
  * Positivist (after the Positivism of the early nineteenth century French sociologist, August Comte)
  * Agnostic (a term coined by the British scientist T.H. Huxley in 1870)
  * Ethical Culture (a worldwide movement founded in 1876 by New Yorker Felix Adler)
  * Free Religious (in Germany)
  
• Some of these groups were primarily anti-clerical, focused on critiquing religion and the power of the clergy, while others saw themselves as a new, progressive, non-theistic form of religion.
  
  "Humanist" was not widely used in its modern sense until the publication of the "Humanist Manifesto" in the U.S. in 1933 (see Lesson 2, Manifestoes and other statements of humanism). The term "humanist" quickly spread as the preferred description for non-theistic people and groups who believed in promoting human welfare without reference to gods or the supernatural. Increasingly, these groups saw themselves neither as religious nor anti-religious but as a positive, ethical replacement for religion.
  
  After the Second World War, leaders from Britain, the Netherlands, and the U.S.A. led the way in creating the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a new global umbrella organization for national humanist groups. Its founding members included groups from the U.S.A., Europe, and India -- organizations whose mission is to preserve not only the cultural humanism of historical tradition, but also to promote lifestance humanism, a contemporary worldview offering a framework for everyday life. It is lifestance humanism which we'll explore in Lesson 2.
• Darwin and evolution
• Natural evolution was the final piece in the puzzle for those positing a naturalistic explanation of the world and humanity's place in it. Evolution explained how intelligent beings could arise from a process lacking intelligence. The science of evolution, first explained by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species : By Means of Natural Selection in 1859, galvanized the scientific community and shook intellectual Christianity to its foundations. It not only overturned the Biblical claim that humans and all the other species had been created by God as separate and unchanging forms, but also removed the need to propose an intelligent "Creator" to explain the astonishing complexity of life on Earth.
  
  The explanatory power of Darwin's theory meant that it was quickly accepted by the scientific community. Today, even the Roman Catholic Pope accepts evolution, and it is rejected mostly by die-hard Christian fundamentalists in the United States; though, increasingly, Muslim fundamentalists are opposing the teaching of evolution in Europe as well as the Middle East. (See Evolution, Creationism, and the Nature of Science, the cornerstone course in COHE Study Area II, Science and Humanism, for more on the theory of evolution.)
  
• 5 Review questions - with marking by computer.
• 3 Essay Review questions - with suggestions by COHE markers
  

reposted from: COHE
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