Humanism

Author(s):  
John C. Luik

The philosophical term ‘humanism’ refers to a series of interrelated concepts about the nature, defining characteristics, powers, education and values of human persons. In one sense humanism is a coherent and recognizable philosophical system that advances substantive ontological, epistemological, anthropological, educational, aesthetic, ethical and political claims. In another sense humanism is understood more as a method and a series of loosely connected questions about the nature and character of human persons. From the fourteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, humanism minimally meant: (1) an educational programme founded on the classical authors and concentrating on the study of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy; (2) a commitment to the perspective, interests and centrality of human persons; (3) a belief in reason and autonomy as foundational aspects of human existence; (4) a belief that reason, scepticism and the scientific method are the only appropriate instruments for discovering truth and structuring the human community; (5) a belief that the foundations for ethics and society are to be found in autonomy and moral equality. From the end of the nineteenth century, humanism has been defined, in addition to the above, by the way in which particular aspects of core humanist belief such as human uniqueness, scientific method, reason and autonomy have been utilized in such philosophical systems as existentialism, Marxism and pragmatism.

Author(s):  
Samuel Asad Abijuwa Agbamu

AbstractIn his 1877 Storia della letteratura (History of Literature), Luigi Settembrini wrote that Petrarch’s fourteenth-century poem, the Africa, ‘is forgotten …; very few have read it, and it was judged—I don’t know when and by whom—a paltry thing’. Yet, just four decades later, the early Renaissance poet’s epic of the Second Punic War, written in Latin hexameters, was being promoted as the national poem of Italy by eminent classical scholar, Nicola Festa, who published the only critical edition of the epic in 1926. This article uncovers the hitherto untold story of the revival of Petrarch’s poetic retelling of Scipio’s defeat of Hannibal in Fascist Italy, and its role in promoting ideas of nation and empire during the Fascist period in Italy. After briefly outlining the Africa’s increasing popularity in the nineteenth century, I consider some key publications that contributed to the revival of the poem under Fascism. I proceed chronologically to show how the Africa was shaped into a poem of the Italian nation, and later, after Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, of Italy’s new Roman Empire. I suggest that the contestations over the significance of the Africa during the Fascist period, over whether it was a national poem of Roman revival or a poem of the universal ideal of empire, demonstrate more profound tensions in how Italian Fascism saw itself.


1962 ◽  
Vol 12 (47) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
R. Harre ◽  
R. M. Blake ◽  
C. J. Ducasse ◽  
E. H. Madden

Philosophy ◽  
1926 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-182
Author(s):  
A. D. Lindsay

In the history of English Idealism in the nineteenth century a great place must be given to the work of two men who held the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow for two periods of twenty-eight years, from 1866 to 1922, Edward Caird and Henry Jones.


Author(s):  
Frank Feder

This chapter examines the history of the famous Bashmuric revolts and introduces the so-called Bashmuric dialect of Coptic. The Bashmuric revolts were recorded by Coptic and Arabic medieval historians and became known to European scholars as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the eighth and ninth centuries, the population of the Delta revolted very successfully for a longer period against the Arab rule and administration. Historians and the History of the Patriarchs attributed the revolts to the insupportable fiscal demands and unjust treatment of the Christian population by the Muslim governors (walis). The appearance of the Bashmuric dialect is first noted in the description of Athanasius of Qus (fourteenth century) in his Coptic grammar written in Arabic. Early scholars (beginning in the seventeenth century) studying Coptic manuscripts then tried to apply Athanasius' division of the Coptic language to the Coptic texts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
George M. Marsden

Various Protestant denominations founded hundreds of colleges during the first half of the nineteenth century. Even two-thirds of presidents of state universities were clergymen. Though those in the Reformed tradition tended to be the leading educators, denominational diversity and necessities of attracting varieties of students weakened doctrinal distinctives. The prevailing “Whig” ideal emphasized combining building a modern civilization with Christian morality. Educators, such as Francis Wayland or Mark Hopkins, confidently assumed that the best of objective common sense and modern science would support traditional Christianity. Colleges still promoted the evangelical tradition, as in campus revivals. They taught the classics as a way of developing moral faculties, as the Yale Report of 1828 advocated. Specifically Christian perspectives were found in capstone moral philosophy courses.


Philosophies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arran Gare

Prior to the nineteenth century, those who are now regarded as scientists were referred to as natural philosophers. With empiricism, science was claimed to be a superior form of knowledge to philosophy, and natural philosophy was marginalized. This claim for science was challenged by defenders of natural philosophy, and this debate has continued up to the present. The vast majority of mainstream scientists are comfortable in the belief that through applying the scientific method, knowledge will continue to accumulate, and that claims to knowledge outside science apart from practical affairs should not be taken seriously. This is referred to as scientism. It is incumbent on those who defend natural philosophy against scientism not only to expose the illusions and incoherence of scientism, but to show that natural philosophers can make justifiable claims to advancing knowledge. By focusing on a recent characterization and defense of natural philosophy along with a reconstruction of the history of natural philosophy, showing the nature and role of Schelling’s conception of dialectical thinking, I will attempt to identify natural philosophy as a coherent tradition of thought and defend it as something different from science and as essential to it, and essential to the broader culture and to civilization.


2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 616-618
Author(s):  
Diego Mazzoccone ◽  
Mariano Mosquera ◽  
Silvana Espejo ◽  
Mariana Fancio ◽  
Gabriela Gonzalez ◽  
...  

It is very difficult to date the birth of political science in Argentina. Unlike other discipline of the social sciences, in Argentina the first distinction can be made between political thought on the one hand, and political science in another. The debate over political thought—as the reflection of different political questions—emerged in our country in the nineteenth century, especially during the process of constructing the Argentine nation-state. Conversely, political science is defined in a general way as the application of the scientific method to the studies on the power of the state (Fernández 2001).


1987 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 213-229
Author(s):  
Shyli Karin-Frank

The aim of this paper is to expose the unique muddle in which moral philosophy finds itself with regard to genetic engineering. The latter can be essentially defined as the correcting of nature's mistakes at their source, the DNA acid molecule of the gene. I shall discuss the moral nature of genetic engineering with respect to a single issue: the potential harm it may inflict upon the autonomous individual. I shall also consider the distinctions between genetic engineering and other activities affecting human existence, in order to establish that the moral issues presented by genetic engineering are unique to it.


Biometrics ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 371 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. N. David ◽  
R. N. Giere ◽  
R. S. Westfall

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER TANNOCH-BLAND

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) lectured in astronomy and political economy, held the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh University from 1775 to 1785, then the chair of moral philosophy from 1785 to 1810, and wrote extensively on metaphysics, political economy, ethics, philology, aesthetics, psychology and the history of philosophy and the experimental sciences. He is commonly regarded as the last voice of the Scottish Enlightenment, the articulate disciple of Thomas Reid, father of Scottish common sense philosophy. Recently some historians have begun to rediscover elements of the contribution Stewart made to early nineteenth-century British intellectual culture, and his Collected Works have been republished with a new introduction by Knud Haakonssen.


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