Humanism and Gender

Framed in terms of the problems associated with traditional thinking on gender within humanism, this chapter sets about the task of carving out an approach to humanism that would enable flexible, fluid, and malleable understandings of social difference, such as gender, by calling for a re-orientation of humanism that can account for human variability over time, space, and place. Essentially, the chapter argues that humanism’s reliance on fixed categories of reason and human nature has reinforced a White, male logic of domination. First, it suggests a rethinking of humanism as a constructed concept, rather than an idea that somehow metaphysically emanates from some universal core of “human nature.” The chapter suggests a charting of humanism that moves beyond essences insomuch that free-floating “essences” (e.g., gender) collapse the construction (of humanism) back onto, and within, the domain of metaphysics. Next, it looks at origins, attempting to disrupt the science-based situativity in Enlightenment notions of (white, male, objective) “rationality” that were constructed over and against “irrational” categories of difference, such as gender.

Humanism in the Middle East

This chapter is an exploration of the concept and practice of humanism in the Muslim Middle East, from the seventh-century Prophetic dispensation to the present times. Humanism has often been described as the peculiar fruit of the European Renaissance. The chapter challenges this claim by investigating the incidence of humanism in the Middle East around a three-tiered axis. First, humanism as a focus on this-worldly rather than other-worldly matters is not only compatible with the “worldliness” of an Islamic ethos but was historically encouraged by it. Second, modernist reformers portray humanism as an earlier “modern” age in the history of the Middle East that they now seek to renew. Finally, inasmuch as humanism is a form of anthropocentrism, theological ideas like al-insān al-kāmil, the perfect man, allow for such humanism to be embedded within a broader Islamic theocentrism. The chapter concludes with possible humanistic futures in the Middle East.

The Changing Demographics of Humanism

What do we know about the social and demographic characteristics of humanists? This chapter seeks to answer that question by offering a way to measure humanism via data from the 2014 Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study (RLS). In addition to the existence of various types of humanism, findings indicate the presence of gender imbalance in humanist circles and potential for growth in the number of humanists in the United States, as young people are overrepresented. However, this particular cohort also lacks racial and ethnic diversity. It is important to note that, given there is no survey specifically examining humanists, this chapter serves only as a building block for understanding the prevalence of humanism and its demographic characteristics.

Humanism and the Modern Age

The story of humanism in the modern age is not a simple, linear narrative that begins in classical antiquity and continues to the contemporary moment. Rather, humanism represents a complex contestation of ideas and ideologies born out of the intercourse of the contact of cultures that mark the modern European encounter with the world. Humanism in the modern world is thus critically understood in the reflexive contact between peoples, cultures, and ideas and the processes of making sense of being human in the world. The contests and conquests for power, legitimacy, and authority shape and inform the discourse of humanism in ways that often elide this dense and diverse experience. Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Edward Said provide critical resources to interrogate the discourse of humanism and the emergence of the human that comes to dominate the narrative and render humanism as an unique idea and event of European modernity.

Humanism in Africa

This chapter shows that the idea of humanism in contemporary African thought takes as its backdrop the historical interaction between Africa and foreign cultural and political invasions of the continent since the Middle Ages. Christianity and Islam, before European political invasion, introduced novel concepts and values of the human person and human life, introducing with them new political and social concepts and structures. The emerging synchrony and sometimes tensions between these and indigenous African worldviews have seen African philosophers and political visionaries reaching out to indigenous African modes of thought, whether secular or with some supernatural inclinations, as reservoirs of better concepts of human nature that will heal a world broken by unsound concepts of human nature that not only resulted in unsound epistemological and other philosophical theories, but also produced the injustices of domination, racism, and inequality across the globe. Grounded in the idea of the relational nature of humans among themselves and with nature, African philosophers and thinkers have argued that the well-being of human and non-human reality depends on developing and defending the values of mutual dependency.

Humanism and Political Identity

This chapter focuses on humanist political identities and how these shape views on various social, cultural, and political matters. The chapter considers “humanists” as people (a) who are nontheistic, meaning they do not believe in God; and (b) whose worldviews are shaped not by religious belief but by science and philosophy. This definition of humanist overlaps with the segment of the population that consider itself atheist but is not entirely composed of self-identified atheists. For this reason, the humanist cohort is not limited to the nonreligious. An analysis of the 2014 Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project shows that humanists in the United States hold views about politics, economics, and culture that are more liberal than most religious Americans. As humanism becomes better known and embraced by more nonreligious Americans, their views could become an important part of the Democratic Party coalition.

Humanism and Literature

This chapter explores multiple connections between humanism and literature in Europe and the United States. The period covered extends from antiquity to the twenty-first century. The first part of the chapter discusses the intrinsic connection between literature and humanism, the humanist program and literary form, humanism institutionalizing literature since the Renaissance, and humanist education and liberal arts. The second part turns more directly to literary works (the nineteenth-century democratic tradition, Black humanism, and ecohumanism), presenting exemplary readings from humanist scholars. These readings show, first, how literature has continuously broadened the humanist focus, especially in terms of sociopolitical and intersectional themes, and second, that literature fulfills a fundamental function in humanist scholarship across the disciplines.

Humanism and Enlightenment

Humanism and Enlightenment are words associated with the birth of rights-bearing Man. Yet this birth was accompanied by the rise of another Enlightenment concept: race. This chapter theorizes the effects of the twinned, contradictory birth of pseudo-biological human difference and “universal” Man. Starting in the Renaissance and concluding in the “posthuman” present, the chapter shows how conceptions of the human emerged from interactions between Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. From the Enlightenment onward, theories of religion, politics, and culture have centered on contestations over the limits of this human. Rather than telling a linear narrative of Man–human–posthuman, such contests present an unfinished project that continues to this day.

Humanism and Class

Although early twentieth century humanist discourse was informed by an explicit emphasis on class and socioeconomic redress, contemporary iterations within “organized humanism” have been less definitive. In the post–World War II era, humanist scholars and activists have taken diverse approaches to connecting organized humanism and humanist discourse with class politics and class analyses. Changing demographics in the United States, including the rise of “Religious Nones” and the US shift from a majority white population, may play a prominent role in clarifying the nexus between humanism and class analysis.

Humanism and the Renaissance

Both the Renaissance and humanism have anachronistically taken on meanings today that betray their historical reality. Emerging from the peculiar lay professional culture of medieval Italy, humanism joined in the Renaissance with other elements of medieval Italian culture to dominate the educated world of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. The Renaissance humanists constituted, in the words of Paul Oskar Kristeller, “a characteristic phase in what may be called the rhetorical tradition in Western culture.” Renaissance humanism created not an ideology or philosophy, but a dynamic set of educated interests and methods dominated by rhetorical and literary interests and focused on imitation of classical eloquence and literature. The humanists would in time powerfully reshape European learning, education, and, ultimately, self-conception. A non-trivial residue of Renaissance humanism is our understanding of the disciplines that make up the humanities and that we view as essential to educated culture.