Who founded Humanism?
Humanism
Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism and empiricism) over acceptance of dogma or superstition. The meaning of the term "humanism" has fluctuated according to the successive intellectual movements which have identified with it. The term was coined by theologian Friedrich Niethammer at the beginning of the 19th century to refer to a system of education based on the study of classical literature ("classical humanism"). Generally, however, humanism refers to a perspective that affirms some notion of human freedom and progress. It views humans as solely responsible for the promotion and development of individuals and emphasizes a concern for man in relation to the world.
American Humanist Association
The first "Humanist Manifesto" was issued by a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1933. Signatories included the philosopher John Dewey, but the majority were ministers (chiefly Unitarian) and theologians. They identified humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, and social and economic justice.
Renaissance humanism
Some of the first humanists were great collectors of antique manuscripts, including Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Coluccio Salutati, and Poggio Bracciolini. Of the four, Petrarch was dubbed the "Father of Humanism" because of his devotion or loyalty to Greek and Roman scrolls. Many worked for the Catholic Church and were in holy orders, like Petrarch, while others were lawyers and chancellors of Italian cities, and thus had access to book copying workshops, such as Petrarch's disciple Salutati, the Chancellor of Florence.
Humanism
After 1517, when the new invention of printing made these texts widely available, the Dutch humanist Erasmus, who had studied Greek at the Venetian printing house of Aldus Manutius, began a philological analysis of the Gospels in the spirit of Valla, comparing the Greek originals with their Latin translations with a view to correcting errors and discrepancies in the latter. Erasmus, along with the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, began issuing new translations, laying the groundwork for the Protestant Reformation. Henceforth Renaissance humanism, particularly in the German North, became concerned with religion, while Italian and French humanism concentrated increasingly on scholarship and philology addressed to a narrow audience of specialists, studiously avoiding topics that might offend despotic rulers or which might be seen as corrosive of faith. After the Reformation, critical examination of the Bible did not resume until the advent of the so-called Higher criticism of the 19th-century German Tübingen school.
Raymond Bragg
Raymond Bennett Bragg (1902–1979) was an American Unitarian minister who played a key role in the writing of the Humanist Manifesto and eventually signing Humanist Manifesto. Raymond Bragg was born in Massachusetts and attended Bates College and Brown University. In 1927, he earned a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and a B.D. from Meadville Theological School and was ordained at the Unitarian Church of All Souls in Evanston, Illinois where he was pastor until 1930. From 1930-1935 he served as the Secretary of the Western Unitarian Conference. During these years he was also the editor of The New Humanist, and was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto, which helped give rise to a new humanist movement within Unitarianism. He served as pastor of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis from 1935–1947. He was the Executive Director of the Unitarian Service Committee from 1947-1952, and then became the pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church, Kansas City, Missouri, where he remained until his retirement in 1973. During this time, he chaired the Kansas City's Civil Liberties Union, worked on the local and state levels to improve mental health services, and was an assistant professor of philosophy at the Kansas City Art Institute. Upon his retirement, he was elected Minister Emeritus by the Kansas City congregation.he was very old about his life
New Humanist
The "New Humanist" has been in print for 131 years; starting out life as "Watts's Literary Guide", founded by C. A. Watts in November 1885. It later became "The Literary Guide and Rationalist Review" (1894–1954), "Humanist" (1956–1971) and the "New Humanist" in 1972.
Fellowship of Humanity
The Fellowship of Humanity is a humanist church in Oakland, California, founded in 1935 by Reverend A. D. Faupell as part of the American Religious Humanism movement. It was an offshoot of the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, where A. D. Faupell had been teaching Sunday school, and was inspired in part by Upton Sinclair’s campaign for governor of California under the banner of EPIC, End Poverty in California. It was one of several "Churches of Humanity" established in the 1930s but is the only one that has survived into the 21st century. It is the first and oldest affiliate of the American Humanist Association. It is currently described as a "Deep Green Humanist Church vital to progressive infrastructure, inspired by humanitarian ideals, and committed to action for social justice and ecological sanity."
Sherwin Wine
In 1982, Wine founded the North American Committee for Humanism, a confederation of the six major humanist organizations in North America, and The Humanist Institute, a graduate school in New York for training humanist leaders. Wine served as President of both of these organizations from 1982 until 1993.
Humanism in France
Humanism in France found its way from Italy, but did not become a distinct movement until the 16th century was well on its way.
Humanism
Humanists reacted against this utilitarian approach and the narrow pedantry associated with it. They sought to create a citizenry (frequently including women) able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity and thus capable of engaging the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous and prudent actions. This was to be accomplished through the study of the "studia humanitatis", today known as the humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy. As a program to revive the culturaland particularly the literarylegacy and moral philosophy of classical antiquity, Humanism was a pervasive cultural mode and not the program of a few isolated geniuses like Rabelais or Erasmus as is still sometimes popularly believed.
Music of Florence
Given this environment of collaboration among institutions and classes of society, it is worth considering the relationship between music and humanism, one of the primary intellectual strands active in quattrocento Florence. Humanism arose as a literary movement in Italy during the late 13th century and flowered in the 15th, particularly in the city of Florence. Humanists were initially identified as professors or students of the "studia humanitatis", the curriculum of core subjects that formed the foundation of the humanists' education; these included grammar (i.e. Latin), rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy. Classicism was the basis for their studies: humanists drew on the discoveries and revival of ancient Greek and Latin authors and attempted to imitate them in content, style, and form.
Antihumanism
In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the philosophy of humanism was a cornerstone of the Enlightenment. From the belief in a universal moral core of humanity, it followed that all persons are inherently free and equal. For liberal humanists such as Kant, the universal law of reason was a guide towards total emancipation from any kind of tyranny.
Lovato Lovati
Lovato Lovati (1241–1309) was an Italian scholar, poet, notary, judge and humanist from the Italian Renaissance. Arguable among historians, Lovati is considered the "father of Humanism." His literary Padua circle included Rolando de Piazzola, Geremia da Montagnone, and Albertino Mussato. Lovati's scholarship marked characteristics which would later define the development of humanism: an appetite for classical texts; a philological concern to correct them, and ascertain their meaning; and a desire to imitate them. Scholars such as Petrarch commented on his works favorably. Lovati's achievements which survive today are his Latin verse epistles, and his short commentary of Seneca's tragedies.
Humanism
Another instance of ancient humanism as an organised system of thought is found in the Gathas of Zarathustra, composed between 1,000BCE600BCE in Greater Iran. Zarathustra's philosophy in the Gathas lays out a conception of humankind as thinking beings, dignified with choice and agency according to the intellect which each receives from Ahura Mazda (God in the form of supreme wisdom). The idea of Ahura Mazda as a non-intervening deistic god or Great Architect of the Universe was combined with a unique eschatology and ethical system which implied that each person is held morally responsible in the afterlife, for their choices they freely made in life. This importance placed upon thought, action and personal responsibility, and the concept of a non-intervening creator, was a source of inspiration to a number of Enlightenment humanist thinkers in Europe such as Voltaire and Montesquieu.
Secular humanism
The original signers of the first Humanist Manifesto of 1933, declared themselves to be religious humanists. Because, in their view, traditional religions were failing to meet the needs of their day, the signers of 1933 declared it a necessity to establish a religion that was a dynamic force to meet the needs of the day. However, this "religion" did not profess a belief in any god. Since then two additional Manifestos were written to replace the first. In the Preface of Humanist Manifesto II, in 1973, the authors Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson assert that faith and knowledge are required for a hopeful vision for the future. Manifesto II references a section on Religion and states traditional religion renders a disservice to humanity. Manifesto II recognizes the following groups to be part of their naturalistic philosophy: "scientific", "ethical", "democratic", "religious", and "Marxist" humanism.
Charles Francis Potter
In 1927 Potter returned to the ministry at the Church of the Divine Paternity, a Universalist congregation on Manhattan's Upper West Side. In 1929, his progressive ideas led him to resign his post and found the First Humanist Society of New York, whose advisory board included Julian Huxley, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Mann. Together with Dewey, Potter was one of the original 34 signers of the first "Humanist Manifesto" in 1933.
Fritz Bauer Prize
The Fritz Bauer Prize () is a prize awarded by the Humanist Union, established in 1968 in memory of its founder, Fritz Bauer, the longtime Attorney General of Hesse. The Humanist Union presents the award to those who have excelled in contributions to the humanization, liberalization and democratization of the judiciary.
Modern philosophy
Renaissance humanism emphasized the value of human beings (see Oration on the Dignity of Man) and opposed dogma and scholasticism. This new interest in human activities led to the development of political science with The Prince of Niccolò Macchiavelli. Humanists differed from Medieval scholars also because they saw the natural world as mathematically ordered and pluralistic, instead of thinking of it in terms of purposes and goals. Renaissance philosophy is perhaps best explained by two propositions made by Leonardo da Vinci in his notebooks:
In a similar way, Galieo based his scientific method on experiments but also developed mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. These two ways to conceive human knowledge formed the background for the principle of Empiricism and Rationalism respectively.Modern philosophy traditionally begins with René Descartes and his dictum "I think, therefore I am". In the early seventeenth century the bulk of philosophy was dominated by Scholasticism, written by theologians and drawing upon Plato, Aristotle, and early Church writings. Descartes argued that many predominant Scholastic metaphysical doctrines were meaningless or false. In short, he proposed to begin philosophy from scratch. In his most important work, "Meditations on First Philosophy", he attempts just this, over six brief essays. He tries to set aside as much as he possibly can of all his beliefs, to determine what if anything he knows for "certain". He finds that he can doubt nearly everything: the reality of physical objects, God, his memories, history, science, even mathematics, but he cannot doubt that he is, in fact, doubting. He knows what he is thinking about, even if it is not true, and he knows that he is there thinking about it. From this basis he builds his knowledge back up again. He finds that some of the ideas he has could not have originated from him alone, but only from God; he proves that God exists. He then demonstrates that God would not allow him to be systematically deceived about everything; in essence, he vindicates ordinary methods of science and reasoning, as fallible but not false.Empiricism is a theory of knowledge which opposes other theories of knowledge, such as rationalism, idealism and historicism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes (only or primarily) via sensory experience as opposed to rationalism, which asserts that knowledge comes (also) from pure thinking. Both empiricism and rationalism are individualist theories of knowledge, whereas historicism is a social epistemology. While historicism also acknowledges the role of experience, it differs from empiricism by assuming that sensory data cannot be understood without considering the historical and cultural circumstances in which observations are made. Empiricism should not be mixed up with empirical research because different epistemologies should be considered competing views on how best to do studies, and there is near consensus among researchers that studies should be empirical. Today empiricism should therefore be understood as one among competing ideals of getting knowledge or how to do studies. As such empiricism is first and foremost characterized by the ideal to let observational data "speak for themselves", while the competing views are opposed to this ideal. The term empiricism should thus not just be understood in relation to how this term has been used in the history of philosophy. It should also be constructed in a way which makes it possible to distinguish empiricism among other epistemological positions in contemporary science and scholarship. In other words: Empiricism as a concept has to be constructed along with other concepts, which together make it possible to make important discriminations between different ideals underlying contemporary science.
Humanist Manifesto
The Amsterdam Declaration 2002 is a statement of the fundamental principles of modern Humanism passed unanimously by the General Assembly of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) at the 50th anniversary World Humanist Congress in 2002. According to the IHEU, the declaration "is the official statement of World Humanism."
Religion of Humanity
Religion of Humanity (from French "Religion de l'Humanité" or "église positiviste") is a secular religion created by Auguste Comte, the founder of positivist philosophy. Adherents of this religion have built chapels of Humanity in France and Brazil.
Humanist Manifesto
In 1980, the Council for Secular Humanism, founded by Paul Kurtz, which is typically more detailed in its discussions regarding the function of Humanism than the AHA, published what is in effect its manifesto, entitled "A Secular Humanist Declaration". It has as its main points:A Secular Humanist Declaration was an argument for and statement of support for democratic secular humanism. The document was issued in 1980 by the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism ("CODESH"), now the Council for Secular Humanism ("CSH"). Compiled by Paul Kurtz, it is largely a restatement of the content of the American Humanist Association's 1973 Humanist Manifesto II, of which he was co-author with Edwin H. Wilson. Both Wilson and Kurtz had served as editors of "The Humanist", from which Kurtz departed in 1979 and thereafter set about establishing his own movement and his own periodical. His Secular Humanist Declaration was the starting point for these enterprises.
Transhumanism
Fundamental ideas of transhumanism were first advanced in 1923 by the British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane in his essay "Daedalus: Science and the Future", which predicted that great benefits would come from the application of advanced sciences to human biology—and that every such advance would first appear to someone as blasphemy or perversion, "indecent and unnatural". In particular, he was interested in the development of the science of eugenics, ectogenesis (creating and sustaining life in an artificial environment), and the application of genetics to improve human characteristics, such as health and intelligence.
Secular humanism
As an organized movement, Humanism itself is quite recent – born at the University of Chicago in the 1920s, and made public in 1933 with the publication of the first Humanist Manifesto. The American Humanist Association was incorporated as an Illinois non-profit organization in 1943. The International Humanist and Ethical Union was founded in 1952, when a gathering of world Humanists met under the leadership of Sir Julian Huxley. The British Humanist Association took that name in 1967, but had developed from the Union of Ethical Societies which had been founded by Stanton Coit in 1896.
Sherwin Wine
In 1969 Wine founded the Society for Humanistic Judaism. He later was a founder of several other organizations related to Humanistic Judaism, a humanist movement within Judaism that emphasizes secular Jewish culture and Jewish history rather than belief in God as sources of Jewish identity. Wine was also the founder of several humanist organizations that are not specifically Jewish, such as the Humanist Institute and the International Association of Humanist Educators, Counselors, and Leaders, as well as the cofounder of Americans for Religious Liberty, which promotes separation of church and state. Wine was the provost of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism at the time of his death.
Religion of Humanity
Profound criticism came from John Stuart Mill who advocated Comte but dismissed his Religion of Humanity in a move towards a differentiation between the (good) early Comte, the author of "The Course in Positive Philosophy" and the (problematic) late Comte, who authored the Religion of Humanity. While sympathising with the need for a secular religion, and appreciating Comte’s respect for “the Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, including the past, he present and the future”, Mill thought that the details of Comte’s ritualism were not only illiberal but “could have been written by no man who had ever laughed”.
Comtean Positivism was relatively popular in Brazil. In 1881 Miguel Lemos and Raimundo Teixeira Mendes organized the "Positivist Church of Brazil." In 1897 the "Temple of Humanity" was created. The services at the Temple could go on for up to four hours and that, combined with a certain moral strictness, led to some decline during the Republican period. Nevertheless it had appeal with the military class as Benjamin Constant joined the group before breaking with it because he deemed Mendes and Lemos as too fanatical. Cândido Rondon's conversion proved more solid as he remained an orthodox Positivist and a member of the faith long after the church's importance waned. Although declined, the church still survives in Brazil. The national flag of Brazil bears the "Ordem e Progresso" ("Order and Progress"), inspired by Comte's motto of positivism: "L’amour pour principe et l’ordre pour base; le progrès pour but" ("Love as a principle and order as the basis; progress as the goal").
First Humanist Society of New York
In 1929 Charles Francis Potter founded the First Humanist Society of New York whose advisory board included Julian Huxley, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Mann. Potter was a minister from the Unitarian tradition and in 1930 he and his wife, Clara Cook Potter, published "". Throughout the 1930s Potter was a well-known advocate of women’s rights, access to birth control, "civil divorce laws", and an end to capital punishment.
Christian humanism
Christian humanism regards humanist principles like universal human dignity and individual freedom and the primacy of human happiness as essential and principal components of the teachings of Jesus, and explicitly emerged during the Renaissance with strong roots in the patristic period. Historically, major forces shaping the development of Christian humanism was the Christian doctrine that God, in the form of Jesus Christ became human in order to redeem humanity, and the further injunction for the participating human collective (the church) to act out the life of Christ. Many of these ideas had emerged among the patristics, and would develop into Christian humanism in the late 15th century, through which the ideals of "common humanity, universal reason, freedom, personhood, human rights, human emancipation and progress, and indeed the very notion of secularity (describing the present "saeculum" preserved by God until Christ’s return) are literally unthinkable without their Christian humanistic roots." Though there is a common association of humanism with agnosticism and atheism in popular culture, this association developed in the 20th century and non-humanistic forms of agnosticism and atheism have long existed.
Ingemar Hedenius
Per Arvid Ingemar Hedenius (5 April 1908 – 30 April 1982) was a Swedish philosopher. He was Professor of Practical Philosophy at Uppsala University (1947-1973). He was a famous opponent of organised Christianity. The Swedish Humanist Association, known in Sweden as "Humanisterna", offers the Ingemar Hedenius Award each year to support humanist ideas and critical thinking.
Humanitas
According to historian Peter Gay, the eighteenth-century French philosophes of the Enlightenment found Cicero's eclectic, Stoic-tinged paganism congenial:The ideal of "humanitas" was first brought to Rome by the philosophic circle around Scipio and further developed by Cicero. For Cicero, "humanitas" was a style of thought, not a formal doctrine. It asserted man’s importance as a cultivated being, in control of his moral universe. The man who practiced "humanitas" was confident of his worth, courteous to others, decent in his social conduct, and active in his political role. He was a man, moreover, who faced life with courageous skepticism: he knows that the consolations of popular religion are for more credulous beings than himself, that life is uncertain, and that sturdy pessimism is superior to self-deceptive optimism. Man becomes man as he refines himself; he even becomes godlike: “"Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem",” wrote Pliny, translating a Greek Stoic, “To help man is man’s true God.” Finally, the man who practiced "humanitas" cultivated his aesthetic sensibilities as he listened to his reason: ""Cum musis,"” wrote Cicero, “"id est, cum humanitate et doctrina habere commercium"". Virtue, Cicero insisted, is nothing but nature perfected and developed to its highest point, and there is therefore a resemblance between man and God: ""Est autem virtus nihil aliud quam in se perfecta et ad summum perducta natura; est igitur homini cum deo similitudio"".
International League of Humanists
ILH was established at a meeting held at the Inter-University Center in Dubrovnik, Croatia (then a part of Yugoslavia) in 1974. Its founders were notable peacemakers and humanists of that time: Linus Pauling, Ivan Supek, Aurelio Peccei, Sophia Wadia and Philip Noel-Baker. The First International Congress of ILH was held in Philadelphia in 1976.
Italian philosophy
Renaissance Humanism was a European intellectual movement that was a crucial component of the Renaissance, beginning in Florence in the latter half of the 14th century, and affected most of Italy. The humanist movement developed from the rediscovery by European scholars of Latin literary and Greek literary texts. Initially, a humanist was simply a scholar or teacher of Latin literature. By the mid-15th century humanism described a curriculum – the "studia humanitatis" – consisting of grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry, and history as studied via Latin and Greek literary authors.
Indian Humanist Union
Narsingh Narain (1897–1972) was born on 4 October 1897 in Uttar Pradesh, India. In 1960, he founded the Indian Humanist Union, an organisation for promoting humanism. Narain is one of the main humanist thinkers of twentieth century India. Some of his important essays have been collected in a book titled "A Commonsense Humanism and Other Essays."
Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism
The Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism is a prize given to people who made exemplary contributions to humanity and the environment. The goal of the prize is to advance the cause of humanitarianism. The prize was established in 1986 by Albert Toepfer, an international grain merchant from Hamburg, Germany. Previously given under the auspices of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in New York and administered by Johns Hopkins University, it is named after noted humanitarian and physician Albert Schweitzer and is now administered by The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship.
Humanism
In February 1877, the word was used pejoratively, apparently for the first time in America, to describe Felix Adler. Adler, however, did not embrace the term, and instead coined the name "Ethical Culture" for his new movement a movement which still exists in the now Humanist-affiliated New York Society for Ethical Culture. In 2008, Ethical Culture Leaders wrote: "Today, the historic identification, Ethical Culture, and the modern description, Ethical Humanism, are used interchangeably."
Religious humanism
In the 1850s, Auguste Comte, the Father of Sociology, founded Positivism, a "religion of humanity". Auguste Comte was a student and secretary for Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, the Father of French Socialism. Auguste Comte coined the term "altruism".
Humanism
Raymond B. Bragg, the associate editor of "The New Humanist", sought to consolidate the input of Leon Milton Birkhead, Charles Francis Potter, and several members of the Western Unitarian Conference. Bragg asked Roy Wood Sellars to draft a document based on this information which resulted in the publication of the "Humanist Manifesto" in 1933. Potter's book and the Manifesto became the cornerstones of modern humanism, the latter declaring a new religion by saying, "any religion that can hope to be a synthesising and dynamic force for today must be shaped for the needs of this age. To establish such a religion is a major necessity of the present." It then presented 15 theses of humanism as foundational principles for this new religion.
Secular humanism
In 1878, the Society established the Church of Humanity under Congreve's direction. There they introduced sacraments of the Religion of Humanity and published a co-operative translation of Comte's Positive Polity. When Congreve repudiated their Paris co-religionists in 1878, Beesly, Harrison, Bridges, and others formed their own positivist society, with Beesly as president, and opened a rival centre, Newton Hall, in a courtyard off Fleet Street.
Larry Jones (humanist)
Although he was born into an atheist family, Jones did not discover humanism until the mid 1980s, when he became involved in the Capital District Humanist Society, a local humanist group in Albany, and the Council for Secular Humanism. Jones later served on the CDHS board and as director from 1998 to 2002. In 1999 Jones founded the Institute for Humanist Studies, a humanist think-tank based in Albany, NY, in order to promote a greater understanding of humanist values. The IHS grant program has also provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant funding to humanist projects. Both the Secular Student Alliance and Camp Quest were organizations that benefitted from these grants. August Brunsman, executive director of the Secular Student Alliance, states that Jones was “essentially one of the first donors to significantly support the SSA,” and that the IHS grant was vital to the survival of the organization. Funding from the IHS also helped Camp Quest grow and become more professionalized.
Outline of humanism
Humanism – group of philosophies and ethical perspectives which emphasize the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers individual thought and evidence (rationalism, empiricism), over established doctrine or faith (fideism). Two common forms of humanism are religious humanism and secular humanism.
Neohumanism
Neohumanism is a holistic philosophical theory proposed by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar to promote individual and collective progress. In this philosophy universalism plays a central role. It claims to elevate humanism to level of universalism. It claims not to have any grouping intention.
Lester Mondale
Mondale was a member of the American Humanist Association (AHA) since its inception and received its Humanist Pioneer award in 1973 and the Humanist Founder award in 2001.
Dunantist
Dunantist is named after Henry Dunant (1828–1910), who inspired the creation of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. It refers to the group of humanitarian practitioners, who follow the traditional or classic approach to humanitarianism, which comprises four fundamental principles:Aside from the strict subscription to the humanitarian principles that the Red Cross is based on, Dunantists also limit their action exclusively to humanitarian crises.
Institute for Humane Studies
The Institute for Humane Studies was founded in 1961 in Menlo Park, California by F. A. Harper in order to promote peace, prosperity, and social harmony by fostering a greater understanding of human affairs and freedom. Initially serving as the secretary and treasurer, Harper became the Institute's president in 1966, a position he held until his death in 1973. Murray Rothbard played a key role as speaker at IHS conferences in the 1970s, promoting Austrian economics. Following Harper in the role of president were Louis M. Spadaro and Leonard Liggio, who served as president from 1980 to 1989. From 1998 to 2000 Stanford graduate David C. Nott, now with the Reason Foundation, led the organization as president. The current president and CEO, Emily Chamlee-Wright, served as provost and dean at Washington College from 2012 to 2016 and was previously the Elbert H. Neese Professor of Economics and associate dean at Beloit College. Her predecessor, Marty Zupan, served as president and CEO from 2001 to 2016 after serving as editor of "Reason" magazine.
Existential humanism
Jean-Paul Sartre said "existentialism is a humanism" because it expresses the power of human beings to make freely-willed choices, independent of the influence of religion or society. Unlike traditional humanisms, however, Sartre disavowed any reliance on an essential nature of man – on deriving values from the facts of human nature – but rather saw human value as self-created through undertaking projects in the world: experiments in living.
Albert Camus, in his book "The Plague", suggests that some of us may choose to be heroic, even knowing that it will bring us neither reward nor salvation; and Simone de Beauvoir, in her book "The Ethics of Ambiguity", argues that embracing our own personal freedom requires us to fight for the freedoms of all humanity.
Institute for Humanist Studies
In June 1999, the Institute for Humanist Studies, Inc., was incorporated in the state of New York. With financial support from Larry Jones, the founding president of the Institute, the organization began its work as an educational non-profit institute, with the purpose of providing information to policy makers and others in order to advance humanism as a life philosophy. Much of this information was made available through its on line publication – Humanist Network News. In addition to information in the form of papers, etc., the Institute also offered distance-learning opportunities through its on line “Continuum of Humanist Education” curriculum. With time, these courses were made available without cost to those interested in them. Furthermore, through its registered lobbyist, the Institute sought to promote humanism within New York State Legislation. Intentionally avoiding a framework based on membership, the Institute understood itself as thereby being free to partner with other humanist organizations without competition for members. Based on this approach, the Institute became a founding member of the Secular Coalition for America. In addition to supporting these organizations through information, the Institute also provided grants averaging between $10,000-$20,000 to humanist organization in support of the policy efforts and programming. Those receiving grants include: Secular Student Alliance; International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organization (Belgium); Prometheus Society of Slovakia, Bratislava; and the International Humanist and Ethical Union (London).
L'Homme
L'Homme. Revue française d'anthropologie, is a French anthropological journal established in 1961 by Emile Benveniste, Pierre Gourou, and Claude Lévi-Strauss at the École pratique des hautes études, as a French counterpart to "Man" and "American Anthropologist".
Humanism
The phrase the "religion of humanity" is sometimes attributed to American Founding Father Thomas Paine, though as yet unattested in his surviving writings. According to Tony Davies: Paine called himself a "theophilanthropist", a word combining the Greek for "God", "love", and "humanity", and indicating that while he believed in the existence of a creating intelligence in the universe, he entirely rejected the claims made by and for all existing religious doctrines, especially their miraculous, transcendental and salvationist pretensions. The Parisian "Society of Theophilanthropy" which he sponsored, is described by his biographer as "a forerunner of the ethical and humanist societies that proliferated later" ... [Paine's book] the trenchantly witty "Age of Reason" (1793) ... pours scorn on the supernatural pretensions of scripture, combining Voltairean mockery with Paine's own style of taproom ridicule to expose the absurdity of a theology built on a collection of incoherent Levantine folktales.
Humanist photography
At the end of World War II, in 1946, French intellectuals Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux embraced humanism; Sartre arguing that existentialism was a humanism entailing freedom of choice and a responsibility for defining oneself, while at the Sorbonne in an address sponsored by UNESCO, Malraux depicted human culture as 'humanisme tragique', a battle against biological decay and historical disaster. Emerging from brutal global conflict, survivors desired material and cultural reconstruction and the appeal of humanism was a return to the values of dignity, equality and tolerance symbolised in an international proclamation and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris on 10 December 1948. That the photographic image could become a universal language in accord with these principles was a notion circulated at a UNESCO conference in 1958
Francis Crick
Crick referred to himself as a humanist, which he defined as the belief "that human problems can and must be faced in terms of human moral and intellectual resources without invoking supernatural authority." He publicly called for humanism to replace religion as a guiding force for humanity, writing:
Jordan Plevnes
He is the founder of the World Prized of Humanism and the Ohrid Academy of Humanism in Macedonia on 19.01.1991 with Liljana Kotevska Plevnes, Zoran Veljanovski Letra and several Macedonian intellectuals.
http://www.jordanplevnes.net/biography.html
Lovato Lovati
Petrarch is considered one of the greatest humanists and often titled the "father of humanism" in the Italian Renaissance. He owed much of his humanistic tendencies to the study of the classical texts of ancient Rome, especially the writings of Seneca. Seneca's writings, especially his moral writings, "exercised tremendous influence on early humanists concerned with ethical problems." And it was Lovato's belief in the promise of a better time as expounded by Seneca, which coloured his poetry and ultimately helped formulate the thinking of Petrarch towards such matters. Also, in his humanistic philosophy and its explication and embrace of the secular and civic life, Petrarch showed himself to be more of a "grammarian than that of a rhetorician" much like Lovato.
Mario Rodríguez Cobos
Silo differentiates himself further from the academic ambits with a conception of the human being which led to the formation of the Humanist Movement. In fact, the definition of humanist movement as the group of people who study and interpret the needs of human beings and provide the conditions for advancing from the field of determinism to the field of freedom, i.e. to overcome pain and suffering, both individually and socially, is implied in the idea of human beings:
A Secular Humanist Declaration
A Secular Humanist Declaration was an argument for and statement of support for democratic secular humanism. The document was issued in 1980 by the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODESH), now the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH). Compiled by Paul Kurtz, it is largely a restatement of the content of the American Humanist Association's 1973 Humanist Manifesto II, of which he was co-author with Edwin H. Wilson. Both Wilson and Kurtz had served as editors of "The Humanist", from which Kurtz departed in 1979 and thereafter set about establishing his own movement and his own periodical. His Secular Humanist Declaration was the starting point for these enterprises.Before the list of signatories, the declaration has the following disclaimer: "Although we who endorse this declaration may not agree with all its specific provisions, we nevertheless support its general purposes and direction and believe that it is important that they be enunciated and implemented. We call upon all men and women of good will who agree with us to join in helping to keep alive the commitment to the principles of free inquiry and the secular humanist outlook. We submit that the decline of these values could have ominous implications for the future of civilization on this planet."
Humanism
Earlier attempts at inventing a secular religious tradition informed the Ethical Culture movement. The Cult of Reason () was a religion based on deism devised during the French Revolution by Jacques Hébert, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette and their supporters. In 1793 during the French Revolution, the cathedral Notre Dame de Paris was turned into a "Temple of Reason" and for a time Lady Liberty replaced the Virgin Mary on several altars. In the 1850s, Auguste Comte, the Father of Sociology, founded Positivism, a "religion of humanity". One of the earliest forerunners of contemporary chartered humanist organisations was the Humanistic Religious Association formed in 1853 in London. This early group was democratically organised, with male and female members participating in the election of the leadership and promoted knowledge of the sciences, philosophy, and the arts.
Yaakov Malkin
Humanistic nonreligious beliefs include Agnostics such as Socrates, Deists such as Epicurus, Pantheists such as Spinoza or Einstein, and Atheists such as John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, which are all free of commitment to a religious or ideological religion. A contemporary institutionalized Jewish form of humanism is Humanistic Judaism (www.shj.org), to which Malkin's works contributed and in which movement Malkin's daughter, Sivan Maas, is a rabbi. These humanistic nonreligious beliefs stand in contrast to postmodern relativism in that they see themselves as bound by humanistic ethical values and by the values of universal justice as articulated by Confucius and Hillel the Elder: "Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself". These values of justice lead to the moral values of equality, freedom, and human and national rights.
Humanist Movement
In short, New Humanism is based on two basic points:The project of the Humanist Movement is nothing less than to eradicate war, hunger, poverty and economic exploitation across the planet and develop a new system based on the value of human life as the central value, higher than money, power, prestige, etc. Siloists call this vision of the future the Universal Human Nation. The methodology used is to work in groups and undertake personal development activities as well as social projects. Once sufficiently experienced, new groups develop according to their interests.
Happy Human
The Happy Human was created in response to a Humanists UK competition in 1965, after many years of discussion as to what a logo should look like. After some time without progress, radio presenter Margaret Knight backed a popular movement among Humanists UK's membership to commission such a logo, triggering publicity officer Tom Vernon to announce the competition. Of the several hundred designs from a number of countries that were considered, Dennis Barrington's simple design was favoured for its perceived universalism. Within the space of a few years, the logo had emerged as a symbol of Humanism, not just of Humanists UK and was adopted by humanist organisations around the world.
International Humanist and Ethical Union
Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.Member Organisations of the IHEU are required according to IHEU's membership regulations to have objects that are "consistent" with this understanding of Humanism.
Susan Sackett
Although raised as a reform Jew, Susan Sackett considers herself a secular humanist and has been active in Humanism since 1989. 
She was first introduced to secular humanism by Gene Roddenberry after finding on his desk a copy of Isaac Asimov's book Asimov's Guide to the Bible. "I discovered that I was in line with this way of thinking without knowing there was a name for it". The two began attending conventions together and met prominent skeptics such as James Randi.
From 2000 to 2010 she was president of Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix. She is on the Board of Directors of the American Humanist Association, a member of Mensa, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), and Writers Guild of America (WGA).
Humanism
In his book, "Humanism" (1997), Tony Davies calls these critics "humanist anti-humanists". Critics of antihumanism, most notably Jürgen Habermas, counter that while antihumanists may highlight humanism's failure to fulfil its emancipatory ideal, they do not offer an alternative emancipatory project of their own. Others, like the German philosopher Heidegger considered themselves humanists on the model of the ancient Greeks, but thought humanism applied only to the German "race" and specifically to the Nazis and thus, in Davies' words, were anti-humanist humanists. Such a reading of Heidegger's thought is itself deeply controversial; Heidegger includes his own views and critique of Humanism in Letter On Humanism. Davies acknowledges that after the horrific experiences of the wars of the 20th century "it should no longer be possible to formulate phrases like 'the destiny of man' or the 'triumph of human reason' without an instant consciousness of the folly and brutality they drag behind them". For "it is almost impossible to think of a crime that has not been committed in the name of human reason". Yet, he continues, "it would be unwise to simply abandon the ground occupied by the historical humanisms. For one thing humanism remains on many occasions the only available alternative to bigotry and persecution. The freedom to speak and write, to organise and campaign in defence of individual or collective interests, to protest and disobey: all these can only be articulated in humanist terms."
Culturalism
In philosophy and sociology, culturalism (new humanism or Znaniecki's humanism) is the central importance of culture as an organizing force in human affairs. It was originally coined by the Polish-American philosopher and sociologist Florian Znaniecki in his book "Cultural Reality" (1919) in English and later translated into Polish as "kulturalizm". Znaniecki had introduced a similar concept in earlier Polish language publications which he described as "humanism" ("humanizm").
History of Protestantism
The frustrated reformism of the humanists, ushered in by the Renaissance, contributed to a growing impatience among reformers. Erasmus and later figures like Martin Luther and Zwingli would emerge from this debate and eventually contribute to another major schism of Christendom. The crisis of theology beginning with William of Ockham in the fourteenth century was occurring in conjunction with the new burgher discontent. Since the breakdown of the philosophical foundations of scholasticism, the new nominalism did not bode well for an institutional church legitimized as an intermediary between man and God. New thinking favored the notion that no religious doctrine can be supported by philosophical arguments, eroding the old alliance between reason and faith of the medieval period laid out by Thomas Aquinas.
The major individualistic reform movements that revolted against medieval scholasticism and the institutions that underpinned it were humanism, devotionalism, (see for example, the Brothers of the Common Life and Jan Standonck) and the observantine tradition. In Germany, "the modern way" or devotionalism caught on in the universities, requiring a redefinition of God, who was no longer a rational governing principle but an arbitrary, unknowable will that cannot be limited. God was now a ruler, and religion would be more fervent and emotional. Thus, the ensuing revival of Augustinian theology, stating that man cannot be saved by his own efforts but only by the grace of God, would erode the legitimacy of the rigid institutions of the church meant to provide a channel for man to do good works and get into heaven. Humanism, however, was more of an educational reform movement with origins in the Renaissance's revival of classical learning and thought. A revolt against Aristotelian logic, it placed great emphasis on reforming individuals through eloquence as opposed to reason. The European Renaissance laid the foundation for the Northern humanists in its reinforcement of the traditional use of Latin as the great unifying language of European culture.
Amsterdam Declaration
The Amsterdam Declaration 2002 is a statement of the fundamental principles of modern Humanism passed unanimously by the General Assembly of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) at the 50th anniversary World Humanist Congress in 2002. According to the IHEU, the declaration "is the official statement of World Humanism."
Religious humanism
The Fellowship of Humanity was founded in 1935 by Reverend A. D. Faupel as one of a handful of "humanist churches" seeded in the early 20th century as part of the American Religious Humanism movement. It was the only such organization to survive into the 21st century and is the first and oldest affiliate of the American Humanist Association.
Renaissance architecture
Leon Battista Alberti, born in Genoa (1402–1472), was an important Humanist theoretician and designer whose book on architecture "De re Aedificatoria" was to have lasting effect. An aspect of Humanism was an emphasis of the anatomy of nature, in particular the human form, a science first studied by the Ancient Greeks. Humanism made man the measure of things. Alberti perceived the architect as a person with great social responsibilities.
He designed a number of buildings, but unlike Brunelleschi, he did not see himself as a builder in a practical sense and so left the supervision of the work to others. Miraculously, one of his greatest designs, that of the Church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, was brought to completion with its character essentially intact. Not so the church of San Francesco in Rimini, a rebuilding of a Gothic structure, which, like Sant'Andrea, was to have a façade reminiscent of a Roman triumphal arch. This was left sadly incomplete.
Humanism
Eliot and her circle, who included her companion George Henry Lewes (the biographer of Goethe) and the abolitionist and social theorist Harriet Martineau, were much influenced by the positivism of Auguste Comte, whom Martineau had translated. Comte had proposed an atheistic "culte" founded on human principlesa secular Religion of Humanity (which worshiped the dead, since most humans who have ever lived are dead), complete with holidays and liturgy, modeled on the rituals of what was seen as a discredited and dilapidated Catholicism. Although Comte's English followers, like Eliot and Martineau, for the most part rejected the full gloomy panoply of his system, they liked the idea of a religion of humanity. Comte's austere vision of the universe, his injunction to ""vivre pour altrui"" ("live for others", from which comes the word "altruism"), and his idealisation of women inform the works of Victorian novelists and poets from George Eliot and Matthew Arnold to Thomas Hardy.
Paul Kurtz
Kurtz was largely responsible for the secularization of humanism. Before Kurtz embraced the term "secular humanism," which had received wide publicity through fundamentalist Christians in the 1980s, humanism was more widely perceived as a religion (or a pseudoreligion) that did not include the supernatural. This can be seen in the first article of the original Humanist Manifesto which refers to "Religious Humanists" and by Charles and Clara Potter's influential 1930 book "Humanism: A New Religion".
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (; July 20, 1304 – July 18/19, 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of Renaissance Italy who was one of the earliest humanists. His rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Renaissance. Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri. Petrarch would be later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca.
Julian Huxley
Huxley had a close association with the British rationalist and secular humanist movements. He was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association from 1927 until his death, and on the formation of the British Humanist Association in 1963 became its first President, to be succeeded by AJ Ayer in 1965. He was also closely involved with the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Many of Huxley's books address humanist themes. In 1962 Huxley accepted the American Humanist Association's annual "Humanist of the Year" award.
Irving Babbitt
It was in the early 1890s that he first allied himself with Paul Elmer More in developing the core doctrines that were to constitute what he called the "New Humanism". In 1895 he gave a lecture "What is Humanism?", which announced his attack on Rousseau. At the time, Babbitt had switched out of classical studies. He would later declare his opposition to contemporary textual and philological scholarship, associated with German scholarship, as a finite task, which he was unhappy to see placed above teaching based on what he felt was the "eternal" moral and spiritual content of literary masterpieces. His ideas, and More's, were characteristically written as short pieces or essays that were later gathered into books. Babbitt's "Literature and the American College", although assembled from writings already circulated, caused a stir when published in 1908.
The Humanist Institute
The idea for the Humanist Institute originated in Pittsburgh in 1976 and was the brainchild of Paul Beattie, a Unitarian Universalist minister. In August 1982, Rabbi Sherwin Wine organized a gathering of forty-five humanist leaders at the University of Chicago [where] the North American Committee for Humanism [NACH] was formed with Rabbi Wine as president. This new alliance was a response to the urgent need to defend humanism against the assaults of its enemies and to find an effective way to bring the message of humanism to a wider public. It was at this meeting that the Humanist Institute was voted to be established.
Antihumanism
Martin Heidegger viewed humanism as a metaphysical philosophy that ascribes to humanity a universal essence and privileges it above all other forms of existence. For Heidegger, humanism takes consciousness as the paradigm of philosophy, leading it to a subjectivism and idealism that must be avoided. Like Hegel before him, Heidegger rejected the Kantian notion of autonomy, pointing out that humans were social and historical beings, as well as Kant's notion of a constituting consciousness. Heidegger nevertheless retains links both to humanism and to existentialism despite his efforts to distance himself from both in the Letter on Humanism (1947).
Humanism
"Religious humanists" are non-superstitious people who nevertheless see ethical humanism as their religion, and who seek to integrate (secular) humanist ethical philosophy with congregational rituals centred on human needs, interests, and abilities. Though practitioners of religious humanism did not officially organise under the name of "humanism" until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, non-theistic religions paired with human-centred ethical philosophy have a long history. A unified Ethical Culture movement was first founded in 1876; its founder, Felix Adler was a former member of the Free Religious Association, and conceived of Ethical Culture as a new religion that would retain the ethical message at the heart of all religions. Ethical Culture was religious in the sense of playing a defining role in people's lives and addressing issues of ultimate concern. Nowadays religious humanists in the United States are represented by organisations such as the American Ethical Union, and will simply describe themselves as "ethical humanists" or "humanists". Secular humanists and religious humanists organise together as part of larger national and international groupings, and differentiate themselves primarily in their attitude to the promotion of humanist thinking.
Panhumanism
At the core of Renaissance humanism was the concept of "humanitas", which meant the development of human virtue to its fullest extent. The possessor of humanitas could not be merely a sedentary and isolated philosopher or man of letters but was of necessity a participant in active life. Just as action without insight was held to be aimless and barbaric, insight without action was rejected as barren and imperfect. Humanitas scholars also believed it was inevitable to project humanitas from the individual into the state at large.
Christian humanism
Christian humanism originated towards the end of the 15th century with the early work of figures such as Jakob Wimpfeling, John Colet, and Thomas More and would go on to dominate much of the thought in the first half of the 16th century with the emergence of widely influential Renaissance and humanistic intellectual figures like Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and especially Erasmus, who would become the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance. These scholars used much of their intellectual work towards reforming the church and reviving spiritual life through humanist education, and were highly critical of the corruption they saw in the Church and ecclesiastical life. They would combine the greatest morals in the pre-Christian moral philosophers, such as Cicero and Seneca with Christian interpretations deriving from study of the Bible and Church Fathers.
Humanism
In 1808 Bavarian educational commissioner Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer coined the term "Humanismus" to describe the new classical curriculum he planned to offer in German secondary schools, and by 1836 the word "humanism" had been absorbed into the English language in this sense. The coinage gained universal acceptance in 1856, when German historian and philologist Georg Voigt used "humanism" to describe Renaissance humanism, the movement that flourished in the Italian Renaissance to revive classical learning, a use which won wide acceptance among historians in many nations, especially Italy.
Christian humanism
Although the first humanists did little to orient their intellectual work towards reforming the church and reviving spiritual life through humanist education, the first pioneering signs and practices of this idea emerged with Jakob Wimpfeling (1450-1528), a Renaissance humanist and theologian. Wimpfeling was very critical of ecclessiastical patronage and criticized the moral corruption of many clergymen, however, his timidity stopped him from converting his work from speech to action for fear of controversy. Though he loved reading many of the classics of the writings of classical antiquity, he feared introducing them to mainstream Christianity and sought to use the works of the Latin Church Fathers and a few Christian poets from the Late Roman Empire towards creating a new form of education that would provide church leaders educated in Christian religion, prominent Church authors and a few important classical writings and hence improve Christnedom's condition.
Homosexuality and religion
Humanism is a non-religious, non-theistic approach to life that supports full equality for LGBTQ individuals, including the right to marry. "Humanism and Its Aspirations", a statement of humanist principles from the American Humanist Association, states that "humanists are concerned for the well being of all, are committed to diversity, and respect those of differing yet humane views...work to uphold the equal enjoyment of human rights and civil liberties in an open, secular society and maintain it is a civic duty to participate in the democratic process and a planetary duty to protect nature's integrity, diversity, and beauty in a secure, sustainable manner." The American Humanist Association provides a LGBT Humanist Pride award and has funded a LGBT-inclusive prom for Itawamba County Agricultural High School in Mississippi. The organisation LGBT Humanists UK "is a United Kingdom-based not-for-profit that campaigns for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality and human rights and promotes Humanism as an ethical worldview." It was formerly an independent group, but since 2012 has been a part of the charity Humanists UK. In 2009 they gave Stephen Fry an award "for his services to humanism and gay rights."
E. M. Forster
Forster was President of the Cambridge Humanists from 1959 until his death and a member of the Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association from 1963 until his death. His views as a humanist are at the heart of his work, which often depicts the pursuit of personal connections in spite of the restrictions of contemporary society. His humanist attitude is expressed in the non-fictional essay "What I Believe" (reprinted with two other humanist essays – and an introduction and notes by Nicolas Walter – as "What I Believe, and other essays" by the secular humanist publishers G. W. Foote & Co. in 1999). When Forster's cousin, Philip Whichelo, donated a portrait of Forster to the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GLHA), Jim Herrick, the founder, quoted Forster's words: "The humanist has four leading characteristics – curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race."
Religious humanism
The Ethical Culture movement was founded in 1876. The movement's founder, Felix Adler, a former member of the Free Religious Association, conceived of Ethical Culture as a new religion that would strip away the accumulated unscientific dogmas of traditional religions while retaining and elevating the ethical message at the heart of all religions. Adler believed that traditional religions would ultimately prove to be incompatible with a scientific worldview. He felt that the vital aspects of religion should not be allowed to fall by the wayside. Religions provided vital functions in encouraging good works. And religions taught important truths about the world, albeit these truths were expressed through metaphors that were not always suited to modern understandings of the world. For example, monotheistic religions were based on a metaphor of an authoritarian monarchy, whereas democratic relationships were now understood to be the ideal.
Humanist Association of Ireland
The Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI) is an Irish secular humanist organisation that was founded in 1993 to promote Humanism, which they describe as:
an ethical philosophy of life, based on a concern for humanity in general, and for human individuals in particular. This view of life combines reason with compassion. It is for those people who base their interpretation of existence on the evidence of the natural world and its evolution, and not on belief in a supernatural power.
The Humanist Institute
It was at this meeting that NACH founded The Humanist Institute. The founding members of the institute were Khoren Arisian, Paul Beattie, Ed Ericson, Paul Kurtz, Howard Radest, Lyle Simpson, and Sherwin Wine. Sherwin Wine served as the founding president with Howard Radest as the founding Dean. They were soon joined by feminist humanists Miriam Jerris and Jean Kotkins. Each of the original founders were themselves either leaders or founders of other humanist or humanistic organizations such as: the Society for Humanistic Judaism, the Council for Secular Humanism, the American Ethical Union, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the American Humanism Association.
Homaranismo
Homaranismo () is a philosophy developed by L. L. Zamenhof. Based largely on the teachings of Hillel the Elder, Zamenhof originally called it Hillelism. He sought to reform Judaism because he hoped that without the strange dress code and purity requirements, it would no longer be the victim of antisemitic propaganda. The basis of Homaranismo is the sentence known as the Golden Rule: "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself".
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Hume's empiricist approach to philosophy places him with John Locke, George Berkeley, Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes as a British Empiricist. Beginning with his "A Treatise of Human Nature" (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Against philosophical rationalists, Hume held that passion rather than reason governs human behaviour. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge is founded solely in experience.
L'Humanité
"L'Humanité" was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). Jaurès also edited the paper until his assassination on 31 July 1914.
Traditionalist conservatism in the United States
Another intellectual branch of early-20th-century traditionalist conservatism was known as the New Humanism. Led by Harvard University professor Irving Babbitt and Princeton University professor Paul Elmer More, the New Humanism was a literary and social criticism movement that opposed both romanticism and naturalism. Beginning in the late 19th century, the New Humanism defended artistic standards and "first principles" (Babbitt's phrase). Reaching an apogee in 1930, Babbitt and More published a variety of books including Babbitt's "Literature and the American College" (1908), "Rousseau and Romanticism" (1919) and "Democracy and Leadership" (1924) and More's "Shelburne Essays" (1904–1921).
International Academy of Humanism
The International Academy of Humanism, established in 1983, is a programme of the Council for Secular Humanism. It was established to recognize great humanists and disseminate humanist thinking. According to its declared mission, members of the academy are devoted to free inquiry, are committed to a scientific outlook, and uphold humanist ethical values.
Humanists UK
In 2014, Humanists UK launched two public awareness campaigns. The first, called "That's Humanism!", was an Internet-based campaign revolving around four videos on humanist responses to ethics, happiness, death, and the scientific method, as narrated by its distinguished supporter, Stephen Fry. The videos, which were widely shared on social media, were intended to introduce non-religious people who were humanist in their outlook to the existence of a community of like-minded people living their lives on the basis of reason and empathy. The second campaign, called "Thought for the Commute", was a London Underground campaign featuring posters depicting humanist responses from Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell and A.C. Grayling to the question "What's it all for?" The campaign intended to be a positive introduction to Humanism for commuters, as well as to highlight the exclusion of humanist voices from BBC slots such as "Thought for the Day". After announcing that it intended to replicate it in other UK cities, the campaign moved to bus posters in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool for four weeks in November and December 2014, this time depicting humanist responses from Jim Al-Khalili, Jawaharlal Nehru, Natalie Haynes and Russell once again.In April 2011, it was announced that Professor A.C. Grayling would succeed Polly Toynbee as president of Humanists UK in July 2011. However, in June Humanists UK announced that Professor Grayling had decided not to take up that position, because of what he described as "controversy generated by activities in another area of my public life." Humanists UK stated that Polly Toynbee would continue as President until a new appointment was made later in 2011; she remained President for a further 18 months until in December 2012 it was announced that physicist Jim Al-Khalili would become President in January 2013.The charity also contracts an officer on the ground both in Wales and Northern Ireland, who coordinate its national sections (or branches) Wales Humanists and Northern Ireland Humanists. These officers are in turn supported by national committees of volunteers whose advice assists the charity's service delivery in those countries, strategic litigation, and lobbying on devolved issues at the Northern Ireland Assembly and National Assembly for Wales.
Humanistisch Verbond
The Humanistisch Verbond (HV) was founded on 17 February 1946 as a response to 'spiritual nihilism' - that was held partially responsible for the atrocities of the Second World War - and the slighting of the non-religious in the Netherlands. The initiators were, amongst others, Jaap van Praag, Garmt Stuiveling and Jan Brandt Corstius. The widow of the prominent freethinker and humanist Leo Polak, Henriette Polak, was also closely involved in the foundation. The goal of the HV was uniting all humanists and deepening, spreading and defending the humanist worldview. Nowadays the HV focuses on the motto "Zelf denken, samen leven" ("Thinking for yourself, living together") to fulfilling two core tasks:
The Humanistisch Verbond is one of the founders of the Dutch humanist umbrella, the Humanistische Alliantie, and is member of the European Humanist Federation and International Humanist and Ethical Union.
Humanist Movement
The Humanist Movement is often said to have been started May 4, 1969, with the talk "The Healing of Suffering" by Silo at Punta de Vacas, Argentina. Because of the military dictatorship in place at that time, this talk was permitted on the condition that it would be held high in the Andes Mountains, far from the nearest town.
Humanitas
During the Aufklärung (or German version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment), the term ""Humanität"" was used to designate the intellectual, physical, and moral formation of "a better human being" (or Humanism). It was used, for example, by theologian Johann Gottfried Herder in his "Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität" ("Letters for the Advancement of Humanity"), 1792, and by Friedrich Schiller, among others.Herder's "Humanität" is a broad concept he defines variously as the gradual fulfillment of best human potential, the achievement of reason and fairness in all classes and in all affairs of men, and the joint product of the creative actions of legislators, poets, artists, philosophers, inventors, and educators through the ages.
Humanism
Gellius's writings fell into obscurity during the Middle Ages, but during the Italian Renaissance, Gellius became a favorite author. Teachers and scholars of Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and poetry were called and called themselves "humanists". Modern scholars, however, point out that Cicero (10643BCE), who was most responsible for defining and popularizing the term "humanitas", in fact frequently used the word in both senses, as did his near contemporaries. For Cicero, a lawyer, what most distinguished humans from brutes was speech, which, allied to reason, could (and should) enable them to settle disputes and live together in concord and harmony under the rule of law. Thus "humanitas" included two meanings from the outset and these continue in the modern derivative, "humanism", which even today can refer to both humanitarian benevolence and to a method of study and debate involving an accepted group of authors and a careful and accurate use of language.
Buddhism in Taiwan
Humanistic Buddhism traces its roots to Chinese monk Venerable Taixu (1890-1947), who wanted to reform the continuous focus on ritual and ceremony. Taixu promoted more direct contributions to society through the Buddhist community and was a significant influence for Master Ying Shun, who is generally considered to be the figure who brought Humanistic Buddhism to Taiwan.
Humanist Manifesto
The first manifesto, entitled simply "A Humanist Manifesto", was written in 1933 primarily by Roy Wood Sellars and Raymond Bragg and was published with 34 signatories including philosopher John Dewey. Unlike the later ones, the first Manifesto talked of a new "religion", and referred to Humanism as a religious movement to transcend and replace previous religions that were based on allegations of supernatural revelation. The document outlines a fifteen-point belief system, which, in addition to a secular outlook, opposes "acquisitive and profit-motivated society" and outlines a worldwide egalitarian society based on voluntary mutual cooperation, language which was considerably softened by the Humanists' board, owners of the document, twenty years later.
Mario Rodríguez Cobos
Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos, also known by the mononym Silo (6 January 1938 – 16 September 2010), was an Argentine writer and founder of the Humanist Movement.
Religion in the Netherlands
A research in 2003 shows that about 1.27 million people in the Netherlands express explicitly an affinity with secular humanism, which is about 9.4% of the total population.
Erasmus and Coornhert are important early representatives of humanism in the Netherlands in the 16th century.
Erasmus translated many classical texts so that they were accessible to a wide audience. In this period, there was still no non-or anti-religion movement. However, there was a sense of free will, own strength and reason. Dirck Coornhert in the Netherlands was one of the first who advocated religious tolerance. He did not derive his morality from the Christian religion, but enunciated that people outside the Christian faith could be virtuous as well. A statement Coornhert made is: "He who is never in doubt, does never learn." 
In the 17th century, especially Spinoza and Hugo Grotius were important. Baruch Spinoza (17th century) dared to call the bible man-made. The jurist Hugo Grotius focused on the law relating to war, peace and law. Internationally, he is regarded as the founder of modern human rights.
During the Age of Enlightenment (18th century), the importance of science and research increased sharply. Confidence in human understanding and logical reasoning was given shape in liberalism. The German philosopher Kant and the evolution theory of Darwin, among other scientific theories in the 19th century, had an exceptionally strong influence and were a major step in the development of humanism in the Netherlands. Ludwig Feuerbach called religion a creation of the human mind. The modern organized humanist movement began in the Netherlands in the mid-nineteenth century with the establishment of freethinkers association "De Dageraad" (Dawn). The members, including writer Multatuli and later Anton Constandse.
Marx's socialism had a significant influence on the Dutch humanism of the 20th century. With the establishment of the humanistic associations "Humanitas" in 1945 and the "Humanistisch Verbond" in 1946, Dutch humanists organized themselves after the Second World War to fight the still highly compartmentalized society which was dominated by separate Christians movements in the Netherlands (pillarisation).
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, the Dutch Humanist movements became involved with the establishment of the International Humanist and Ethical Union in 1952 (and since 1990 also the European Humanist Federation).
Creativity
The rejection of creativity in favor of discovery and the belief that individual creation was a conduit of the divine would dominate the West probably until the Renaissance and even later. The development of the modern concept of creativity begins in the Renaissance, when creation began to be perceived as having originated from the abilities of the individual, and not God. This could be attributed to the leading intellectual movement of the time, aptly named humanism, which developed an intensely human-centric outlook on the world, valuing the intellect and achievement of the individual. From this philosophy arose the Renaissance man (or polymath), an individual who embodies the principals of humanism in their ceaseless courtship with knowledge and creation. One of the most well-known and immensely accomplished examples is Leonardo da Vinci.
Humanism
The British Humanistic Religious Association was formed as one of the earliest forerunners of contemporary chartered Humanist organisations in 1853 in London. This early group was democratically organised, with male and female members participating in the election of the leadership, and promoted knowledge of the sciences, philosophy, and the arts.
Humanism
Modern humanists, such as Corliss Lamont or Carl Sagan, hold that humanity must seek for truth through reason and the best observable evidence and endorse scientific skepticism and the scientific method. However, they stipulate that decisions about right and wrong must be based on the individual and common good, with no consideration given to metaphysical or supernatural beings. The idea is to engage with what is human. The ultimate goal is human flourishing; making life better for all humans, and as the most conscious species, also promoting concern for the welfare of other sentient beings and the planet as a whole. The focus is on doing good and living well in the here and now, and leaving the world a better place for those who come after. In 1925, the English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead cautioned: "The prophecy of Francis Bacon has now been fulfilled; and man, who at times dreamt of himself as a little lower than the angels, has submitted to become the servant and the minister of nature. It still remains to be seen whether the same actor can play both parts".
Humanism
The first "Humanist Manifesto" was issued by a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1933. Signatories included the philosopher John Dewey, but the majority were ministers (chiefly Unitarian) and theologians. They identified humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, and social and economic justice, and they called for science to replace dogma and the supernatural as the basis of morality and decision-making.
Humanism
The word "humanism" is ultimately derived from the Latin concept "humanitas". It entered English in the nineteenth century. However, historians agree that the concept predates the label invented to describe it, encompassing the various meanings ascribed to "humanitas", which included both benevolence toward one's fellow humans and the values imparted by "bonae litterae" or humane learning (literally "good letters").