humanism

Examples of humanism in the following topics:

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• The Evolution of Humans

  • Human evolution began with primates.
  • Humans and chimps then separated about 7.5 million years ago.
  • There were four main stages of human evolution.
  • Humans acquired symbolic culture and language about 50,000 years ago.
  • Modern humans have a brain volume of 1250 cm3.

• Education and Humanism

  • Humanism played a major role in education during the Renaissance with the goal to cultivate the moral and intellectual character of citizens.
  • During the Renaissance, humanism played a major role in education.
  • Humanists - proponents or practitioners of humanism during the Renaissance - believed that human beings could be dramatically changed by education.
  • This was to be accomplished through the study of the humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.
  • Liberal arts were viewed as the key to freedom, which allowed humans to achieve their goals and reach their full potential.

• The Medical Renaissance

  • The Renaissance period witnessed groundbreaking developments in medical sciences, including advancements in human anatomy, physiology, surgery, dentistry, and microbiology.  
  • His anatomical teachings were based upon the dissection of human corpses, rather than the animal dissections that Galen had used as a guide.
  • In 1543, Vesalius asked Johannes Oporinus to publish the seven-volume De humani corporis fabrica (On the fabric of the human body), a groundbreaking work of human anatomy.
  • It emphasized the priority of dissection and what has come to be called the "anatomical view" of the human body.
  • The book advanced the modern study of human anatomy.

• The Neolithic Revolution

  • During this time, humans lived in small groups as hunter-gatherers, with clear gender divisions for labor.
  • Paleolithic humans were nomads, who often moved their settlements as food became scarce.
  • During about 10,000 BCE, a major change occurred in the way humans lived; this would have a cascading effect on every part of human society and culture.
  • It is not known why humans decided to begin cultivating plants and domesticating animals.
  • Human population swelled from five million to seven billion today.

• The Three Sovereigns

  • The first part of the Mythical Period was under the rule of the Three Sovereigns, magical demigods who created the human race out of clay and introduced agriculture.
  • According to legend, Chinese history began with a succession of three half-animal, half-human rulers.
  • In legend, Fuxi and Nüwa were together responsible for the procreation of the human race.
  • They used clay to create human figures, and with their divine power made the clay figures come alive.

• Petrarch

  • Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism.
  • Petrarch is traditionally called the "Father of Humanism" and considered by many to more generally be the "Father of the Renaissance."
  • Petrarch argued instead that God had given humans their vast intellectual and creative potential to be used to their fullest.
  • He believed in the immense moral and practical value of the study of ancient history and literature – that is, the study of human thought and action.
  • Later the politician and thinker Leonardo Bruni argued for the active life, or "civic humanism."

• Aztec Religion

  • The Aztec religious cosmology included the physical earth plane where humans lived, the underworld (or land of the dead), and the realm of the sky.
  • While human sacrifice was practiced throughout Mesoamerica, the Aztecs, if their own accounts are to be believed, brought this practice to an unprecedented level.
  • Tlaxcala also practiced the human sacrifice of captured Aztec citizens.
  • Everyone was affected by human sacrifice and it should be considered in the context of the religious cosmology of the Aztec people.
  • This Spanish rendering of human sacrifices reflects the outsider's view of these ritual traditions.

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Francophone Genevan philosopher and writer, whose conceptualization of social contract, theory of natural human, and works on education greatly influenced the political, philosophical, and social Western tradition.
  • He asserted that the stage of human development associated with what he called "savages" was the best or optimal in human development, between the less-than-optimal extreme of brute animals on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilization on the other.
  • In his Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences (1750), Rousseau argued, in opposition to the dominant stand of Enlightenment thinkers, that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality.
  • Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation.
  • As society developed, division of labor and private property required the human race to adopt institutions of law.

• Rationalism

  • Rationalism - as an appeal to human reason as a way of obtaining knowledge - has a philosophical history dating from antiquity.
  • For example, Descartes and John Locke, one of the most important Enlightenment thinkers, have similar views about the nature of human ideas.
  • He wanted to put an end to an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience and regarded himself as ending and showing the way beyond the impasse between rationalists and empiricists.
  • To the empiricist he argued that while it is correct that experience is fundamentally necessary for human knowledge, reason is necessary for processing that experience into coherent thought.
  • He therefore concludes that both reason and experience are necessary for human knowledge.