Talk:Humanism/Definitions

To centralize our information on the most common definitions of humanism for discussing the Humanism article, here is a table for editors with copy-pasted dictionary and encyclopedia definitions of the term. For ease of browsing, the rows are color-coded based on how strongly the source equates humanism with some form of secular humanism.

Red (2) = The source treats secular humanism as the sole definition of humanism.
Pink (5) = The source treats secular humanism as the primary (or first) definition, but allows for other types or forms of humanism.
Light blue (9) = The source's primary definition of humanism is not secular, but the source does reference secular humanism in some way.
Dark blue (4) = The source defines humanism without any reference to secularism, naturalism, etc.

(Wiktionary, incidentally, happens to qualify as 'light blue', like most dictionaries.)

Source	Definition(s)
American Heritage Dictionary [1]	A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth. Concern with the interests, needs, and welfare of humans Medicine The concept that concern for human interests, values, and dignity is of the utmost importance to the care of the sick. The study of the humanities; learning in the liberal arts. Humanism A cultural and intellectual movement of the Renaissance that emphasized secular concerns as a result of the rediscovery and study of the literature, art, and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome.
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary [2]	a belief system based on the principle that people's spiritual and emotional needs can be fulfilled without following a god or religion
Cambridge Companion to Philosophy	Not a school of thought or a collection of specific beliefs or doctrines, humanism is rather a general perspective from which the world is viewed. That perspective received a gradual yet persistent articulation during different historical periods and continued to furnish a central leitmotif of Western civilization. It comes into focus when it is compared with two competing positions. One the one hand, it can be contrasted with the emphasis on the supernatural, transcendent domain which considers humanity to be dependent on divine order. On the other hand, it resists the tendency to treat humanity scientifically as part of the natural order, on a par with other living organisms. Humanism discerns in human beings unique capacities and abilities, to be cultivated and celebrated for their own sake.
Cambridge Dictionary of American English [3]	a system of thought and reasoning based on human values and interests, often without accepting the beliefs of religion
Catholic Encyclopedia	Humanism is the name given to the intellectual, literary, and scientific movement of the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, a movement which aimed at basing every branch of learning on the literature and culture of classical antiquity.
Chambers Dictionary [4]	a system of thought which rejects the supernatural, any belief in a god, etc, but holds that human interests and the human mind are paramount, that humans are capable of solving the problems of the world and deciding what is or is not correct moral behaviour. (often Humanism) a cultural movement of the Renaissance period which promoted classical studies.
Collins Essential English Dictionary [5]	the rejection of religion in favour of a belief in the advancement of humanity by its own efforts
Columbia Encyclopedia [6]	philosophical and literary movement in which man and his capabilities are the central concern. The term was originally restricted to a point of view prevalent among thinkers in the Renaissance. The distinctive characteristics of Renaissance humanism were its emphasis on classical studies, or the humanities, and a conscious return to classical ideals and forms. The movement led to a restudy of the Scriptures and gave impetus to the Reformation. The term humanist is applied to such diverse men as Giovanni Boccaccio, Petrarch, Lorenzo Valla, Lorenzo de' Medici, Erasmus, and Thomas More. In the 20th cent., F. C. S. Schiller and Irving Babbitt applied the term to their own thought. Modern usage of the term has had diverse meanings, but some contemporary emphases are on lasting human values, cultivation of the classics, and respect for scientific knowledge.
Compact Oxford English Dictionary	a rationalistic system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. a Renaissance cultural movement that turned away from medieval scholastic-ism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought.
Encyclopædia Britannica	term freely applied to a variety of beliefs, methods, and philosophies that place central emphasis on the human realm. Most frequently, however, the term is used with reference to a system of education and mode of inquiry that developed in northern Italy during the 14th century and later spread through Europe and England.
Encyclopedia of Philosophy	Humanism is the philosophical and literary movement which originated in Italy in the second half of the fourteenth century and diffused into the other countries of Europe, coming to constitute one of the factors of modern culture.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English [7]	the belief that human problems can by solved through science rather than religion Humanism the study during the Renaissance of the ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans
Microsoft Encarta [8]	in philosophy, attitude that emphasizes the dignity and worth of the individual. A basic premise of humanism is that people are rational beings who possess within themselves the capacity for truth and goodness. The term humanism is most often used to describe a literary and cultural movement that spread through western Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Oxford Companion to Philosophy New Edition, Ted Honderich, editor	The tendency to emphasize man and his status, importance, powers, achievements, interests, or authority. Humanism has many different connotations, which depend largely on what it is being contrasted with. As well as denoting particular claims about man it can also denote the tendency to study man at all. Early Greek thought began by studying the cosmos as a whole and particular phenomena in it, such as the weather, earthquakes, etc. and then turned to questions of logic and metaphysics, but the so-called humanist movement arose in the fifth century BC when the Sophists and Socrates “called philosophy down to earth,” as Cicero later put it, by introducing political, and moral questions. Humanism is also associated with the Renaissance, when it denoted a move away from God to man as the center of interest. God still remained as creator and supreme authority – the Renaissance humanists were far from being atheists – but his activity was seen as less immediate, more general control than as day-to-day interference, and this enabled a scientific outlook to arise which saw the universe as governed by general laws, albeit these were laid down by God. (A rather similar development had occurred earlier when the Stoics relied on the notion of an impersonal fate to provide the stability needed for a coherent description of the world.) One feature which made this specifically a humanist development was the emphasis in both the ability of man to find out about the universe by his own efforts, and more and more to control it. It was when the conflict between science and religion arose in the nineteenth century, largely because of Darwinism's inconsistency with a fundamentalist reading of the Bible that humanism acquired its modern association with atheism or agnosticism. Humanism, often called scientific humanism, then becomes associated with rationalism, not in its main philosophical senses but in that of an appeal to reason in contrast to revelation or religious authority as a means of finding out about the natural world and the nature and destiny of man, and also as giving a grounding for morality. However this appeal to reason in ethics should be distinguished from that common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and not without echoes in the twentieth, where reason was opposed not to religious authority but to feelings or emotions. Some humanists in fact demur at the title "rationalist" or "scientific humanism" because, though they are quite willing to follow reason rather than authority or revelation (and for that reason willing call themselves humanists at all), they do not accept that reason can provide the basis for morality, but may appeal to feelings or emotions instead; in fact throughout their histories the British Humanist Association and the Rationalist Press Association have been independent entities, though allied on most issues. Humanists may also reject the implication in the title "scientific humanist” that science can at least ultimately answer all questions (see Nationalism and Positivism). Humanist ethics are also distinguished by placing the end of moral action in the welfare of humanity rather than in fulfilling the will of God.--ARL
Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, , Simon Blackburn, editor, (1996), p. 178	Most generally, any philosophy concerned to emphasize human welfare and dignity, and optimistic about the powers of unaided human understanding. More particularly, the movement distinctive of the Renaissance and allied to the renewed study of Greek and Roman literature: a rediscovery of the unity of human beings and nature, and a renewed celebration of the pleasures of life, all supposed lost in the medieval world. Humanism in this Renaissance sense was quite consistent with religious belief, it being supposed that God had put us here precisely in order to further those things the humanists found important. Later the term tended to become appropriated for anti-religious social and political movements. Finally, in the late 20th century, humanism is sometimes used as a pejorative term by postmodernist and especially feminist writers, applied to philosophies such as that of Sartre that rely upon the possibility of the autonomous, self-conscious, rational, single self, and that are supposedly insensitive to the inevitable fragmentary, splintered, historically conditioned nature of personality and motivation.
Oxford English Dictionary	Belief in the mere humanity of Christ: cf. HUMANITARIAN The character or quality of being human; devotion to human interests. Any system of thought or action which is concerned with merely human interests (as distinguished from divine), or with those of the human race in general (as distinguished from individual); the ‘Religion of Humanity’. Devotion to those studies which promote human culture; literary culture; esp. the system of the Humanists, the study of the Roman and Greek classics which came into vogue at the Renascence. Philos. A pragmatic system of thought introduced by F. C. S. Schiller and William James which emphasizes that man can only comprehend and investigate what is with the resources of the human mind, and discounts abstract theorizing; so, more generally, implying that technological advance must be guided by awareness of widely understood human needs.
Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy	An intellectual and cultural movement linked to the revival of classical learning in the Renaissance . . . which adopted an ideal of the full development of the individual, rejecting religious asceticism, narrow scholasticism and humble piety alike. The ideal of a rich flourishing of individual potentiality, enhanced by the study of classical languages and literature, was revived towards the end of the eighteenth century by neo-humanists in Germany: Goethe, Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt. Especially in the English-speaking world, humanism has since the nineteenth century come to designate a non-religious or anti-religious view, usually based on a belief in man’s capacity for self-cultivation and self-improvement, and in the progress of mankind. Among the sources for such views were Fourier and Saint-Simon, who wrote of a “religion of humanity”, and Feuerbach. In contemporary French philosophy, humanism designates a cluster which includes among other things, the conception of man as a transcendental subject, the conception of an essential human nature which grounds thought and action, and the conception of man as an autonomous being capable of self-determination, to which is joined the assumption that an individual’s choices can make a real difference to a society, or to the course of history. Against this, anti-humanists (Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault) point to the decisive influences of social, economic, and psychological structures. . . . These determine the ways in which individuals act; the self-determination of the individual is an illusion; all consciousness is causally or structurally determined. The anti-humanist view is that man can only be a pawn in the game of life, while the humanist view is that man can be a player. There are various other senses of “humanism,” for instance F.C.S. Schiller’s version of pragmatism. any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity are taken to be of primary importance, as in moral judgments.
Oxford: Ologies and Isms - A Dictionary of Word Beginnings and Endings	any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity are taken to be of primary importance, as in moral judgments. a devotion to or study of the humanities. a theory of the life of man as a responsible being behaving independently of a revelation or deity. Also called naturalistic, scientific, or philosophical humanism.
Philosophy Dictionary [9]	Most generally, any philosophy concerned to emphasize human welfare and dignity, and either optimistic about the powers of human reason, or at least insistent that we have no alternative but to use it as best we can. More particularly, the movement distinctive of the Renaissance and allied to the renewed study of Greek and Roman literature: a rediscovery of the unity of human beings and nature, and a renewed celebration of the pleasures of life, all supposed lost in the medieval world. Humanism in this Renaissance sense was quite consistent with religious belief, it being supposed that God had put us here precisely in order to further those things the humanists found important. Later the term tended to become appropriated for anti-religious social and political movements. Finally, in the late 20th century, humanism is sometimes used as a pejorative term by postmodernist and especially feminist writers, applied to philosophies such as that of Sartre, that rely upon the possibility of the autonomous, selfconscious, rational, single self, and that are supposedly insensitive to the inevitable fragmentary, splintered, historically and socially conditioned nature of personality and motivation.
Random House Dictionary	any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate. devotion to or study of the humanities. (sometimes initial capital letter) the studies, principles, or culture of the humanists. Philosophy. a variety of ethical theory and practice that emphasizes reason, scientific inquiry, and human fulfillment in the natural world and often rejects the importance of belief in God.
Webster's Dictionary	a : devotion to the humanities : literary culture b : the revival of classical letters, individualistic and critical spirit, and emphasis on secular concerns characteristic of the Renaissance : HUMANITARIANISM : a doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values; especially : a philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual's dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason

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