Humanism

A social current formed during the European Renaissance against feudal system and religious theology. Its core point of view was to advocate centering on man, oppose the authority of God, and try to liberate man from the yoke of medieval theology. Humanism originated in Italy in the 14th century and developed further in other European countries in the 15th and 16th centuries. The chief representatives of humanism were Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio, Pomponazzi, Erasmus of the Netherlands, Montaigne of France, Shakespeare of England, etc. Because the objects of inquiry of its chief representatives, such as philosophy, natural sciences, literature and art, and ancient languages, were different from and even opposed to “studia divina”, they were called “studia humana” at the time; and because the basic ideas running through its representatives were common, all of them put man at the center and advocated human nature or a humanitarian outlook on life. Therefore, the representatives of this current were called humanists, and the current they represented was called the current of humanism. The ideological basis of humanism is individualism and the theory of human nature, and its contents broadly include: advocating to “put people first”, esteem human sensuous experience and rational thinking, holding that man is the master of the universe, the origin of all things, so as to resist “divine origin”; advocating to oppose the divine right with human nature, affirming the worth and power of man in order to oppose the theory of divine right of the Church; advocating individual emancipation, encouraging people to pursue the happiness in this world in order to counter asceticism; advocating to explore the nature, study science and pursue knowledge with reason and wisdom in order to oppose the obscurantism of the Church; advocating to disseminate knowledge and widen education, so as to prompt people to accept new things and fully and harmoniously develop their individual talents, so as to eliminate the evils of society and mankind. Politically, humanism embraced centralism and opposed feudal separatism. As an anti-feudal current of the rising bourgeoisie, humanism has played a positive and progressive role at that time, made ideological preparation for bourgeois revolutions, and paved the way for the Reformation and the development of materialism in natural sciences.