Last revision: 15 September 2003
The research programme Humanism, Meanings of Life, Worldviews refers to humanism in two different ways. On the one hand humanism is source of inspiration, on the other hand humanism is object of investigation. Humanism is a conglomerate of traditions, a multi-faceted cultural and social phenomenon.The humanism most widely known among scholars probably is Renaissance humanism. This humanism is characterized by its orientation towards the Roman and Greek examples of human self-development (`humanitas': `paideia' and `philanthropia' combined), especially in verbal arts, morals, politics, and historiography. In the research programme Renaissance humanism serves as a source of inspiration for clarifying problems of human existence today. However, other humanisms do exist.
The eighteenth-century Enlightenment and its nineteenth-century follow-up not only led to important changes in the character of humanism as it originated in the Renaissance period, they also resulted in a new type of humanism. The main feature of this modern humanism is: free criticism of religion based on human reason and experience, leading either to open and undogmatic forms of religion, to agnosticism or to atheism. Each of these three options is regarded as a meaning frame which can offer a viable and valuable alternative to traditional Christian religion and the dogmatism of its churches.
In philosophical discussions `humanism' has still more meanings. Most of these in some way or other refer to human dignity manifesting itself in reason, freedom or human rights, or they have as their central theme the nature of humans as beings with specific limitations and possibilities. Especially in twentieth-century Eastern Europe humanism became associated with Marxism (and even Stalinism), but also with the revision of and the fight against `orthodox' Marxism. Nowadays the significance and shortcomings of humanism also figure in the debate on modernism and postmodernism. Because of this entanglement in central social and cultural issues some of the debates on humanism have a hard normative and political edge.
In Humanism, Meanings of Life, Worldviews we focus our research on European humanism. Renaissance humanism excepted, the history of European humanism has hardly been investigated. Thus the relationship of humanism to the Enlightenment and to Romanticism is far from clear. Moreover, after the fall of communism (symbolized by the fall of the Berlin wall, November 1989) and the new impetus to the European unification process (symbolized by the Treaty of Maastricht, December 1991, and the introduction of the euro, January 2002), European humanism is confronted with many new questions, not only in the political and economic sphere, but certainly also in the cultural domain.
Your comments on this explication of "humanism" are welcomed.
You may view a selection of annotated weblinks relevant to "humanism" as it is presented here (size: 61 kB).
You may also read an historical review of modern humanism in the Netherlands in pdf.
You can jump back to the top of this page or to the index page of this website.