Modern Humanism Copared To Classical Humanism

Humanism is a doctrine, attitude, or way of life that is centered on human interests or values and stresses an individual's dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason. It was first developed in ancient Greece and Rome. It is no coincidence that many of our legal codes go back to Rome and many scientific and technical terms and ideas back to ancient Greece. But Greece in particular has influenced philosophy, which celebrates reason. We use the term Classical Humanism to refer to the humanism of this early period. In order to know what humanism is one must look at its history.

Although the term "humanism" was not applied to a philosophy or belief system until the European Renaissance, those early humanists were inspired the ideas and attitudes which they discovered in forgotten manuscripts from ancient Greece. This Greek humanism can be identified by a number of shared characteristics: it was materialistic in that it sought explanations for events in the natural world, and it valued humanity in that it placed

One of the earliest person we might be able to call a "humanist" in some sense would be Protagoras, a Greek philosopher who lived around the 5th century B.C. Protagoras exhibited two important features which remain central to humanism even today. First, he appears to have made humanity gave the spark of different values and consideration when he said, "Man is the measure of all things." In other words, it is not to the gods that we should look when setting standards, but instead to ourselves.

Secondly, Protagoras was cynical with regards to traditional religious beliefs and traditional gods. So much so that he was accused of impiety and exiled from Athens. Protagoras claimed that: "As to gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life."

Protagoras may be the first one credited with writing down such thoughts but he was surely not the first to have these thoughts and to share them to others. Although he was met with much resistance for close traditionalist and government, other philosophers of the era pursued the same lines of humanist thinking.

They tried to look the workings of the world from a logical perspective rather than as the actions of some god. This same naturalistic methodology was also applied to the human condition as they sought to better understand politics, ethics, and so on. No longer were they alright with the idea that standards of life were simply handed down from previous generations and/or from the gods; But rather wanted to set standards based on their needs and feelings

Four well known Classical Humanists were Plato, Zeno, Epicurus, and Aristotle. Plato promoted Idealism, the theory that the nature of reality lies in consciousness or reason. Stoicism was founded by Zeno, who greatly stressed ethics. Zeno claimed that everything exists in Nature, and that Nature itself is a controlling intelligence. Epicurus followed the theory and materialism of Democritus. He rejected supernatural concepts, if there are gods, he said, they are made out of the same stuff as the rest of us. Aristotle helped much to our understanding of science and human nature. He saw body and soul as inseparable and the universe as a scale lying between the two extremes: form without matter is on one end, and matter without form is on the other end. The passage of matter into form must be shown in its various stages in the world of nature. Everything in nature has its end and function, and nothing is without its purpose. Everywhere we find evidences of design and rational plan. Reason is the source of the first principles of knowledge. The human soul shares the nutritive element with plants, and the appetitive element with animals, but also has a rational element which is distinctively our own. Though diverse, Classical Humanists were united in their belief that individual worth came from the individual's capacity to reason, which could shape character and life according to rational standards.

Greek humanism was not only for philosophers, it was also found in politics and art. For example, the famous Funeral Oration delivered by Pericles in 431 BCE as a tribute to