Humanistic values: definition and examples

What are values

Values are ideas that help us act. In this they are similar to plans, goals, fears, intentions, policies, etc. These are all ideas that lead us to action.

Among these ideas, some values relate only to the ways we act, not to consequences (as to plans, goals and fears) or the simple fact of how they work (as to intentions and policies).

There is no specific way to divide values, but there is a partial taxonomy here. For example, there are values associated with attitudes towards other people, with actions, with attitudes towards things.

Advantages and disadvantages

The ideas of humanism, as already mentioned, are interpreted by each ideology and philosophy in their own way, and within each of them it can receive its own set of pros and cons. Let us give their characteristics.

The main advantages of the humanistic worldview:

conscious renunciation of violence has many positive aspects;
People who choose the path of non-violence will not be able to cause serious physical and mental harm to their children, friends, lovers, parents, and life and interaction with such people will be pleasant and peaceful.
people learn to better understand others, their empathic abilities grow, which facilitates social interaction, reduces the number of conflicts and makes it easier to restore relationships in case of quarrels;
people better understand the importance of mutual assistance and are ready to extend a hand to their neighbors;
they are also more understanding of their own needs and desires, realizing that their happiness and well-being matter, as a result, their risk of developing mental illnesses, especially neuroses and depression, is reduced;
the younger generation is being brought up within the framework of a humanistic approach, which excludes violence and cruelty and welcomes a constructive approach;
children are taught and raised in such a way that both learning and upbringing bring them joy and pleasure, which increases their motivation and interest in learning;
Children's needs and desires are respected and they are not required to provide emotional or other services.

Disadvantages of a humanistic worldview:

Like any idea, humanity changes in the perception of different people. Each idea, if desired, can be distorted, brought to the point of absurdity, adjusted to one’s own desires, or simply misunderstood.
For example, a child who was taught to value others and help them as much as possible, but was not taught how to protect his own boundaries and how to act in potentially dangerous situations, may get into trouble if he wants to help someone.
Therefore, it is important for parents and educators to comprehensively consider such issues with their children.
Since the interpretation of humanism and humanity is ambiguous, even within a community of people who believe that their worldview belongs to the humanistic, conflicts may arise, especially related to pressing social issues related to abortion, euthanasia, and prenatal diagnosis. What is humane for one person is inhumane for another.

The concept of humanism

It can be seen as a worldview or a way of life, as a more or less unquestionable doctrine. Collectively, it represents a set of beliefs and values that are a way of looking at the world—a philosophy by which many people live their lives.

The word "humanism" is used in many different ways - it was coined in the eighteenth century to describe the revival of classical learning during the Renaissance, is associated with the idea of the humanities, and only came to be applied to the current kind of non-religious lifestyle in the early twentieth century. The meaning of words is determined by their use, and the organized humanist movement does not have a monopoly on the use of the word "humanism."

Features of the humanistic worldview

Despite the presence of many directions in humanism of the 15th century, the basis of the doctrine was supported by the majority of scientists.
Not everyone agreed with the ideas of civil humanism, only a part supported the Florentine Neoplatonists, and not all humanists shared the views of Valla or Alberti. Nevertheless, humanism had a strong platform based on the principles of humanism common to all. Note 1

A distinctive feature of humanism is its focus on people. In ancient philosophy, the center of attention was natural-comic life; in the Middle Ages, religious life became the center of attention, solving the problem of salvation. The revival puts secular life at the center, including human activities to achieve happiness in earthly existence. Philosophy takes on the function of science, which is obliged to guide a person to find his place in life.

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The philosophy of humanism is anthropocentric in nature. At the center of everything is not God, but Man. God is the beginning of all things on earth, man is the center of the whole world. Accordingly, society does not appear by the will of God, but as a result of human activity. A person’s activities and thoughts have no boundaries; he is capable of anything. The worldview of the Renaissance man is clearly humanistic in nature. Man is recognized as a free being, who is the creator of the entire world around him and, most importantly, of himself. Renaissance philosophers believed in God; they could not be atheists. But, giving God the role of creator of both the world and man, they believed that God endowed man with free will. Thus, a person independently determines his destiny, wins a place in the sun, and is responsible for the result of his actions.

Humanism and morality

One of the key ideas held by representatives of the humanistic movement is that people are part of human nature, moral beings. On the other hand, people are not moral in the sense of goodness, but all of them, with the exception of psychopaths and extremely autistic people, have the ability to think morally and cannot avoid it. What is called morality (the idea of right or wrong) simply arises from human nature.

In fact, humanism is an alternative to religion, which performs the same function as the latter. It allows a person to shape his attitude towards the world.

The principle of humanism

A person must develop and receive a certain set of knowledge and develop skills that he will return to the world through social and professional activities. A humanistic worldview implies compliance with the legal and moral norms of society and respect for social values. The principle of humanism implies adherence to a number of rules:

Decent attitude of society towards all people, without regard to physical, financial and social status.
When figuring out what humanism is, it is worth pointing out one more principle - the right of every person to be himself must be recognized.
It is important to understand mercy as a step towards humanism, which should be based not on pity and sympathy, but on the desire to help a person integrate into society.

Intelligence

One of the core humanistic values is the importance placed on truth and rational thought as the only proven way to provide knowledge of the facts of the universe.

Religious people will often give excellent or comforting answers, even if they doubt how true they are, or will rely on unquestioned dogma in the face of evidence that it is clearly false. Often critics of the so-called new atheism dismiss criticism of religion by saying that it relies on religion as a set of assumptions, hypotheses that seem meaningless. Instead, these critics say, religion is a felt experience, a relationship, or something else.

It is difficult for humanists to see the difference, except in comparative antiquity, between mainstream religion and "new age" people who accept mindless nonsense about the healing powers of crystals, about feng shui, astrology or alternative medicine and who refuse to test it in controlled trials. For humanists, faith must be proportionate to evidence. Humanists see the value of skepticism when evidence is inadequate and reject dogma, religious, political or any other kind.

Thus, humanists reject ideas and theories that are not reasonable and do not accept concepts that are not supported by adequate evidence. The goal of humanists is to get as close to the truth as possible. They think it's crazy to believe things without enough evidence.

Relevance of humanistic theories

Speaking about Maslow's theory, we have already mentioned that his construction cannot be viewed linearly as the replacement of a satisfied need with the next one that has not yet been satisfied. Moreover, history knows a lot of facts when great scientists, artists and musicians vegetated in deep poverty and misery, which did not distract them from their pursuits of science and creativity. And the phrase “an artist must be hungry,” which has become commonplace, even implies that excessive concentration on solving everyday problems will interfere with thinking about the sublime.

A classic of the genre is the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, who lived in a barrel and abandoned the idea of starting a family, believing that this would limit his freedom. Refutations of the rigid hierarchy of values can be found even in the history of humanistic theories of personality themselves. Psychologist and neurologist Viktor Emil Frankl, who made a breakthrough in understanding man as a highly spiritual being, continued to write scientific works even in the conditions of a fascist concentration camp, when the needs for food and safety were not only not satisfied, but there was not even a chance to somehow escape from this everyday nightmare.

Life also presents strictly opposite examples, when senior officials who have provided for themselves for 10 thousand lives ahead continue to take bribes, and not at all with the goal of investing them in their spiritual development or giving the world a unique scientific experiment. Nevertheless, it is worth recognizing that, when applied to the average citizen, humanistic theories of personality often confirm their relevance.

Thus, deficit motivation actually forces many to work three jobs and forget about rest and books. However, as soon as a person ceases to be in need, he needs not just housing, but a house with a beautiful interior and exterior, not just a vacation, but a trip to an exotic country where you can see a lot of new things and get an unforgettable experience. New hobbies often appear, a desire to engage in charity work, to get a second higher education, despite the fact that this requires expenditure both time and money.

Carl Ransom Rogers's clinical direction also generally stands the test of reality. One way or another, most psychotherapeutic techniques boil down to the fact that a person can be helped only when he wants to help himself.

Thus, it is worth taking from history to the present the optimism of humanistic theories of personality, which by default believe that a person is social and always strives to become the best version of himself. Simply because there are enough such people to confirm the theory in practice.

We wish you to be surrounded by exclusively highly spiritual and successful people who will contribute to your diversified development!

We also recommend reading:

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Abraham Maslow "Motivation and Personality" - summary
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Key words: 1LLL, 1Cognitive science

The role of science

Science is simply the best, almost the only, way to know for sure about the world, but its answers are always provisional, always open to reexamination in the light of new evidence. They are not eternal truths, never irrefutable. Newton's laws were overthrown by Einstein; Einstein's theories cannot account for quantum physics; String theory may undo current ideas.

What science gives is not the truth, but a gradual approach to the truth. Science refuses to accept dogma, refuses to allow anything to be certain, admits that it can make mistakes, but contains its own means for correcting them. Of course, scientists can make mistakes, but this is human error, not an error in the method. And this spirit of open-minded, intelligent inquiry is an important part of humanistic ideas.

Russian Humanist Society

Humanism is a consequence of man’s naturally inherent humanity and humanity. It is closely connected with what I am, man as a man, his positive essence.

This does not mean that people are “doomed” to humanism. A person has negative traits. He also has neutral qualities, which include all physical, neuro-physiological and cognitive abilities, freedom, love and other psycho-emotional characteristics. True, classifying the last two as neutral usually raises objections, because so many words have been said in praise of freedom and love. But the realism of a humanist lies in the fact that he understands the insecurity of freedom and love for humanity, their mandatory connection with the bright sides of the human being. No matter how unpleasant it may be for us to admit it, life demonstrates countless manifestations of freedom as arbitrariness, violence and evil will, and love as parasitism and despotism, expansion and pretension, as well as, unfortunately, the compatibility of genius and villainy. It is obvious that neutral human qualities are neither good nor bad in themselves; they become so when they are combined, respectively, with positive and negative human qualities. That is why the “neutral” region cannot form any kind of worldview.

Inhumanity is another matter. On its basis, something opposite to humanism is formed, say, a criminal or sadistic worldview. It is real, but its content is negative, it is the antipode of the humanistic worldview and appears as its reverse, as a dark and irrational craving for the destruction and self-destruction of man. We are interested not in the negative, but in the positive pole of personality. From this point of view, humanity is the highest life-affirming principle in a person.

The main feature of the fundamental nature of humanism is the special nature of its connection with the individual. She decides here the actual, extremely important choice of herself as not just an individual I (which happens in the usual act of self-consciousness), but a human I, worthy of the best in myself and equally worthy of all the values of the world. On this basis, all other philosophical, religious, political, legal and other ideological issues are resolved positively.

A person’s awareness of his own humanity, its resources and capabilities is a decisive intellectual procedure that transfers him from the level of humanity to the level of humanism. No matter how incredible it may sometimes seem, humanity is an irreducible element of the inner world of any mentally normal person. There are no and cannot be absolutely inhuman people. But there are no absolutely, one hundred percent humane people. We are talking about the predominance and struggle in the personality of both.

Humanism represents a certain sum of universal human values, ordinary (simple) moral, legal and other norms of behavior. Their catalog is familiar to almost all of us. It includes such specific manifestations of humanity as goodwill, empathy, compassion, responsiveness, reverence, sociability, participation, sense of justice, responsibility, gratitude, tolerance, decency, cooperation, solidarity, etc.

The situation is more complicated with the characteristics of the foundations of humanism as a worldview and a phenomenon of social and cultural life. They should record the essence of man, his relationship with society and nature, the place and specificity of humanism in relation to other worldviews, social practices and institutions.

In my understanding, the fundamental features of the humanistic worldview are the following:

1. Humanism is a worldview in the center of which is the idea of man as the highest value and priority reality in relation to himself among all other material and spiritual values. In other words, for a humanist, personality is the original reality, priority and irrespective of itself and relative among all others.

2. Humanists, therefore, affirm the equality of man as a material-spiritual being in relation to another person, nature, society and all other realities and beings known or not yet known to him.

3. Humanists admit the possibility of genesis, evolutionary generation, creation or creation of personality, but they reject reduction, i.e. reduction of the essence of man to the non-human and impersonal: nature, society, the otherworldly, non-existence (nothing), the unknown, etc. The essence of a person is an essence acquired, created and realized by him in himself and in the world in which he is born, lives and acts.

4. Humanism, thus, is a properly human, secular and secular worldview that expresses the dignity of the individual, its outwardly relative, but internally absolute, steadily progressing independence, self-sufficiency and equality in the face of all other realities, known and unknown beings of the surrounding reality.

5. Humanism is a modern form of realistic psychology and human life orientation, which includes rationality, criticality, skepticism, stoicism, tragedy, tolerance, restraint, prudence, optimism, love of life, freedom, courage, hope, fantasy and productive imagination.

8. Humanism is characterized by confidence in the unlimited possibilities of human self-improvement, in the inexhaustibility of his emotional, cognitive, adaptive, transformative and creative abilities.

7. Humanism is a worldview without boundaries, since it presupposes openness, dynamism and development, the possibility of radical internal transformations in the face of changes and new perspectives for man and his world.

8. Humanists recognize the reality of the inhumane in man and strive to limit its scope and influence as much as possible. They are convinced of the possibility of increasingly successful and reliable curbing of the negative qualities of the human being in the course of the progressive development of world civilization.

9. Humanism is considered as a fundamentally secondary phenomenon in relation to humanists - groups or segments of the population that actually exist in any society. In this sense, humanism is nothing more than the self-awareness of real people who understand and strive to take control of the tendency toward totalitarianism and domination that is naturally inherent in any idea, including a humanistic one.

10. As a socio-spiritual phenomenon, humanism is the desire of people to achieve the most mature self-awareness, the content of which is generally accepted humanistic principles, and to practice them for the benefit of the whole society. Humanism is an awareness of existing humanity, i.e. corresponding qualities, needs, values, principles and norms of consciousness, psychology and lifestyle of real layers of any modern society.

11. Humanism is more than an ethical doctrine, since it seeks to understand all areas and forms of manifestation of human humanity in their specificity and unity. This means that the task of humanism is to integrate and cultivate moral, legal, civil, political, social, national and transnational, philosophical, aesthetic, scientific, life-meaning, environmental and all other human values at the level of worldview and way of life.

12. Humanism is not and should not be an ideology or any party political program, i.e. a social ideological current and structure that organizes, mobilizes and directs people to achieve certain political or other goals related to the dominance and power of some people over the rest of the national or world community. At the same time, the task of humanism is to clarify and outline the pluralism of universal political values that form the common basis of political doctrines and movements. Thus, he is capable, ready to perform and performs a communicative-integrative, coordinating and conciliatory function in dialogue, competition and the exchange of political ideas in society. It is able to offer and offers to all non-totalitarian and non-extremist political parties and movements a holistic, open and dynamic system of values capable of humanizing political ideologies and politics in general.

13. Humanism is not and should not be any form of religion. Humanists are alien to the recognition of the reality of the supernatural and transcendental, admiration for them and submission to them as superhuman priorities. Humanists reject the spirit of dogmatism, fanaticism, mysticism and anti-rationalism.

14. Humanists are skeptical of phenomena that are declared paranormal, extrasensory, occult, magical, spiritualistic, clairvoyant, astrological, telekinetic, etc., and advocate the need for independent and objective scientific critical examination of claims about such phenomena.

15. The ideas of humanism cannot be used to achieve goals that are contrary to it. Humanists generally share the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

***

For the humanistic movement, what is important and dear is not humanism itself, but man, his objective humanity. He and his practical way of life take precedence over any, even brilliantly formulated, humanistic doctrine or program. In an organizational and social sense, this means the greatest possible openness and democracy of humanistic movements, societies and institutions. For the practice of humanistic education, this means the most civilized and balanced forms of discussion and assessment of points of view or ideas that are oppositional or opposed to humanism, which does not at all exclude certainty, consistency, decisiveness and courage in the embodiment and defense of humanistic values. Particularly correct should be the work to expand the participants in the movement of secular, civil humanism. The main thing here is the consolidation of people who already consider themselves humanists or are able to recognize themselves as such. This is promising, since there really are a lot of them, even in a country with such a complex historical destiny as Russia.

Thus, we are talking about what is associated with advising a person to understand his inner world, to bring order to it. A humanistic call is, ultimately, a call to a person not to accept something from the outside indifferently, but first to find himself with the help of himself and objective possibilities, it is a call to get to the bottom of, to see in himself the positive foundations of himself, his value, freedom, dignity , self-respect, self-affirmation, creativity, communication and equal cooperation with one’s own kind and with all other - social and natural - no less worthy and amazing realities.

V. A. Kuvakin President of the Russian Humanist Society

Morals and ethics

Human moral instincts are not necessarily a guide to how to behave, but they are a good starting point because they arise from patterns of behavior that promote group survival that have been shaped, developed, and adapted over thousands of years by moral philosophy and practical reasoning.

But circumstances change situations, and specific formulations of morals and ethics may become outdated. People have a responsibility to maintain morality. The purpose of morality, as humanists see it, is not to conform to some model. It exists to serve man.

Moral meaning, along with beliefs, provides the basis for ethics, within which humanists may apply utilitarian ethics or virtue ethics, or may take any number of positions. However, humanistic morality does not go so far as to establish fixed rules. This requires people to make judgments within the circumstances of each situation. This flexibility, this commitment to dialogue and ethical discourse is fundamental to humanistic moral values. They play a big role in the formation of personality.

Thus, humanistic morality gives value and meaning to the individual. The interdependence of the individual and society implies a person's responsibility towards society - individual responsibility for his behavior as it affects society.

Principles and norms

There are many postulates recognized as humanistic. However, due to the strong segmentation of this movement, many of them are disputed or not recognized at all, especially in the context of attitudes towards religion.

Therefore, the best approach here would be a universal approach, according to which the following principles can be distinguished:

Freedom of development and choice of each individual.
Respect for the dignity and personal boundaries of all members of society, regardless of origin, social status and views.
Democratic approach in relationships between people.
Progress and improvement of society to improve the quality of life and moral climate.
Development of organizations to protect rights and freedoms.
The desire for peaceful resolution of conflicts between people and states.
Recognition of humanity as an integral part of nature and environmental activism.

Spirituality

This concept is quite controversial for humanists, since they reject the existence of a transcendental kingdom, souls and spirits. However, this experience is still very real, even if it is of natural origin. The fact is that the mystical feeling of expansion, union, has no specific intellectual content. In addition, one must take into account the breadth of the humanist tradition, represented by some thinkers who are recognized as representatives of humanism, although this concept did not exist previously. This tradition includes Confucius, Epicurus, the Stoic Marcus Aurelius, David Hume, John Locke, the French philosophers, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot. Accordingly, spirituality should be seen as an important part of the humanistic value system.

Basic features of humanism

Humanism became the basis of the worldview of the Renaissance. The main features of humanism usually include the following:

Interest in human needs is returning. Humanist philosophers were interested in the external appearance and spiritual content of man. They sought to study the achievements of the ancient classics.
A cult of individuality is formed. Literature is recognized as an important tool for human upbringing.
The exceptional role of poetry is recognized. Poetry embodied the synthesis of the best qualities of a person, and was an example of the most complete and successful form of expression of thoughts and feelings.
There is a change in the philosophical system. Humanists deny the philosophical and theological basis of medieval thinkers, which was based on the teachings of Aristotle and his supporters. They study a person with his speech and actions, with the manifestation of his character and the results of his activities.
The figure of the intellectual humanist is placed at the center of humanism as a system. He, declaring his individuality and defending it, tries to present his ideology, separating his views from other philosophers.
The universality of humanistic values is accepted. Humanists violate class boundaries and present a teaching without class interests. They declare the universality of the human values they put forward, which have significant weight for all educated humanity.
Conflicting relations with the authorities are developing. Many humanists relied on the support of those in power: lords, kings, papal legates. They always manage to avoid persecution from the church, so they have to hide, leave their homeland or move to the opposite camp.

Rights and dignity

There are a number of other values. The humanist position is that all people have the right to dignity. This statement introduces the key idea that people have the right to life, thereby increasing the value and problems of the universality of rights, the diversity of rights (individual and collective, i.e. groups), their differentiation (civil, religious, intimate). Dignity as a humanistic value opens the door to a variety of human rights. They must become part of world culture, contributing to the formation of a truly human society with rights and dignity equal to all people.

Main features

Today we can talk about the division of the movement into many movements, divided according to religious, political, ideological and ethical reasons. There is also a tendency towards universalism - the desire to create a certain common “humanistic denominator” that takes moral ideals beyond the framework of certain teachings and doctrines.

In general, the basis of the humanistic concept can be reduced to the following main criteria:

self-sufficiency - freedom from the influence of other doctrines, ideas are born through the moral development of the individual;
primacy - humanistic values are the main basis of the social structure of society;
universality - the applicability of ideas to any person and type of social structure.

Human inner world

This concept is considered by both philosophers and psychologists and teachers. It is considered as a subjective reality, that is, everything that is the internal content of psychological activity is characteristic only of one specific person. This determines the individuality and uniqueness of each person. On the other hand, this concept is of great importance when considering the humanistic values of a person.

The formation of the inner world is indirect. This process is associated with certain external conditions. This situation is explained by the fact that the inner world of a person is a specific form of reflection of the external world, which is characterized by its own spatio-temporal characteristics and content.

Some religious and philosophical concepts believe that a person initially has a certain inner world, and during his life his discovery and cognition occurs. Other ideas about this category are based on a more materialistic basis. According to this point of view, the emergence and development of the inner world occurs in the process of formation of a person as an individual, who is characterized by activity associated with the reflection and development of the surrounding reality.

Humanism in the modern world

Recently, the ideas of humanism have undergone changes, and it has even lost its relevance, since for modern society the ideas of ownership and self-sufficiency, that is, the cult of money, have come to the fore. As a result, the ideal was not a kind person who is not alien to the feelings of other people, but a self-made person who does not depend on anyone. Psychologists believe that this situation leads society to a dead end.

Modern humanism has replaced love for humanity with the struggle for its progressive development, which directly affected the original meaning of this concept. The state can do a lot to preserve humanistic traditions, for example, free education and medicine, raising wages for public sector employees will prevent the stratification of society into property groups. A ray of hope that all is not lost and humanism can still be restored in modern society are people who are not yet alien to the value of justice and equality.

Humanistic values in education

One of the goals of modern education is personal development. Spirituality and morality, related to humanistic values, act as the most important, basic characteristics of a person. In this case, the child acts as the center of spiritual life. Spiritual and moral education is an organized, purposeful process, which represents both external and internal (emotional and heartfelt) influence of the teacher on the spiritual and moral sphere of the developing personality. This area is system-forming in relation to the child’s inner world. Such an impact is determined by its complex, integrated nature in relation to the feelings, desires, and opinions of the individual. It is based on a certain system of humanistic values embedded in the content of education. The actualization of this system is determined by a certain position of the teacher.

Main types

Initially, the humanistic movement evolved and divided precisely in the light of its attitude towards religion - one can trace the chain from the thinkers of the Renaissance combining Stoicism and Christianity to the militant atheist philosophers of the New Age. However, in the last century other directions also took final shape. Let's look at the most famous of them.

Literary

It is understood as the embodiment of these ideas through literary creativity. The authors bring them to the reader through the creation of images, plots, trying to convey the corresponding values to him or by making him think about their relevance.

Cultural

This is sometimes the name given to the ancient philosophical heritage, which originates in the Greco-Roman civilization. It was its reception during the Renaissance that laid the basis for the evolution and establishment of humanistic ideals in the modern sense.

Philosophical

This term can be used to refer to a worldview base or an ideological foundation for the practical implementation of humanistic ideas. The primary basis here is considered to be the work of ancient Greek philosophers.

Religious

Supporters of this movement strive to create a universal ethics, a kind of religion without revelation and mysticism, aimed at the practical solution of earthly issues. However, the term is often given another meaning - the understanding of religious teachings as a source of humanism, the affirmation of the absolute value of the human being as God's creation.

Secular

Perhaps the most famous direction. Its proponents believe it is possible to lead an ethical and moral life without relying on religious morality or commandments. Also characteristic is a belief in progress, the power of science and a consistent struggle for secularism - the separation of religion and its institutions from the state.

People's

A rather rare definition. They sometimes mark humanistic ideas that have specificity, which is determined by the mentality of a particular people or ethnic group. In practice, it can intersect with the religious or literary, reflecting the characteristics and beliefs of a particular society.

Human rights

This includes the movement to protect individual rights and freedoms in the public, political and private spheres. Activists strive to defend the interests of citizens who find themselves in a vulnerable position in terms of interaction with authorities or oppressed by other people.

Pacifist

The humanistic movement is characterized by a negative attitude towards violence in general. But pacifists place special emphasis on the fight against wars and other armed conflicts. The need to resolve political and social contradictions through negotiations is declared. Pacifists began to gain strength in the mid-twentieth century against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

Public

In many ways it overlaps with human rights and is sometimes difficult to distinguish one from the other. The emphasis is on comprehensive work in order to improve the morals and moral and ethical state of society as a whole. Activists are engaged in volunteer and charitable activities.

Humanistic education

Despite the fact that humanistic values are an integral part of the content of education, their identification does not occur on its own. This process must be purposeful, and the values themselves must be structured, didactically processed, after which the teacher accepts them as a personal value system. And only after that they can be used as a system of value orientations for students, taking into account their age characteristics. Only in this case can they act as the basis for the spiritual and moral education of schoolchildren.

Renaissance humanism

If in the Middle Ages the church ruled the minds of people, earthly life was viewed from the perspective of preparation for the afterlife, then the Renaissance gave birth to a new person who was interested in the structure of this very real, and not some mythical afterlife.

It was the Renaissance that brought to the world artists, poets, inventors, discoverers and other geniuses, whose names are still known to any child.

The Italians Francesco Petrarch (he is considered the founder of humanism), Dante Alighieri, Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, the English Shakespeare and Bacon, the French de Montaigne and Rabelais, the Spaniard Cervantes, the Germans Erasmus of Rotterdam, Albrecht Durer - all these people were humanists of the era Renaissance.

Humanism arose in Italy in the 14th century as a counterweight to medieval asceticism. It developed under the influence of enormous interest in antiquity as a new philosophical direction, where the spiritual essence of man, his freedom and the right to earthly joys were put at the forefront.

Renaissance humanism placed man at the center of the universe as the most perfect creation of nature, in which the divine principle lies. And the meaning of the existence of this creation is not in atonement for sins, but in the ability to find harmony in earthly life.

Medieval man thought of himself as part of his social group and realized his value through compliance with accepted norms. A Renaissance man is valuable not because of his social affiliation, but because of his activity and personal merit .

It was humanistic ideas that gave birth to a completely new culture, based on cheerful secular themes. Humanism, glorifying the individual principle of man (what is individuality?), turned the anonymous art of the Middle Ages into author's art. Compare how many medieval artists, writers, musicians you can name offhand and how many names come from the Renaissance.

Since humanism presupposed a person’s path to perfection, the sphere of interests of humanists included issues of upbringing and education . An extensive cycle of humanities was introduced into the education system; the approach to educating young people was based on respect for the child’s personality, so spanking was no longer considered a successful pedagogical technique.

Who are humanists?

A humanist is a person who is interested or concerned about the welfare, values and dignity of humanity. Humanists give people freedom of choice. In their opinion, making their own decisions will lead to progress, personal growth and more positive self-esteem.

They also emphasize that anxiety is a driver of change. Humanists believe that change also leads to a more independent and fulfilling life.

Some of the first humanists, including Poggio Bracciolini, Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca, were collectors of ancient manuscripts.

Italian poet Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374)

Francesco Petrarch is considered the father of humanism. He was the first to declare the paramount importance of man. Petrarch identified human knowledge as the most important dilemma for scientists and philosophers. Petrarch also came up with a new method of comprehension - self-knowledge instead of logic.

How does humanism manifest itself?

Humanists argue that there is no evidence that any supernatural force needed or wanted anything from people, communicated anything to them, or interfered with the laws of nature, helped or harmed anyone.

Humanists argue that the welfare of humanity, not the supposed God or gods, is most important. Therefore, humanism aims to satisfy human desires and needs.

Proponents of humanism argue that people can find meaning in life and maximize their long-term happiness by developing their talents and using them to serve humanity.

Humanists believe that this approach to life is more rewarding and leads to deeper and longer-term satisfaction than the hedonistic pursuit of material or sensory pleasures that soon disappear.