HUMANISM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Humanism

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/hjˈumənˌɪzəm/ Listen

noun

Humanism n.

Human nature or disposition; humanity. "(She) looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference the attitude of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism."

The study of the humanities; polite learning.

A doctrine or ethical point of view that emphasizes the dignity and worth of individual people, rejects claims of supernatural influences on humans, and stresses the need for people to achieve improvement of society and self-fulfillment through reason and to develop human-oriented ethical values without theism.

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Etymology of 'Humanism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Humanism" Quotes from Famous Books

... Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums. 2 vols., 1881, especially vol. II p. 1 ff. 363 ff. 494 ff. ("Humanism and the science of history"). The direct importance of humanism for illuminating the history of the middle ages is very little, and least of all for the history of the Church and of dogma. The only prominent works here are those of Saurentius Valla and Erasmus. The criticism ...

— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... speak or write with diligence, acuteness, or knowledge." The beautiful book he produced was worthy of the zeal, and unsparing, unweariable pains, which had been spent on it by the band of enthusiasts, and it was truly a little triumph of humanism. Further editions were reprinted during the sixteenth century at Basic and at Frankfort-on-Main, but they did not improve in any way upon the first; and the next epoch in the study of Saxo was made by the edition and notes of Stephanus Johansen Stephanius, published at Copenhagen in the middle ...

— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... lapsing into a narrow self-sufficiency so far as intellectual ideals are concerned. Danish literature has been made what it is chiefly by the mediation of a few powerful minds who have kept it in touch with modern progress: by Holberg, who may almost be said to have brought humanism into Denmark; by Oehlenschlaeger, who made the romantic movement as powerful an influence in Denmark as it was in Germany; by Brandes, who, beginning his career just after the war in which Denmark lost her provinces and became as embittered toward Germany as France was to become a few ...

— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... destined, once more to blaze up into bright flames, and this time in the spiritual domain. As she grew more and more worldly, the Church had lost much of her influence on men's minds. On the other hand, a refining movement had grown up in humanism, which, supported by the spirit of antiquity, could not fail from its very nature to become antagonistic to the Church. It found enthusiastic response in Germany, and was joined by everyone whose thoughts and hopes were centred in freedom. Ulrich ...

— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... enthusiasm and worship of humanity, partly on the splendid hopes of material improvements in civilisation which applied science has held out to us, two influences from which ancient Greek thought seems to have been strangely free. For the Greeks marred the perfect humanism of the great men whom they worshipped, by imputing to them divinity and its supernatural powers; while their science was eminently speculative and often almost mystic in its character, aiming at culture ...

— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

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