FEATURES OF RENAISSANCE

HUMANSIM

DR P DALAI
DEPT OF ENGLISH
FACULTY OF ARTS
BANARS HINDU UNIVERSITY

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English Banras Hindu University, India
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English Banras Hindu University, India
 MAN, being the servant and
interpreter of Nature, can do and
understand so much and so much only
as he has observed in fact or in thought
of the course of nature: beyond this he
neither knows anything nor can do
anything.” Francis Bacon. Novum
Organum (1620)

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English Banras Hindu University, India
 Features of Humanism
• An approach in study, philosophy, or practice that
focuses on human values and concerns.
• Humanistic Theory of Learning stressed on
experience as the primary pursuit of the study of
human learning and behavior.
• They emphasized distinct human qualities: choice,
creativity, values, self-realization.
• Believed that meaningfulness and subjectivity
were more important than objectivity.
• Humanists proposed a more all-round education
that put preference on not only intellectual
learning, but also on physical and moral
development.

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English Banras Hindu University, India
 Features of Humanism
• Humanities disciplines included studies in
rhetoric, grammar, poetry, ethics and history.
• The more traditional educational approach was
that of scholasticism, which concentrated on logic,
natural science and metaphysics.
• The humanist preference was to study these in
their original classical texts (mostly Latin).
• Relying on scientific temper or scientific method
to understanding how the universe works.
• Rejection of the supernatural.
• Relied on based on reason, empathy, and a
concern for making their ethical decisions
on/aboput human beings and other sentient
animals
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English Banras Hindu University, India
 Features of Humanism
• Didn't believe in the presence of an afterlife , and in
any fixed purpose to the universe.

• According to them, human beings can act to give their

own lives meaning by seeking happiness in this life
and helping others to do the same.

• Therefore, their central concern was always the

happiness of people in this existence, not in some
fanciful never-never land beyond the grave; a
happiness worthwhile as an end in itself and not
subordinate to or dependent on a Supreme Deity, an
invisible King, ruling over the earth and the infinite
cosmos.

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English Banras Hindu University, India
 Precursors of Humanism
Protagoras:

• A Greek teacher and philosopher of the fifth century

BCE, to whom Plato devoted an entire dialogue.

• Protagoras formulated the famous dictum “Man is the

measure of all things, of things that are that they are,
and of things that are not that they are not.”

• Also asserted: “As to the 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.”

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English Banras Hindu University, India
 Precursors of Humanism

Socrates:
• Expounded Humanist maxims such as
“Know thyself” and “The good
individual in the good society.”
• While believing in a God himself and
having hopes of immortality, he tried to
work out an ethical system that would
function independently of religious
doctrine.

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English Banras Hindu University, India
 Influential Philosophical Schools
NATURALISM:

• Considered that human beings, the earth, and the unending

universe of space and time are all parts of one great Nature. The
whole of existence is equivalent to Nature and outside of Nature
nothing exists.

• This metaphysics has no place for the supernatural, no room for

superphysical beings or a supermaterial God, whether Christian or
non-Christian in character.

• Naturalism supported and helped to develop the scientific outlook

and a reliance on reason. Accordingly, it views human beings as
entirely creatures of this earth and as indissoluble unities of
personality (including mind) on the one hand and body or
physical structure on the other.
•

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English Banras Hindu University, India
 Influential Philosophical Schools
MATERIALISM:

• Believed in the ultimate atomic structure of things,

and finds in Nature an order and a process that
can be expressed in scientific laws of cause and
effect.

• Developed systematically the idea that the whole

universe is composed in the last analysis of tiny
material particles—atoms of different size,
shape, and configuration whirling swiftly
through the void and interacting according to a
definite causal sequence.

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English Banras Hindu University, India
THANK YOU

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