Knowra Humanism Humanism Humanism is a family of ideas that emphasizes human agency, dignity, or value. Its meanings vary across religious, philosophical, literary, and political traditions.
Renaissance humanism : A European intellectual movement that revived classical learning and shaped education, literature, and civic life. It is the historically specific movement most closely associated with the word’s origins.
Studia humanitatis : The Renaissance curriculum of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy. Its subjects formed the educational core of Renaissance humanism.
Erasmus : A Dutch Renaissance scholar and theologian known for classical learning, biblical scholarship, and advocacy of reform. His Christian scholarship joined humanist textual methods to calls for moral renewal.
Theocentrism : A worldview that places God or the divine at the center of reality and interpretation. Its emphasis differs from humanist approaches that foreground human capacities and concerns.
Humanistic education : An approach to education that emphasizes broad learning, critical inquiry, and the development of human capacities. Its curricula and aims carry humanist ideas into teaching and civic formation.
Secular humanism : A nonreligious outlook that grounds ethics and meaning in human capacities, reason, and shared experience. It represents a prominent modern interpretation that does not rely on religious authority.
Cicero : A Roman statesman and writer whose works on rhetoric, ethics, and civic life influenced later humanists. Renaissance scholars treated his writing as a model of eloquence and civic learning.
Lorenzo Valla : An Italian Renaissance humanist who used philology to examine classical texts and challenge forged documents. His analysis of the Donation of Constantine demonstrated humanist criticism’s political reach.
Anti-humanism : A family of critiques rejecting the idea of a universal, self-determining human subject as philosophy’s foundation. It directly challenges assumptions about agency and human nature found in some humanisms.
Human rights : Rights held by all people by virtue of being human, regardless of citizenship or status. Humanist arguments about shared dignity have helped support universal rights claims.
Show all 25