Secular humanism
Secular humanism is a nonreligious worldview that grounds ethics and meaning in human reason, experience, and concern for human welfare.
Humanism: A tradition emphasizing human dignity, agency, and the value of human life. Secular humanism belongs to the wider humanist tradition but rejects supernatural foundations.
Existentialism: A philosophical tradition emphasizing human freedom, responsibility, and the creation or discovery of meaning. Both approaches address meaning without relying on a divinely assigned purpose.
Renaissance humanism: A European intellectual movement that revived classical learning and emphasized human capacities and civic life. It is a historical predecessor, though not itself the modern nonreligious worldview.
Religious humanism: A humanist approach that combines concern for human dignity with religious belief or practice. It shares humanist aims while retaining religious commitments that secular humanism does not require.
Ethical culture: A movement and community tradition organized around ethical living without requiring shared religious belief. It shows how nonreligious ethical commitments can sustain communal institutions.
Secularism: A principle or movement advocating separation of religious institutions from public institutions or civic affairs. It clarifies secular humanism’s nonreligious orientation without making the two ideas identical.
Absurdism: The philosophical view that human longing for meaning confronts an indifferent or silent universe. It sharpens the question of whether human-made meaning answers the search for cosmic purpose.
Enlightenment: An intellectual movement emphasizing reason, inquiry, and reform, especially in eighteenth-century Europe and America. Its confidence in reason and criticism helped shape modern secular humanist thought.
Atheism: The absence of belief in gods, or the belief that no gods exist. Atheism may accompany secular humanism, but by itself it does not specify an ethical worldview.
Humanist chaplaincy: Pastoral and practical support provided by nonreligious humanists in institutions such as hospitals and universities. It applies humanist care and meaning-making in settings often associated with religious chaplaincy.