Humanism: a global heritage

Humanism and humanist thinking are indigenous to many different cultures, though expressed differently and to varying degrees. Nonetheless, common themes such as altruistic morality, an emphasis on human agency and welfare, equality, the entitlement to rights and freedoms, and an evidence-based or naturalistic approach have been found the world over.

Essentially, humanists believe that people have an innate capacity for goodness, and advocate for an environment where human flourishing is possible. Humanists do not believe in an afterlife, where punishment for evil or rewards for doing good in this world will be heaped upon an individual after death. Instead, their focus is on being the best human being one can be to others, here, now, and in the one life we have.

Renaissance humanism

While the word ‘humanist’ has been used to refer to different movements throughout history, from its earliest usages the label has often had a sense of the humane and the secular. The first English appearance in print of ‘humanist’ appears to be in 1589, during the period known as the Renaissance: a borrowing from the Italian umanista. This in turn was derived from studia humanitatis (the study of the humanities), an intellectual movement that emerged in Italy during the 14th century.  This term encompassed the advancement of classical culture and the study of five subjects, inspired by the Roman orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero. These were grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy. Shifting study away from religious topics to focus on humanity itself, the word humanism came to be understood more widely to refer to the study of subjects other than theology.

Central to the Renaissance (or ‘rebirth’) was the rediscovery of the classical world, and an admiration for the culture and learning to be found there. According to historian of the Renaissance Paul Grendler, its development ‘articulated new moral and civil perspectives and values offering guidance in life’, and would help give rise to the so-called Age of Enlightenment. Although connections can be made between the approach of the Renaissance humanists and modern humanists, modern humanist thinking, in its naturalistic, ethical form, has a much deeper history.

Ancient Greece and Rome

While most of these Renaissance scholars were religious (and therefore outside of the modern definition of humanist), their emphasis on human reason and creativity as a means of knowledge and discovery was significant. So too was their rediscovery of the classical world, which had included much humanist thinking.

The works of Roman statesman Cicero provided insights into the philosophies of stoicism, Epicureanism, and scepticism, while poet and philosopher Lucretius, in his De Rerum Natura, illuminated the thinking of Epicurus and Democritus. In her Humanist Anthology, humanist psychologist Margaret Knight included these and other classical thinkers such as Thucydides, Seneca, and Epictetus to outline a canon of humanism as old as the written record.

Humanist thought in Asia has a long, distinguished history, traceable to hundreds of years BCE. This encompasses humanistic elements in the philosophies of Confucianism and Buddhism, as well as explicitly agnostic or atheist schools of thought, like the Lokāyata and Ajñāna of India. Nicholas F. Gier has described Buddhism and Confucianism as ‘humanistic in the sense that neither view requires divine aid for attaining liberation or achieving the good life’. Further, in the path towards enlightenment, Buddha embraced skepticism. Skepticism, from the Greek term skeptikoi, is adopting an enquiring state of mind, challenging the status quo or dogmatic establishments and concepts, and thus advancing critical thinking. Buddha utilised such a mindset to reject beliefs imposed by authoritative figures, scriptures, hearsay, or legends, thus attaining liberation and self-actualisation, with the freedom to experience life, determine what is good or bad, what is conducive to self-growth, and how our actions affect others.

Ancient India had a number of skeptical schools of philosophy, including perhaps the best known: Cārvāka, also known as Lokāyata, or ‘philosophy of the people’. While no Cārvāka manuscripts survive, they were widely referred to in other texts, particularly by those who opposed them. As Indian humanist M.N. Roy would write:

The teachings of those early speculative rebels are almost completely lost. Only the general drift of the currents of their thought can be approximately inferred from the works of their orthodox opponents.

Traced to as early as 600 BCE, the Cārvāka philosophy was materialist: it prized sensory perception, and rejected any idea of reincarnation or life after death. The Cārvākas (like the Epicureans) promoted instead the pursuit of pleasure and happiness while alive on earth. The dominant religion of the time was Hinduism, but a belief in karma and reincarnation was widely accepted across almost all schools of thought. The Cārvākas’ rejection of this made them particularly radical but, as the Lokāyata name implies, probably widespread, and likely influential.

Confucius (551–479 BCE) did not regard himself as a prophet, but as a transmitter of existing, ancient, and deeply rooted Chinese ideas. The philosophy which came to be known as Confucianism, best seen in the Analects, emphasises the cultivation of virtuous behaviour and the right way to live well in society.

Mencius (372-289 BCE), considered the most influential Confucian after Confucius, believed xing or human nature has an innate capacity for virtuousness, with our hearts already tuned for recognising and observing moral virtues and conduct. However, he also acknowledged that human nature is complex and fragile, and external influences may erode this goodness from us. To counter this, he actively sought to elucidate the basis of Confucianism to all, promoting the importance of education, self-development and reflection, community and family, and the creation of an environment which supported human flourishing.

The non-religious roots of African ethics have been further explored by Kwame Gyekye, the former professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Ghana, who has written that in the Akan moral system:

good or moral value is determined in terms of its consequences for humankind and human society. All this can be interpreted to mean that African morality originates from considerations of human welfare and interests, not from divine pronouncements. Actions that promote human welfare or interest are good, while those that detract from human welfare are bad. It is, thus, pretty clear that African ethics is a humanistic ethics, a moral system that is preoccupied with human welfare.

Gyekye notes that ‘while Akan ethics is not a microcosm of African ethics, there is nevertheless evidence… that indicates that the values, beliefs, and principles of Akan ethics reverberate mutatis mutandis on the moral terrains of other African societies’. Indeed other scholars, writing on varied African cultures, have argued the social and communal basis of ethics and morality across many different groups.

Another Akan concept explored by Gyekye is that of ‘personhood’, distinct from an individual’s fixed status as a human being. Akan personhood is developed through the exercise of virtuous and useful behaviour; the process of becoming a person. As Ajume Wingo has explained it:

For the Akan, personhood is the reward for contributing to the community and the basis of the individual’s moral worth is located in an independent source—a common humanity.

Ajume Wingo, ‘Akan Philosophy of the Person’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2017)

Gyekye puts the human capacity for reason and reflection at the heart of this – a very humanist ideal of thinking for oneself and acting for others.

Although Akan humanism does not require the rejection of religion, the ethical and moral bases of the philosophy are rooted in the good of the wider community, within which perceptions of what is right and wrong, good, and bad, are nurtured.