Though only some anthropologists are humanists, my own anthropological studies confirmed my review of religion as a human art, not requiring any assumptions of an ultimate reality such as God or Mind, independent of the human world.
Raymond Firth, New Humanist, March 1993
Raymond Firth was an influential anthropologist, who made significant contributions to economic anthropology and the study of social organisation. A member of the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) for over three decades, he was also a prominent humanist: an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association, a member of the advisory council of the British Humanist Association (patron of Humanists UK), and a contributor to the edited essay collection The Humanist Outlook (1968). In 1996, Firth published Religion: a Humanist Interpretation, presenting his ‘personal view on the nature and origin of religion’.
See the gallery below for some documents illustrating Raymond Firth’s connection to the humanist movement.
Humanism could (better) be honoured by reciting a list of the things one has enjoyed or found interesting, of the […]
Humanism is a philosophy – one which gives us a coherent stance for living. We believe the humanist approach to […]
While much of the Humanist Heritage website looks back to the earlier years of the organised humanist movement, recent decades […]
Stanton Coit was a pioneer of the Ethical movement in England and the founder of the West London Ethical Society, […]
