Literary movements

Humanism is an educational and cultural philosophy that began in the

Renaissance when scholars rediscovered Greek and Roman classical
philosophy and has as its guiding principle the essential dignity of man.
Humanism was the intellectual movement that informed the Renaissance,
although the term itself was not used to describe this discovery of man until the
early nineteenth century. Humanist thinking came about as a response to the
scholasticism of the universities. The Schoolmen, or scholastics, valued
Aristotelian logic, which they used in their complicated method of defending the
scriptures through disputation of isolated statements. Humanists accused the
scholastics of sophistry and of distorting the truth by arguing philosophical
phrases taken out of context. By contrast, humanists researched the historical
context and lives of classical writers and focused on the moral and ethical
content of the texts. Along with this shift came the concept that "Man is the
measure of all things" (Pythagoras), which meant that now Man was the center of
the universe in place of God. In turn, the study of man and human acts on Earth
led humanists to feel justified in entering into the affairs of the world, rather than
leading a life of monastic asceticism, as did the scholastics.

The first humanist, Francesco Petrarch coined the term "learned piety" (docta
pietas) to indicate that a philosopher may love God and learning, too. The
common thread between all Renaissance humanists was a love of Latin
language and of classical (Roman and Greek) philosophy. The humanist interest
in authenticating classical texts would become the field of textual criticism that
still thrives today. Humanism, too, thrives today, although it has been transformed
to encompass humanitarian concerns such as providing aid to others who are
suffering. Today’s secular humanists actively reject religion and turn their
attention to charitable works and an ethical, meaningful life on Earth.

Education is an important facet of Humanism. Not only did the humanists revere
learning, but they disseminated their ideas through a radical change in
educational methods. Humanism was primarily a movement in opposition to the
traditional mode of education, called Scholasticism, of the medieval period.
Scholasticism had been a new style of learning in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, which accepted as a maxim that God existed and that God’s Truth was
a given that did not need to be proved. The Schoolmen (as the scholastics were
called) merely had to refute attacks on the Truth, in a sort of legalistic
argumentation style that derived from their understanding of Aristotelian logic. It
took the form of splitting hairs (that is, arguing over minute details), according to
seventeenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon. The flaw in scholastic thinking
was that it relied too much on statements taken out of context and then
disputed......