Introduce yourself to the men and women who have resisted religious dogma and fixed ideologies to carve out a way of thinking in which individuals occupy center stage. Humanists are freethinkers, following no predetermined path. They are committed to inquiry and formal education and believe that “the meaning of our lives is to be found in our connections and bonds with others.”
In the 14th century, Petrarch and Boccaccio strove to cultivate “the joy in writing” and worked to enlarge and salvage the “wrecked or sunken knowledge” embodied in classical manuscripts. They were followed by the northern humanists as Erasmus and Montaigne, whose famous essays embraced “both [the] philosophical and personal,” along with the Enlightenment thinkers Voltaire, Diderot, and Hume, “the most intellectually merciless thinker of his time.” During the 16th century, humanists became “less naively adoring of the past, and ever more interested” in human complexity, fallibility, and uncertainty. Anti-humanism has its day as well—fascists in Italy, blasphemy laws, the contemporary zealots of artificial intelligence—all reflect on the challenges that a turbulent 20th century posed to overcoming injustice through independent thought, moral inquiry, and mutual respect. Humanism is always a “work in progress.” and “history and the human world are neither stable and good on the one hand, nor hopelessly tragic on the other, according to the author.
If the human world is our own work, and if we want it to proceed well, how do we exert ourselves to make it happen? If this question interests, this SDG will fill your soul.
one: What is Humanism?
Contributions of Petrarch and Boccaccio
Chapter One
Robert Shafer, What is Humanism? The Virginia Quarterly Review, April 1930, pp 198- 209
Susan L Ronstretch, Human, More Human, Huamnest/ Storytelling in Boccaccio’s Decameron,
Mediterranean Studies, 1998 pp 117-124.
Rocco Montano, Italian Humanism, Dante and Petrarch, Italica, Summer 1973 pp 205-221
Week two: The Italian Humanists, Chapter 2
W.M. Southgate, Erasmus: Christian Humanism and Political Theory, History, October 1995, pp
240-254
George M. Logan, The Relation of Montaigne to Renaissance Humanism, Journal of the History of
Ideas, Vol 36 No. 4, 1975 pp 613 -632.
Week three: Provocateurs and Pagans, Villa, Bracciolini and Da Vinci, Chapter 3
Ricardo Fubni, Humanism and Truth: Valla Writes against the Donation of Constantine, Journal
Of the History of Ideas, Jan 1996, pp 79 -86.
John W. Oppenheimer, San Bernardino of Sienna and the Dialogue of Avarice, Renaissance
Quarterly, Winter, 1997, pp. 564-587
Week four: Mingling of Humanism and Medicine, Chapter 4
Charles G. Nauert, Jr. Humanists, Scientiests and Pliny, The American Historical Review, Feb.
1979, pp 72 - 85
Week five: Human Stuff: Montaigne, Rabelais and Erasmus Chapter 5
Raymond Lebegue, Rabelais, The Last of the French Ersmians, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, 1949 pp 91-100.
Week six: The Enlighteners and the Age of Reason, Chapter 6
Giorgio Tonelli, The “Weakness” of Reason in the Age of Enlightenment, Diderot Studies,
1971 Vol 14., pp 217 - 244.
Week seven: Universality, diversity, critical reasoning and moral connection, Chapter 7
Week eight: The New Humanists, Chapter 8
Michael Dettelbach, Alexander von Humboldt between Enlightenment and Romanticism,
Northeastern Natualist, 2001 pp 9 - 20.
Week nine: Humanism Turns Scientific , Chapter 9
William W. Matter, The Utopian Traditon and Aldous Huxley, Science Fiction Studies, 1975
Pp 146 - 151.
Week ten: Era of Hope, Chapter 10
Sarah Unna, Bertrand Russell - Then and Now, The Journal of Philsophy, Psychology and
Scientific Methods, July 17, 1919, pp 393 - 403.
Week eleven Facisim and the aftermath of WWII, Chapter 11
David Rose, Sartre and the Problem of Universal Human Nature Revisited, Sartre Studies
International, 2003 pp 1 -20.
Week twelve Secular Humanism, Chapter 12
Sarah Blakewell, Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope, Penguin 462 pages
PDFs of articles will be provided by coordinator