From Wikipedia on 17-Feb-2013
Humanism is a group of philosophies and ethical perspectives which emphasize the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers individual thought and evidence (rationalism, empiricism), over established doctrine or faith (fideism). The term humanism can be ambiguously diverse, and there has been a persistent confusion between several related uses of the term because different intellectual movements have identified with it over time. In philosophy and social science, humanism refers to a perspective that affirms some notion of a “human nature” (contrasted with anti-humanism). In modern times, many humanist movements have become strongly aligned with secularism, with the term Humanism often used as a byword for non-theistic beliefs about ideas such as meaning and purpose.
Before the word was associated with secularism, German historian and philologist Georg Voigt used humanism in 1856 to describe the movement that flourished in the Italian Renaissance to revive classical learning; this definition won wide acceptance. During the Renaissance period in Western Europe, humanist movements attempted to demonstrate the benefit of gaining learning from classical, pre-Christian sources in and of themselves, or for secular ends such as political science and rhetoric. The word “humanist” derives from the 15th-century Italian term umanista describing a teacher or scholar of classical Greek and Latin literature and the ethical philosophy behind it, including the approach to the humanities.
During the French Revolution, and soon after in Germany (by the Left Hegelians), humanism began to refer to philosophies and morality centred on human kind, without attention to any notions of the divine. Religious humanism developed as more liberal religious organizations evolved in more humanistic directions. Religious humanism integrates humanist ethical philosophy with the rituals and beliefs of some religions, although religious humanism still centers on human needs, interests, and abilities.
As the ethical movement began using the word in the 1930s, the term “humanism” became increasingly associated with philosophical naturalism, and with secularism and the secularization of society. The first Humanist Manifesto, formalized at the University of Chicago in 1933,[6] identified secular humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, and justice, while specifically rejecting supernatural and religious ideas as a basis of morality and decision-making. The International Humanist and Ethical Union and other organizations describe it simply as ‘Humanism’, capitalized and without qualification.