Humanism: what is this - world view, position, direction?

World outlook concepts, perhaps, do not count.Even without taking into account individual beliefs and theories, it would not be possible to give a complete picture of philosophical directions in a multipage opus. However, it is possible to identify the most common features. Some are theocentric - that is, in the core of the universe stands God (the gods). Others can be described as existential, religious,

atheistic humanism. Is this a separate worldview, a concept, a vital position?

It is necessary to distinguish this concept from the paronymic onehumanity. Sometimes it is mistakenly believed that philanthropy is the same as humanism. What is this concept? Most dictionaries, including academic and philosophical encyclopedias, define it as a world view (or system of views), in the center of which stands a person as the highest value. It's easier to say that it is life, personality, individuality that are the "measure of all things". All concepts, all phenomena are perceived through the prism of man. Through the "I" and "we", through the correlation of the divine and the earthly in people. It is often possible to hear the terms "revival" or "Renaissance" humanism. What is it - is it only a world view or a whole direction, a system of views and values? This is by no means an invention of modern times. On the contrary, Renaissance scientists and philosophers actively turned to ancient culture, to ancient Roman and Greek spirituality. And one of the first to mention this concept of Cicero, calling the higher development of human abilities a capacious word "humanism". What did this mean in the Renaissance?

In contrast to the followers of cosmocentrism and theocentrism, thinkers of that era in the center

The universe was put in person.A person with his rights and freedoms, opportunities and needs, views and activities began to occupy the minds of philosophers. These include the greatest thinkers of those times - Petrarch and Dante, Boccaccio and Michelangelo, and later - Moore and Montaigne, Copernicus and Erasmus Rotterdam, Schiller and Goethe. If the philosophical humanism of the Renaissance was focused mainly on the field of art and human capabilities, then at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries, ideas received a slightly different meaning. Culture has already separated from religion and the church, therefore, the focus has been on moral values ​​and norms.

Existentialists, Nietzscheans, nihilists, pragmatists - they all considered the spiritual world of man as an absolute, as a starting point.

In contrast, religious philosophersbelieved that social humanism, especially in its atheistic form, threatens with lack of discipline, a departure from the divine and self-destruction of the individual. Discussions about the belonging of this or that thinker to anthropocentric directions are still being conducted. One of the central issues is the problem of subjectivity and objectivity of cognition of the world. If humanists believe that all values, all being correlate primarily with man, postmodernists and structuralists deny the predominant importance of the individual. They proclaim the primacy of the general over the particular, the objective over the individual.

According to the modern understanding of the term, humanism- this is also a vital position. Human beings can independently determine the meaning and significance of their existence. Protection of the individual, individuality, her freedoms and rights is the basis of modern democratic politics.