Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic theologian, educationalist, satirist and philosopher. Through his vast number of translations, books, essays, prayers and letters, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture.
The Renaissance is a period in history and a cultural movement marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity, covering the 15th and 16th centuries and characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity; it occurred after the crisis of the Late Middle Ages and was associated with great social change in most fields and disciplines, including art, architecture, politics, literature, exploration and science. In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of a "long Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century.
Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system or life stance that embraces human reason, logic, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism, while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision making.
Philip Melanchthon was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, an intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and influential designer of educational systems.
Religious humanism or ethical humanism is an integration of nontheistic humanist ethical philosophy with congregational rites and community activity which center on human needs, interests, and abilities. Self-described religious humanists differ from secular humanists mainly in that they regard the nontheistic humanist life stance as a non-supernatural "religion" and organising using a congregational model.
John Colet was an English Catholic priest and educational pioneer.
Renaissance humanism was a worldview centered on the nature and importance of humanity, that emerged from the study of Classical antiquity. This first began in Italy and then spread across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term humanist referred to teachers and students of the humanities, known as the studia humanitatis, which included the study of Latin and Ancient Greek literatures, grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy. It was not until the 19th century that this began to be called humanism instead of the original humanities, and later by the retronym Renaissance humanism to distinguish it from later humanist developments. During the Renaissance period most humanists were Christians, so their concern was to "purify and renew Christianity", not to do away with it. Their vision was to return ad fontes to the simplicity of the Gospels and of the New Testament, bypassing the complexities of medieval Christian theology.
Adagia is the title of an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Erasmus' repository of proverbs is "one of the most monumental ... ever assembled".
(Divine) Accommodation is the theological principle that God, while being in His nature unknowable and unreachable, has nevertheless communicated with humanity in a way that humans can understand and to which they can respond, pre-eminently by the incarnation of Christ and similarly, for example, in the Bible.
Humanism in France found its way from Italy, but did not become a distinct movement until the 16th century was well on its way.
Renaissance humanism came much later to Germany and Northern Europe in general than to Italy, and when it did, it encountered some resistance from the scholastic theology which reigned at the universities. Humanism may be dated from the invention of the printing press about 1450. Its flourishing period began at the close of the 15th century and lasted only until about 1520, when it was absorbed by the more popular and powerful religious movement, the Reformation, as Italian humanism was superseded by the papal counter-Reformation.
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to humanism:
The migration waves of Byzantine Greek scholars and émigrés in the period following the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek studies that led to the development of the Renaissance humanism and science. These émigrés brought to Western Europe the relatively well-preserved remnants and accumulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization, which had mostly not survived the Early Middle Ages in the West. The Encyclopædia Britannica claims: "Many modern scholars also agree that the exodus of Greeks to Italy as a result of this event marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance", although few scholars date the start of the Italian Renaissance this late.
Spiritual naturalism, or naturalistic spirituality combines a naturalist philosophy with spirituality. Spiritual naturalism may have first been proposed by Joris-Karl Huysmans in 1895 in his book En Route.
Coming into prominence as a writer during the 1870s, Huysmans quickly established himself among a rising group of writers, the so-called Naturalist school, of whom Émile Zola was the acknowledged head...With Là-bas (1891), a novel which reflected the aesthetics of the spiritualist revival and the contemporary interest in the occult, Huysmans formulated for the first time an aesthetic theory which sought to synthesize the mundane and the transcendent: "spiritual Naturalism".
Andrew James William Copson, FRSA, FCMI, MCIPR is a humanist leader and writer. He is the Chief Executive of Humanists UK and the President of Humanists International.
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. Articles related to humanism include:
Articles related to philosophy of religion include:
Irreligion in the Netherlands pertains to atheism, agnosticism, and other forms of irreligion in the Netherlands. Irreligion is the majority religious position in the country since around 2015, making the Netherlands one of the minority of mostly irreligious countries in the world. After that, there is still a very large and prominent Christian minority, plus a large irreligious but former Christian minority. Also, about a million, mostly Sunni Muslims make up about a 5% Islamic minority, making Islam the second biggest religion in the Netherlands – a new development through immigration, mostly since ca. 1970. Until World War II, the Netherlands had a small but influential Jewish minority for centuries. The Holocaust all but irradicated them, but not the Jewish influences in Dutch history and culture.
Dr. Jens Michael Zimmermann is a German-Canadian Christian philosopher, theologian, and professor who specializes in hermeneutics and the philosophical and theological roots of humanism.
