In a general sense, the Humanism is recognition of the human personality’s value, each person’s right to freedom and development. Humanism protects personal dignity, self-value and self-importance, the exceptional right for free choice and happiness. Narrowly, Humanism is associated with the secular social and cultural movement, which appeared in the era of
Renaissance, as a counterbalance for the scholasticism and spiritual supremacy of the Church.
“Man is the measure of all things” – said Protagoras far before the Humanism appears in Europe as separate movement. However, these words show the main idea of it perfectly.
The question of the Humanism and World Religions’ connection is one of the most contradictory. If we look at the Humanism’s history, we can see that this movement appeared in struggles with Christian dogmatic moral. The Middle Ages showed incredibly cruel Crusades, witch hunts and scientific discoveries’ abnegation. All this seem very far from Humanism philosophy. Nevertheless, let’s think about things Christianity proposes to society. The main idea of Christianity is the human’s solvability. The fundamentals of cruelty in the Middle Ages go into quite overweighed understanding of the Old Testament. However, the New Testament shows deep humanistic principles – an honor to human’s freedom, kindness and a value of other people’s life, personality and their right for solvability.
In fact, all World Religions show the Humanism’s philosophy. Unfortunately, sometimes society can interpret this in a wrong way. When we talk about strict religions, as Islam, we used to see very unpleasant for the Humanism things, sometimes forgetting that Islam is not only jihad, which is also a lot of people can understand wrong. Islam is also concentrates on personality. A Moslem constantly should refine and improve spiritually, morally and physically, trying to become perfect. Truthfulness, sincerity and politeness, rejection of anger, hatred, envy, as well as moral and physical strength, tolerance and forgiveness – these are only a few from important Islamic moral norms. Using examples of nowadays, we can see how a meaning of any moral norms can be changed by not proper understanding, or if it is profitably for someone.
The next one in a range of World Religions is Buddhism, in which we can easily find the Humanism’s philosophy. Probably, it’s the only one from World Religions, in which it is almost impossible to find any alternatives for the Humanism; it’s hard to change its norms’ meaning. Buddhism is full of humanistic origins and it is far from dogmatic religions. Buddhism deeply concentrates on human’s personality, and sees people’s life as a way from misery and pain to Nirvana, according to the Four Noble Truth. (Source 1) In Buddhism people are free to choose their own ways, to develop and to find themselves in happiness.
It’s no doubt, that in this paper some ideas were matched in a very general way. The World Religions requires years for their real meaning understanding. In the same time, all of them bring the idea of personal development and …