humanism

"It might seem unnecessary to define what a person is, but the issue of personhood has been a longstanding source of debate. The scope of personhood has been questioned in many applications, including human slavery, right to life and right to end life, animal rights, bioethics, corporate rights, and theology. It is believed the question will arise again as robots and artificial intelligence become more sophisticated and ingrained in our culture. What makes a person, and who gets to define personhood?"--Provided by publisher.

Examines the history of human civilization in the twenty-first century.

Many people use religion to guide them and instill a set of principles that they can follow in life. However, not everyone chooses to go down this path. Those who don't believe in things like god or destiny might subscribe to humanism, or the philosophy that humans are independent and in control of their own lives without a higher power to help them along. Using this insightful guide, readers will be well-equipped to navigate the world on their own terms using critical thought and analysis.

". . . In this . . . book, [the] author takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz, a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder, Stanley Milgram's Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think--and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature"--OCLC.

Explores how to confront social problems and continue progress through the application of Enlightenment era ideals, including reason, science, and humanism.

Irving Babbitt was a leader of the intellectual movement called American Humanism, or the New Humanism, and a distinguished professor of French literature at Harvard. "Democracy and Leadership", first published in 1924, is his only directly political book, and in it he applies the principles of humanism to the civil social order. Babbitt rejects all deterministic philosophies of history, whether they be the older type found in Saint Augustine or Bossuet, which tends to make of man the puppet of God, or the new type, which tends in all its varieties to make of man the puppet of nature. He offers a compelling critique of unchecked majoritarianism and addresses the great problem of how to discover leaders with standards.

Examines the use of violence in response to wrongdoing and how Christian fundamentalism advocates military action abroad and state violence domestically. Proposes that systematic nonviolence would be in accord with the moral imagination of Jesus of Nazareth.

An introduction to humanism that explores its underlying philosophy, its approach to religious belief, ethics, and politics, and criticisms of its position.