Humanism Is Revolutionary

How Humanism was Revolutionary Humanism is a philosophy that was created by the Athenians of Ancient Greece; those who follow this philosophy would believe that human beings are the center of everything, are able to rely on their own abilities to achieve things, and are able to make sense of the universe without relying on supernatural reasons. There is a strong emphasis on human reason and faith that everything in the natural world can be explained through purely natural reasons. With that said, the Athenian humanist philosophy is one that is unlike any other philosophy historically prior to it. The unique concept of humanism demonstrates a new system of culture, revolutionized medicine, tools, ideas, and government for human benefit, and

For example, Socrates had faith in the rationality and the ability of humans to form their own values without the aid of traditional beliefs. This is related to the idea of rationalism, which is the idea that thought alone allows for one to pursuit knowledge and come to conclusions. There is also another contrary method of coming to conclusions through reason called empiricism, which was thought up of by Aristotle and is closely related to the scientific method that we use today. Empiricism calls for the observation of the natural world and learning through experience. These concepts, which resulted from the humanist philosophy, require faith in human reason and demonstrate a new and exceptional way to come to conclusions without any unnecessary, supernatural

However, upon closer inspection, one would find that instead of gods and supernatural beings, humans are represented on the art forms as well; for example, many famous sculptures magnificently depict human figures. Moreover, any illustrated or sculpted gods are interpreted to be in the form of humans, which furthers the idea that humans really are the center of everything for these ancient Athenians. In other civilizations, this would never be the case. Going further, one could argue that other civilizations, such as Ancient China, have already had philosophies and ways of teaching and learning things. However, the philosophies of Ancient China were very different to humanism. Legalism, for example, had absolutely zero faith whatsoever in humans, which is extremely contrary to humanism. Confucianism would promote teaching, but did not come up with the ideas of coming to conclusions through one’s own reason; instead, Confucius just had a set of rules that people should follow. Taoism is somewhat more similar to humanism; however, it never explicitly talks about humans being able to be powerful enough to come up with their own ways to do things, nor did it have enough of an impact on human society in Ancient China to be relevant enough. Furthermore, the maths and sciences developed by other civilizations were not as