Academic literature on the topic 'Secular Humanistic world'

This chapter goes into greater detail regarding the history of humanist thought and the way a narrative-based humanism might be exhumed from humanism’s philosophical lineage. It looks at the differences between Renaissance, canonical, and contemporary secular humanisms and the set of values that are conjured when a narrative is described as “humanistic.” It makes a case for humanism as both a style of storytelling, and a reading method, and thus establishes a “humanist hermeneutics” that will be carried through the remainder of the book. In so doing, this chapter sets up some core values of narrative humanism: it describes the difference between narrative and character complexity, the use of social science as a hermeneutic tool, the value of incomplete striving for understanding rather than grand theories that totalise people’s worlds, and finally describes some of the alternatives to humanism before concluding.

How did the frottola inhabit Renaissance palazzi? One almost recoils from placing this unsophisticated music within the system of austere symbols that aristocratic interiors had to convey. This apparent contradiction, however, may offer precious insights on the status of music at the turn of the sixteenth century. This chapter describes the layout and content of a Paduan frottola source, MS Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha.F.9.9, and the context in which it originated. The contrast between the highly learned framework and the more vernacular content of this manuscript arguably reflects the tension between humanistic standards required of music and a secular repertory just beginning to adjust to a new role. Only later would music be able to develop the vocabulary for a fruitful dialogue with literary and artistic humanism.

This chapter examines texts in which a medieval poet, Dante Alighieri, and a Renaissance humanist, Lorenzo Valla, handle the historical drama which controlled the European imagination for at least a thousand years: the drama of Pilate and Jesus. Both writers treat the gospels’ trial narratives in a that way reveals, to their minds, the corruption of the medieval “papal monarchy” (as it is called). For both Dante and Valla, the crucial moment is that in which Jesus renounces, before Pilate, “the kingdoms of the world”. If Jesus had not made this “great refusal”—as first formulated by Augustine, and received by Dante, Valla, and later European philosophers—there is reason to believe that the secular could not have been theorized, or progressively actualized, in Europe.

This chapter includes discussion on the nature of spirituality in a secular and multicultural world. It describes the relationship between religion and spirituality and the role of faith practices, religion, and spiritual assessment. It also outlines the nature of spiritual pain, and its importance in holistic care. The word ‘spirit’ is widely used in our culture. Politicians speak about the ‘spirit’ of their party, veterans talk about the wartime ‘spirit’; religious people discuss the ‘spirit’ as that part of human being that survives death, whereas humanists might regard the human ‘spirit’ as an individual’s essential, but non-religious, life force. Related words are equally common and diverse: footballers describe their team as a spiritual home; spiritual music and spiritual art are fashionable; and there are spiritual healers, spiritual life coaches, spiritual directors, and even spiritually revitalizing beauty products. Spiritual care, particularly of those facing their own death, demands the response of a wise and compassionate ‘spiritual friend’. Not every member of the multidisciplinary team will want to or be equipped to offer this level of spiritual care. But each can contribute to enabling a patient to find a ‘way of being’ that will help them to go through the experience of dying in the way appropriate to them.

This chapter surveys and evaluates the major studies on Shakespeare and morality from 1775 to 1964. In so doing, it demonstrates that there are three main traditions of thinking about Shakespeare and morality: the Protestant tradition foregrounding divine providence (Elizabeth Griffith, Charles Knight, Bishop Charles Wordsworth, Richard G. Moulton, and Harold Ford), the Catholic tradition foregrounding moral conscience (Richard Simpson, Henry Sebastian Bowden, Arthur Temple Cadoux, Alfred Harbage, and John Vyvyan) and the secular-humanist tradition foregrounding human nature (William Hazlitt, Frank Chapman Sharp, George H. Morrison, and Roland Mushat Frye). It finds a number of reoccurring conclusions in the available criticism: that Shakespeare stresses the importance of viable alternatives in ethical choices; that he emphasises the psychological interiority of morality; and that he has a positive view of humanity. Critics also found that it is not possible to pin Shakespeare down to any Christian doctrine, and it is not clear whether or not the worlds of his plays allow for redemption, and his sinners seldom seek it.