Nigeria’s Embattled Humanists
Humanist International’s 2021 Freedom of Thought Report suggests that restrictions on freedom of expression are by and large most severe in the Muslim majority countries of Africa and the Middle…
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Humanism
9 posts
Ancient Philosophers, Alpacas and the Moral Status of Animals
Britain may, famously, be a nation of animal lovers, but even so, things seem to be getting out of hand. This summer, national attention was captured by the government’s ultimately…
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Teaching Empowerment
The 2020–21 US academic school year has been marked by many changes. The prominence of the so-called anti-racism movement—not to be confused with simple opposition to racism—is one of the…
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Plato and Marx: Two Contrasting Visions of Humanism
There are two sorts of humanism (though the two strands are often intertwined): a humanism of constraint and moderation that talks of nature and limits; and a humanism of self-creation…
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Towards a New American Humanism
It’s easier to criticize something than it is to replace it. During the Black Lives Matter protests this past summer, it was moving to see that so many people care…
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At The Crossroads of Critical Theory and Compassionate Humanism
Ralph Waldo Emerson once proclaimed that “One idea lights a thousand candles.” Every magnificent feat, act of atrocity, technological advancement and social movement began with a single idea. The twenty-first…
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James Baldwin’s Ambiguous Legacy
Whether it is conservatives using Martin Luther King Jr.’s colorblind principles to argue against progressive anti-racism, while ignoring his condemnations of white moderates, or leftists using the legacy of Frederick…
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Enlightenment Thought: A Very Brief Primer
The controversy surrounding Steven Pinker’s latest book, Enlightenment Now, has led to a scurry of casual pronouncements on Enlightenment philosophy, some of which are misguided. While this is far too expansive…
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“Nothing Human Is Foreign to Me”: On the Nobility of Science and the Humanistic Instinct
Only recently did I realize there was a word for the desire to understand and prevent disease, and, more generally, to help people flourish: humanism.
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