Introduction

Abstract

This introduction critically examines historic, traditional, and less-considered understandings of the humanism/non-humanist distinctions in historical and contemporary context. With (now) wide-ranging definitional variability, one of the few unchanging principles of Humanism remain the centrality and sui generis nature of human uniqueness—the significance of being human by marking qualities of distinction from non-human. This introduction charts the conceptual, ideological, and historic emergence(s) of the term Humanism from various historical junctures (Pre/Post-Enlightenment contexts) that saw intellectual revolutions in areas of the sciences, politics, education, and philosophy—ushering in a ‘new age’ of human reason. Over and against the representative standard narratives that undergird conventional and popular points of departure for the historical emergence, and characterizations of humanism today, this introduction asks, “…what else, beyond a starting point, do we traffic into contemporary debates and dialogues concerning what humanism is and where it is heading given this archeological heritage?”