Spirit of Humanities
The human spirit – the spiritual or intellectual portion of humanity – is an element of human philosophies, psychology, creativity, and understanding. It is distinct from the psyche’s different elements, including the concepts of feelings, pictures, memories, and individuality. While the word “humanity spirit” can have the same connotation as “humanity soul,” it is also employed to allude to the impersonal, general, or more significant element of human character, as opposed to consciousness or psyche, which can allude to the egotistical or inferior part. Human intelligence, instincts, anxieties, desires, and inventiveness are all part of the human spirit. The cognitive abilities of consciousness, intuition, comprehension, judgment and other intellectual skills are regarded to be the spirits of humanities. This article aims to explore and analyze the spirit of humanities through Classical Greek philosophy, Chinese philosophy, and Scientific inventions and explorations during Renaissance.
Confucianism is frequently described as a societal and moral philosophical approach rather than a religion. In reality, Confucianism relied on a historical, spiritual basis to build conventional Chinese culture’s societal norms, organizations, and transcendental goals. Confucianism was woven into the Chinese societal structure and mode of living; daily human existence was a religious arena (Mark, 2020). Master Kong, the father of Chinese philosophy, did not want to establish a revolutionary faith but rather to understand and revitalize the nameless spirituality of the Zhou period, during which numerous individuals believed the conventional system of spiritual governance was unsustainable. On the other hand, Confucius argued that the foundation was in the Zhou religion and its rites. He saw these as rituals done by human beings and expressing the sophisticated and cultured norms of conduct acquired over centuries of human intelligence, rather than offerings appealing for the gods’ graces. As a result, one aspect of Confucianism was the confirmation of acceptable ideals and standards of conduct in major societal structures and fundamental human relations. Every human interaction has a set of established duties and reciprocal responsibilities; each member must comprehend and adapt to his or her correct function. Individuals who act correctly, beginning with individuals and families, have the potential to transform and improve the community.
Nevertheless, there was another aspect to Chinese philosophy. Confucius emphasized not only interpersonal rites but also humaneness which is also referred to as Ren. Humaneness, which can be interpreted as compassion or generosity, is the root of all qualities. The Chinese symbol essentially depicts the interaction amongst “two humans,” or co-humanity—the ability to coexist ethically instead of scraping like songbirds or rodents. Humaneness prevents ceremonial patterns from becoming meaningless; a ceremony conducted with compassion has shape and moral meaning; it fosters the inner nature of the individual and advances his/her moral growth. Therefore, if the “outside” aspect of Confucianism was compliance and social function acceptability, the “inside” factor was the development of consciousness and personality (Berling, 2018).
Philosophers flourished in classical Greece, particularly in Athens, throughout its Golden Era. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are the most significant well of these philosophers. Socrates transforms the ordinary person’s perception regarding what is identifiable and what is actually in various conversations, more prominently The Republic. While many individuals believe that the contents of their sensations are genuine, if anything is, Plato is dismissive of those who believe that anything must be comprehensible in the senses to be actual. Socrates’ belief that truth is inaccessible to those who employ their perceptions sets him apart from the ordinary person and ordinary understanding (Classical Greek philosophy | Western civilization, 2018). Socrates claims that anybody who perceives with his sight is blindfolded, and this thought is most notably portrayed in his allegorical of the cavern, a contradictory comparison in which Socrates contends that the unseen reality is the most understandable and the apparent universe is the least computable and confusing. Socrates portrays a meeting of individuals who have remained shackled to the walls of a cavern staring at a plain wall. The individuals stare at shadows cast on the walls by the flame blazing beside them, and they begin to identify and characterize the patterns, which are the nearest visions to the actuality they possess (Classical Greek philosophy | Western civilization, 2018).
Humanity, sometimes referred to as Renaissance Humanism, was an academic ideology supported by 14th- and early-15th-century Italian philosophers, poets, and municipal officials. The approach arose in reaction to the ancient medieval practices in schooling at the period, which stressed pragmatic, pre-professional, and analytical education conducted mainly for work preparedness and usually by males exclusively. Humanists replied to this pragmatic strategy by building a citizenry capable of speaking and writing eloquently and thereby engaging in civic affairs in their societies. Humanists saw the historical world as the apex of human accomplishment and believed that its achievements should act as a pattern for modern Europe (Humanist thought | Boundless world history, n.d). Humanism was an ideological concept that considered humankind as a logical and conscious entity capable of making his own decisions and thinking for himself. It considered man as essentially virtuous by nature, in contrast to the Christian concept of humanity as the original culprit in need of salvation. It elicited new insights into the structure of actuality, prompted questions beyond God and religion, and supplied an understanding of history exceeding Christian tradition.
To maintain consistency to this spirit, people cannot take the excellent examination of many religious rituals and concepts as a goal in itself, no matter however significant the insights that occur within them. The primary advantage of studying the spirituality of humanities is that it makes people conscious of the inevitable insufficiency of our humanistic self-understanding. This uncertainty results not from the human mind’s reverence for established constraints but from its contradictory rejection to a specific type of closure, notably spiritual closure. The sociological disciplines, notably psychoanalysis, provide a broad range of constructive genres, but it is primarily in the humanities that humans will discover the proper appreciation for the contradiction that exists at the center of the human spirit contradiction that is usually frequently referred to as liberty.
References
Humanist thought | Boundless world history. (n.d.). Lumen Learning – Simple Book Production. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/humanist-thought/
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark. (2020). Confucius (Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/confucius/
Judith A. Berling. (2018). Confucianism. Asia Society. https://asiasociety.org/education/confucianism
Classical Greek philosophy | Western civilization. (2018). Lumen Learning – Simple Book Production. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-herkimer-westerncivilization/chapter/classical-greek-philosophy/
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