A movement of thought which, starting from Italy, developed in Europe during the Renaissance period (from the end of the 15th to the beginning of the 17th centuries). The humanists of the Renaissance were erudite, with a thirst for knowledge, a will to make it progress and transmit it in an accessible manner. They affirmed their confidence in the human being, who they placed at the centre of their preoccupations and whose personal development they looked for. The Humanist movement reconnected with the values, the philosophy, literature and art of classical Greco-Roman Antiquity, considered as the foundation of knowledge. But it also proposed new values, rooted in reason, free will, independence, tolerance and an openness of mind. Thanks to the invention of printing (by the German Gutenberg, around 1454), humanism spread throughout the whole of Europe and in particular favoured the emergence of the Protestant Reformation. Amongst the first humanists were Petrarch (1304-1374), Leonardo de Vinci (1452-1519), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Erasmus (circa 1467-1536), Machiavelli (1469-1527), Thomas More (1478-1535), François Rabelais (1494-1533) etc. A very great number of the thinkers of later periods staked a claim to this current of thought or can be termed humanists. Amongst them are: Descartes, Montesquieu, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Gandhi, Albert Camus, Albert Jacquard, etc.
Modern humanism involves currents of thought which expound the absolute primacy of the human being, the ultimate reference with which to approach other potentially competing values. The flowering of the human being, balanced and in solidarity with others, must be looked for beyond any subjugation and independently of any supernatural reference, all the more so in that human beings are capable of evolving by themselves in a positive manner. Certain contemporary intellectuals nevertheless warn against a possible drift of humanism, which would lead to the human being being considered as a ‘supreme being’ authorised to appropriate nature and exploit it without limit.
