Category talk:Renaissance humanists

Are Petrarch, Erasmus, and More not humanists anymore?

At the Category:Humanists page the heading currently says somewhat intriguingly "This list is for humanists. It is not for Renaissance humanists". When you follow the link to humanists, you'll arrive at the humanism page, which has a section on its history. This section starts with "Contemporary humanism can be traced back through the Renaissance to its ancient Greek roots." and discusses the evolution of humanism from its classical origin via Renaissance humanism to it modern interpretations.

User:Johnbod's reversions of my restoration of the category Renaissance humanists/humanism etc. among the humanist/humanism categories with the summary "lets keep them sperate - essentially a coincidence of name" and "rev category error" does not make sense in that light (or any light really). Not finding any humanist I was familiar with under the humanists category, brought me to ask at the humanism site about its inclusiveness. The endless discussions there get constantly moved to the question if humanities should be included, but, as expected, no-one seems to doubt the relatedness of historical and modern humanism. This is also supported by the fact that the {{Humanism}} portal includes "Renaissance humanism" .

Even if the humanists of the past would have no relation with the present humanists, which is false, they should be included in the general category. They are called humanists after all, and if a word takes on an additional, unrelated meaning, this meaning doesn't hijack or usurp the entire term and make the traditional and still widely used meaning of the term verboten. It's also impractical: someone looking for, say, the Prince of the Humanists would be surprised (and either annoyed or amused, depending on mood) not to find him in the humanists category or any of its subcategories.

Since the relationship is there, all this is moot anyway and I don't see any reason to break these links; are present-day humanists embarrassed about their generally highly regarded predecessors? From the description, I could consider myself a humanist and I would certainly not be embarrassed about that.

The common and appropriate thing to do in these situations would be to have the category "humanists" encompass all, with hardly any people directly listed there, and subcategories by period (classic, renaissance, there-were-also-humanists-in-between (Voltaire, say), modern) and country. However, this undoubtedly is too much to ask at the time, so I settle for just letting Renaissance humanists take their rightful place among their like-minded human beings. Afasmit (talk) 05:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

As I've said on Talk:Humanism, I think the hat-notes are enough. Both Renaissance humanism & modern uses of the term cover a very large amount of ground, and lack any clear definitions, but if one had to boil down the definitions to a handful of words, a Renaissance humanist was someone who had studied classical literature, and a modern humanist is someone who doesn't believe in God. Of course there is some overlap, and individual articles may belong in both sets of categories, but the trees should not be joined. Personally I don't think Petrarch, Erasmus, and More belong in the modern cats, but I would not revert their placing there. The trend of comments on this & related issues at Talk:Humanism suggests keeping the cats apart is in line with - well not exactly concensus, but the most often expressed views. The present situation arose from this CfD debate Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_May_31#Category:Humanists followed by this one, and the decision there, which specifically included not having the RHs as subs of the Hs should not be overturned without a further nomination at Cfd. Not all the national cats have linking-notes, and of course these can be added. Johnbod (talk) 13:49, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I've had a look at those short discussions. Confusing! Some positively responding people had squarely opposite ideas as how things eventually turned out. For example, User:Biruitorul wrote "people listed as being Dutch, German or Swedish humanists seem like actual humanists, but the American and British subcategories, for example, appear more problematic" (the first mostly with historical figures and the latter mostly with life-style humanists). User:Bduke later on independently expands on this"I would support deleting Category:Humanists by nationality and all its sub-categories, but I would keep Category:Humanists and its other sub-categories. My reason is that the historic categories have clearer consensus whether someone fits in. The Category:Humanists by nationality is mainly about living people so the BLP issues arise." The opposite happened. Even you said: "I have a Very strong keep for the Renaissance humanists, and a keep for the "Religious humanists"". That would have been great! A category humanists containing subcats classical, renaissance, however you call the people falling in between (Voltaire, etc), and life-style humanists.

User: Pavel Vozenilek felt rather strongly about it: " Rename' (per suggestions above) to indicate it is about historical humanists (not in the modern political sense which is just an empty word). Delete all non-renamed categories w/o mercy. The current German subcat looks OK, OTOH the American subcat is farce". That sounds to me he wanted to rename the category so that all the modern humanists would be left without a category. That didn't quite work out for him. In the second discussion, Pavel voted for your suggestion while stating the apparent opposite: "Support rename. This is well known and agreed terminology, unlike the modern interpretation of the word." And then the next person says "rename per nom and Pavel." Isn't it odd then (and impractical!) that when Pavel now looks for "real" humanists (I actually don't share that opinion, they are both valid), he can't find them anywhere under the category that carries their name?

I'm probably wasting my time, as you seem to have made up your mind and patrol this category vigorously. The main reason that I'm still responding is because I'm a sucker for logic, and the current situation is not only nonsensical but even paradoxical: the heading at the humanists category "This list is for humanists. It is not for Renaissance humanists" is akin to a sign saying "Only animals are aloud on the boat. Mammals have to find their own way.' (with a handy, pre-deluvian link to a site telling you that mammals are animals). It is further currently inconsistent: "classical humanists" ís a subcategory of "humanists" and I'm hard-pressed to see how Avicenna and Confucius are more like a modern humanist than Boerhave or Rabelais. Now, please don't go deleting " classical humanists" as a subcategory;-) Afasmit (talk) 11:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent about classical humanists, as I said in the debate. The fact of the matter is that cat:humanists mainly consists of contemporary people who have said in interviews they aren't religious, and I see no point in putting a bunch of historical figures, a good 50+% of them clergy, as a sub-cat of that. If Talk:Humanism can ever work out what the word is supposed to mean, it might be possible to find a sensible tree structure linking the two. The people in the debates were mostly happier with the "Renaissance humanist" sense of the word than the prevailing modern US one, and their comments have to be read in that light, where they make more sense than you allow. Meanwhile the problem you have lies with Humanism, which still overstates the continuity between classical, Renaissance and modern humanism. Most Renaissance humanists just weren't humanists in any of the main modern senses of the word (except as students of the humanities). I'm sure you realize that few comparisons are less appropriate than that between zoology & philosophy, but if we must use it, then discussions at Talk:Humanities are still at the pre-Linnean stage. The hatnote is really saying: "This category is for whales. For fish, see category:Fish" - except that in the Humanities some whales can actually be fish as well. Johnbod (talk) 15:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree strongly with Afasmit that some deep re-ordering is desperately needed, but there's even more confusion that you realize. Modern often refers to 1500-present: Descartes began "modern" philosophy. Contemporary would be a better term. But explicitly and exclusively secular humanists are only one type of contemporary humanist. There are Christian humanists. Furthermore, Erasmus, even in the Renaissance, was a humanist in more than one sense because the phenomenon of humanism as the promotion of a cultural / educational / literary type of formation happened in ancient Greece and Rome, in the time of Charlemagne, etc. Hence a book like Socratic humanism or The Humanism of Cicero. Unfortunately, the page on humanism and its talk page have been aggressively controlled by folks who dismiss the large complexities here and want to adopt a limited usage as the core and general one. Even simplified dictionaries have been cited because they boil it down to one un-nuanced meaning. Some folks have a lot of learning to do, but I'm also worried about the dynamic that resists enlightenment and can seize dogmatic control of a page no matter how much evidence is brought against them. This pattern will drive scholars away, as Larry Sanger writes in Episteme [1]. People contributing their expertise do not want to be harrassed and shut out of the editorial process, or forced to spend many hours to make their contributions in dispute resolutions. Wilson Delgado (talk) 13:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I've been watching the "debate" at Humanism & have considerable sympathy with your position there. I've said above that I would not revert Erasmus being seperately categorized as a humanist, although he clearly remained a Christian. The rules on categories are rather different than for articles, & the debates linked above showed concern from many editors over whether the ambiguity of "humanist" as a descriptor of contemporary people made it an unsuitable term for categorization. Of course the more the article moves towards defining modern humanism as just atheism, the more the case for the current category arrangement is strengthened. The fact of the matter is that very many Renaissance humanists weren't humanists in your sense either, and any who were should be placed in dual categories. Johnbod (talk) 17:46, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Re: "Meanwhile the problem you have lies with Humanism, which still overstates the continuity between classical, Renaissance and modern humanism." The fact that humanism, in wikipedia and any printed encyclopedia or dictionary, has one or more meanings besides the one you describe as "the prevailing modern US one" is your rather than my problem.

Re: "The hatnote is really saying: "This category is for whales. For fish, see category:Fish" Not true. You learn in preschool not to call whales fish and in college now that cladisticly they group with hippos to the exclusion of all other artiodactyls, but encyclopedias, dictionaries, historians, philosophers, and so on all call "Renaissance humanists" humanists, more often without than with the modifier. In fact, if you search for "humanist" at http://www.britannica.com/ 1 modern and 35 Renaissance humanists are returned. My animal/mammal analogy wasn't quite right either (besides the spelling error). Better would have been "Only animals are allowed on the boat. Amphibia, reptiles, insects, etc. have to find their own way", as laypeople often use the term "animal" restrictively for mammals, similar to your use of the term humanist.

I think the conceptual problem is exposed in "The fact of the matter is that cat:humanists mainly consists of contemporary people who have said in interviews they aren't religious, and I see no point in putting a bunch of historical figures, a good 50+% of them clergy, as a sub-cat of that." No-one is suggesting to make "Renaissance humanists" a subcategory of the category "Humanists (life stance)". The fact that the category "humanists" was quickly filled with people belonging to the latter category doesn't force other humanists out of the general category. The observation that people would not like to be listed under the same header as others doesn't matter: Karl Marx and Ayn Rand find themselves in subcategories of "philosophers" as well, even if neither would have joined a club in which the other one was a member.

As suggested above, it seems best to create a subcategory for the life stance humanists, or whatever name you give it, move everyone who fits in there in it (I bet some modern people don't and would hate to be included with the ones that do;-), and make classical, Renaissance, etc. humanists other subcategories of the general "humanists" category. A similar thing should be done for the humanism category, where you curiously see the "Renaissance humanism" article but not the "Renaissance humanism" subcategory. From reading the above Cfds, I believe the responding editors would have agreed with you making those changes at the time instead. Afasmit (talk) 21:22, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Well you would need to do another Cfd to reverse the decision of the last, which you are welcome to do, though I think any Cfd runs the risk of having the Humanists category deleted entirely as too vague. Personally I think your efforts might be better directed at preserving a broader opening at Humanism, which currently specifically identifies,and largely defines, humanism in terms of atheism, and generally improving the article. To say that Karl Marx and Ayn Rand are both philosophers is to use the same sense of the word; that is not the case here, or very often not the case. The main "humanists" category overwhelmingly categorizes on an opinion or philosophical view - lack of belief in religion. Not only is the Renaissance humanists category not about that, but relatively few of them shared the view that unites the modern humanists - still fewer can be demonstrated to have done so from our articles. Johnbod (talk) 01:35, 23 February 2009 (UTC)