Thread by @andrewcopson

Last month I did videos on humanism and one of the messages I got was from someone wanting to know more about the 'pre-modern' humanists. So each day this week I'm going to tell you about one of them, from ancient China, India, Greece, and Rome.

Of course, these are humanists from before the word 'humanism' was invented. But they are people who had humanist beliefs or values in large part and expressed them.

They are the sort of people that Margaret Knight wrote about in her 'Humanist Anthology', Hector Hawton in his 'Humanist Revolution' and Harold Blackham in his 'The Human Tradition', when they set out to illustrate the perennial nature of the humanist approach to life.

So here we go. Starting not where you might think in ancient Greece but further east...

Here is a bit of Mencius that shows both his preference for naturalistic explanations and his humanistic view of our own nature:

"All human beings have a constitution which suffers when it sees the suffering of others…If people catch sight suddenly of a child about to fall...

into a well, they will all experience a feeling of alarm and distress… Because we all have these feelings in ourselves, let us develop them, and the result will be like the blaze that is kindled from a small flame, or the spring in full spate that starts with a trickle...

Let these feelings have a free rein, and they will be enough to give shelter and love to us all." #humanist

(And there is a good @PenguinBooks volume of Mencius for those of us who can’t read the original) penguin.co.uk/books/348/3488…

For our next ancient humanist, we *are* going to Greece but we are staying in the c.6th/5th century BCE...

Here is a modern picture of Democritus. He is known as the laughing philosopher either because of his ethical emphasis on being of good cheer, because he is a scoffing skeptic, or because he is amused by the folly of humans - take your pick!