Humanism between Western and Islamic dealing

Abdullah Edalkosa

Summary

This study deals with humanism in the Western and Arab contexts, and the ambiguities and problems that the concept of (humanism) has. The study highlights the difference, in perception, between the two by showing the authoritative and conceptual bases on which it was built, whether in the Western or Arab deliberation. The study also discusses this topic, using examples from both contexts; examples that we have chosen just as samples but not the whole, to give a general perception about this issue. In the study, we have relied on a complex approach that combines history, description, comparison, and analysis, aiming, as much as possible, at covering the subject in its various aspects. We have concluded that the advent of humanism dates back to the very advent of the awareness of man’s uniqueness. In fact, the role of religions in this awareness cannot be denied at all. The study of the value of humanism in the Western thought cannot be true except by evoking the philosophical dimensions, whose features had become clear during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Surely, the Arab-Islamic civilization abounds with examples of philosophers and others scholars in various fields of knowledge, who had authored works of no less importance and profundity than what the Western civilization had offered to the human heritage, and according to the Islamic authority that is compatible with the texts of Divine Revelation.
Keywords: humanist movement, humanism, the West, Islamic heritage, philosophy.

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)