Daily *ism: Humanism

Today, I’m going to bring up a school of philosophy.


Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. The term can mean several things, for example:

  1. A cultural movement of the Italian Renaissance based on the study of classical works.
  2. An approach to education that uses literary means or a focus on the humanities to inform students.
  3. A variety of perspectives in philosophy and social science which affirm some notion of ‘human nature‘ (by contrast with anti-humanism).
  4. A secular ideology which espouses reason, ethics, and justice, whilst specifically rejecting supernatural and religious dogma as a basis ofmorality and decision-making.

The last interpretation may be attributed to Secular Humanism as a specific humanistic life stance.[1] Modern meanings of the word have therefore come to be associated with a rejection of appeals to the supernatural or to some higher authority.[2][3] This interpretation may be directly contrasted with other prominent uses of the term in traditional religious circles.[4] Humanism of this strand arose from a trajectory extending from the deism andanti-clericalism of the Enlightenment, the various secular movements of the 19th century (such as positivism), and the overarching expansion of the scientific project.

Humanist, humanism, and humanistic may also refer simply and loosely to literary culture.[5

(via Humanism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

by Jonathan Frei

Scenes From Underground

Scenes From Underground

Amazing collection of subterranean pictures. 

Caves and tunnels have always been part of human life. We’ve grown more adept at shaping these underground shelters and passages over the millennia, and today we dig for hundreds of reasons. We excavate to find both literal and cultural treasures, digging mines and unearthing archaeological discoveries. We use caverns for stable storage, for entertainment, and for an effective shelter from natural and man-made disasters. And as the planet’s surface becomes ever more crowded, and national borders are closed, tunnels provide pathways for our vehicles and for smugglers of every kind. Collected below are some recent subterranean scenes from around the world. [36 photos]

by Jonathan Frei

Daily *ism: Manorialism

Here I’m taking us back to an outdated political system. I’m not aware of any active political movements trying to bring it back. 


Manorialism, an essential element of feudal society,[1] was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire,[2] was widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market economy and new forms of agrarian contract.

Manorialism was characterised by the vesting of legal and economic power in a lord, supported economically from his own direct landholding and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under his jurisdiction. These obligations could be payable in several ways, in labor (the French term corvée is conventionally applied), in kind, or, on rare occasions, in coin.

In examining the origins of the monastic cloister, Walter Horn found that “as a manorial entity the Carolingian monastery… differed little from the fabric of a feudal estate, save that the corporate community of men for whose sustenance this organization was maintained consisted of monks who served God in chant and spent much of their time in reading and writing.”[3]

Manorialism died slowly and piecemeal, along with its most vivid feature in the landscape, the open field system. It outlasted serfdomas it outlasted feudalism: “primarily an economic organization, it could maintain a warrior, but it could equally well maintain acapitalist landlord. It could be self-sufficient, yield produce for the market, or it could yield a money rent.”[4] The last feudal dues in France were abolished at the French Revolution. In parts of eastern Germany, the Rittergut manors of Junkers remained until World War II.[5]

(via Manorialism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

by Jonathan Frei

Daily *ism: Romanticism

I’m a bit out of order on these. I suppose this post should have preceded the one on modernism, but at least I’m keeping on track with exploring relatively recent literary periods. 

Romanticism (or the Romantic Era or the “‘Romantic Period”’) was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution.[1] In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.[2] It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography,[3] education[4] and natural history.[5]

The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror and terror and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, made of spontaneity a desirable character (as in the musical impromptu), and argued for a “natural” epistemology of human activities as conditioned by nature in the form of language and customary usage.

Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate a revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval, in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl, and industrialism, and it also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar, and distant in modes more authentic than Rococochinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape.

The modern sense of a romantic character may be expressed in Byronic ideals of a gifted, perhaps misunderstood loner, creatively following the dictates of his inspiration rather than the standard ways of contemporary society.

Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which prized intuition and emotion over Enlightenment rationalism, the ideologies and events of the French Revolution laid the background from which both Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment emerged. The confines of the Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities; indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, “Realism” was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism.[6] Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as heroic individualists and artists, whose pioneering examples would elevate society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas.

(via Romanticism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

by Jonathan Frei