hominism

English

Alternative forms

• homonism

Etymology

Latin homo (“man”) +‎ -ism, to avoid confusion with humanism, already taken in established meanings. Some senses were first invented in German Hominismus.

Noun

hominism (countable and uncountable, plural hominisms)

1. An entirely human world-view, with no elements that do not reflect human senses and experience, especially with the belief that this is all human beings are capable of.
   • 1937, Aegidius Jahn, The Silver World: An Essay on the Ultimate Problems of Philosophy, page 58:

     But excessive hominism has not only the defect of seeing man as the central point of the Universe, upon which everything turns: from the human standpoint it sets too high a value on man himself, and regards him solely from its subjective aspect.

   • 1970, Gershon Weiler, Mauthner's Critique of Language, page 291:

     For this reason hominism stands so bluntly against the old and new dogmatic materialism and mechanism.

   • 1971, Charles B. Maurer, Call to Revolution: The Mystical Anarchism of Gustav Landauer, page 58:

     Locke, the first to criticize the senses, proclaimed the hominism of secondary characteristics like colors and musical tones; Kant, who believed he was criticizing pure reason, asserted boldly and grandly the hominism of some primary characteristics, of space, of time, of causality;

   • 2010, Don Cupitt, Theology's Strange Return, page 110:

     Furthermore, as we have seen during the course of the present book, thoroughgoing anthropomonism or hominism reflexively recoils upon itself and demythologizes itself.

   • 2013, Ai Wu, Plantain Valley, page 203:

     In Fukuzawa of Japan, there's a saying like this, "If the education of the child is before ten years old, it's animalism and if after ten years old, it's hominism.

2. An aggressive and utilitarian stance toward the world, characterized by anthropocentrism and cold objectivity.
   • 1964, Journal of Bible and Religion - Volume 32, page 179:

     Humanism needs the Christian faith lest it reduce man to a thing and become what MacGregor calls hominism.

   • 1997, George F. McLean, Civil Society and Social Reconstruction, page 22:

     The ultimate achievement of hominism is the totalitarian ideologies and corresponding to these, socio-political systems which destroy humanistic values.

   • 2011, Peter Denbo Haskins, The Transforming Power of Suffering, page 113:

     He makes a distinction which goes beyond semantics as he compares humanism and hominism.

   • 2012, Hermann Scheer, Energy Autonomy, page 219:

     Humanism and ecology would have to be abandoned and replaced by 'hominism' – if need by way of 'techno-psychotherapy' using electronic brain prostheses and psychopharmacological drugs that facilitate people's adjustment to the technological environment – and by a 'life liberated from nature'.

3. Secular humanism; A form of humanism with no concept of or reference to God, often associated with feminism.
   • 1925, Salvador de Madariaga, The Sacred Giraffe, page 49:

     I have heard Scruta and seen her plays and that is enough to satisfy anyone that our present way of understanding love is an enjoyable one. But I have no fear that hominism will ever destroy that.

   • 1986, Leo Truchlar, Opening up LIterary Criticism, page 23:

     […] from being a devotee of gnostic gynecocracism, she turns to agnostic hominism, the very type of conversion which some Sinologists consider to have overtaken early Buddhism and Taoism.

   • 1995, Manfred Hauke, God Or Goddess?: Feminist Theology : what is It?, page 148:

     Rosemary Ruether's compilation of the "rituals" of the American "Women-Church" — which one might regard as the best-known feminist "prayer book" — also advocates, in effect, a radical hominism, a deification of the human person.

   • 2013, Rev. Justin (Popovic), Philosophical Divides:

     With the first rebellion against God, man was able to some extent to drive God out of himself, to expel Him out of his consciousness, out of his will, and to remain with pure humanism, with pure hominism

4. A biblically-based love of humanity, as opposed to secular humanism.
   • 1890, The Canadian Methodist Review, page 521:

     The author sets out with the idea that the Bible does not claim to be a statement of the doctrines of physical science; that the revelation in the Bible is purely moral and spiritual in its nature and purpose; that the truth to be revealed formed no part of the original constitution of the universe, but must be from above; and yet that in order to become potent in the life of man it must become part of human intellection. A process, which the author calls "hominism" is needed.

   • 1980, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory - Volume 4, page 37:

     The distinction between humanism and hominism is axial for Gardavsky's critical examination of Christian theology (whose milestones for him are Augustine, Aquinas and Pascal), as well as for his overall attempt to specify the requirements of a leftist religiosity critically based on the best elements in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Further reading

• “hominism”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.