FEWD research Project SHCEE - "Secular Humanism in CEE - Central and Eastern Europe" Online via www.secular-humanism.net at fewd.univie.ac.at/secular-humanism/

Since its establishment in 2001, one of the primary FEWD research focus is the philosophy and ethics in the tradition of secular humanism. Now after so many years of FEWD academic networking especially with colleagues from CEE - Central and Eastern Europe we want publish from each of the CEE countries research articles on this topics. Publication partner will be the 1994 established multidisciplinary journal „Aufklärung und Kritik / Enlightment and Critics”.

Prof. Peter Kampits - the founder of the FEWD and Prof. Manfred Wuketits – the former leading FEWD scientific advisory member – are the main inspirator for this project.

Useful general starting points for defining humanism are: International Humanist and Ethical Union – IHEU, in 1952, at the first World Humanist Congress, the founders of IHEU agreed a statement of the fundamental principles of modern Humanism. They called it “The Amsterdam Declaration”. ... Amsterdam Declaration 2002 Humanism is the outcome of a long tradition of free thought that has inspired many of the world’s great thinkers and creative artists and gave rise to science itself.  The fundamentals of modern Humanism are as follows: humanists.international/what-is-humanism/the-amsterdam-declaration/   

Kurtz, Paul (ed.) 1973 Humanist Manifesto II & Humanist Manifesto I (1933). Amherst, NY, Prometheus.

Kurtz, Paul (ed.) 1980. Secular Humanist Declaration. Amherst, NY, Prometheus. online here at FEWD and original at secularhumanism.org/a-secular-humanist-declaration/

British National Secular Society: NSS launches 2019 a new range of school resources:
Exploring Secularism. exploringsecularism.org

A selection of the basic academic literature the FEWD uses for research, teaching and several workshops you find at   fewd.univie.ac.at/allgemeine-ethik/saekularismus/

Prof. M. Wuketits loved to defend / criticize especially the following articles:

Forrest, Barbara 2004. A Defense of [Evolutionary] Naturalism as a Defense of Secularism. In:  Cotter, Matthew J. (ed.). Sidney Hook Reconsidered. Amherst, Prometheus: 69-115.

Armstrong, David Malet 2005. Sachverhalte, Sachverhalte. Berlin, Xenomos. (Original: 1997. A World of States of Affairs).   Page 5: Naturalism. This term, which often has an epistemic flavour, is here appropiated for an ontological doctrine. It is the contention that the world, the totality of entities, is nothing more than the space-time system.

Sapontzis, Steve F. 1990. "Groundwork for a Subjective Theory of Ethics." American Philosophical Quarterly 27(1): 27-38. 27: „Subjective proposition - The existence of valuer[!]s is a necessary condition for things having value”„Secular proposition - There is no omniscient valuer whose evaluations establish the true value of everything“.

Callahan, Daniel 1990. Religion and the Secularization of Bioethics. Hastings Center Report 20 (4): 2-4. Page 2 “The most striking change over the past two decades or so has been the secularization of bioethics. The field has moved from one dominated by religious and medical traditions to one now increasingly shaped by philosophical and legal concepts”

Tollefsen, Christopher 2011. Mind the Gap: Charting the Distance between Christian and Secular Bioethics. Christian Bioethics 17 (1): 47-53

Lengauer, Erwin 2007. Analytische Rechtsethik als säkular-naturalistisches Plädoyer für Embryonenforschung. In:  Dethloff, Klaus /  et al. (Hg.). Humane Existenz. Reflexionen zur Ethik in einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft. Wien / Berlin, Parerga Verlag: 97-107.

Lengauer, Erwin 2007. Evolutionärer Naturalismus als Grundlage säkular-analytischer Bioethik. In:  Körtner, Ulrich /  Popp, Marianne (Hrsg.). Schöpfung und Evolution - Zwischen Sein und Design. Neuer Streit um die Evolutionstheorie. Wien / Köln / Weimar, Böhlau Verlag: 213-232.

Lengauer, Erwin 2009. Evolutionärer Naturalismus als Grundlage säkularer Tierethikdiskurse. Aufklärung und Kritik 15(1): 145-166. 

More historical aspects about the concept of humanism:

Gill, Michael B. 2006, 2010. The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Abstract: Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, in this 2006 volume Michael Gill shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy. 

Wilson, Catherine 2008. Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Abstract: This landmark study examines the role played by the rediscovery of the writings of the ancient atomists, Epicurus and Lucretius, in the articulation of the major philosophical systems of the seventeenth century, and, more broadly, their influence on the evolution of natural science and moral and political philosophy.