Definition
Humanism is the modern religious-substitute that places humanity itself at the centre of value. Where older religions appealed to gods or cosmic laws to ground morality, humanism grounds morality in the experiences, freedoms, or destinies of human beings. Harari's provocation is to call this a religion: humanism is a faith in a particular kind of sacred — Homo sapiens — that organises lives, laws, and economies the way Christianity once did.
He subdivides it into three families. Liberal humanism sanctifies the individual and their freedom. Socialist humanism sanctifies the species and its equality. Evolutionary humanism — including its darkest political expressions — sanctifies a particular branch of humanity and its capacity for further development.
Why it matters
How it works
A humanist worldview takes a chosen unit — the individual, the nation, the species — and treats its flourishing as the criterion for right and wrong. Schools, courts, hospitals, and parliaments are then redesigned around that criterion. Sacred days become birthdays and constitutions; sacred texts become declarations of rights; sacred specialists become doctors, judges, and elected officials.
Harari notes that humanist assumptions — that human feelings are authoritative, that consent legitimises institutions, that lives are equal in worth — are not derivable from observation. They are doctrines we have collectively adopted because they coordinate behaviour and feel right inside the imagined order they themselves created.