Peace, Force & Joy

Dictionary of New Humanism

FAITH. (ME. faith, feith; OFr. feid; L. fidex, faith, belief, trust, from fidere, to trust, confide in). A belief (*) that is not based on rational argument. Acceptance of or agreement with words or statements based on the authority or reputation of their source; confidence, assurance that a thing is true. F. is a characteristic of individual and social consciousness.

The psychological state of a subject, expressed in ideas and images, that serves as motivation and orientation in practical activity is also regarded as f.

Different theories of f. can be identified: emotional (which interpret f. as an emotion), sensual-intellectual (f. as a phenomenon of the intellect), and voluntarist (f. as an attribute of the will). Religion is a special sphere of f.

N.H. distinguishes between fanatical f. (which is expressed destructively), naive f. (which can endanger a person’s vital interests), and f. that serves to open the future and advance constructive goals in life.

FAMILY. (L. familia, household and servants, from famulus, servant, from Oscan famel, servant). Group of individuals who share some common domestic or nuclear condition.

In botany and zoology the term f. designates a taxonomic group constituted by several natural genera that possess a large number of common characteristics. In mathematics f. refers to a set whose elements are generated by varying the parameters of a general equation.

For census purposes, the f. (household) is a complex unity of economic and social nature. In general, this designation refers to a group of persons who live together in the same residence and share meals. The single-person f. is constituted by a citizen who lives alone; the large f. consists of four or more children under 18 years of age or older disabled children unable to work. These categories vary according to the legislation of each country, depending on the degree of family protection and security provided, among other cases, to single mothers with minor children.

The f. plays a decisive role in the formation and socialization of the personality. It is a historical institution subject to change, and its specific characteristics vary from culture to culture.

In recent years the f. has undergone vertiginous changes due, in large part, to urbanization and overcrowding. Large families have had to reduce their size due to the spatial limitations of land for residential housing. The growing incorporation of women into the working world outside the home has also had an effect. In general, as the standard of living of populations rises, f. size tends to shrink and, inversely, in poor countries explosive growth in family size can be observed. Currently, new structures are emerging that replace parts of the traditional f., for example, in the care and supervision of children in day-care centers. Adoption as well as advances in artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, etc. are introducing variations in the concept of the traditional f. which is connected by consanguinity, as are families formed of homosexual parents and natural or adopted children.

N.H. warns of the urgent need to lower the birthrate in order to improve the standard of living of families in poor countries; it supports legislative initiatives to protect the rights of mothers and children and encourages the creation of interfamily associations capable of providing a complete preschool education.

FASCISM. Fascismo]. (From It. fascismo, fascio; fasces: L., from fascis, bundle; re: L. fascia, band, a bundle of rods, among them an ax with blade projecting, carried before Roman magistrates as a badge of authority in ancient Rome; also, the authority symbolized by the fasces). Nationalistic, authoritarian, anti-communist political concept, the enemy of liberal democracy. Takes its name from the Roman allegory of state authority: a bundle of rods bound around an ax. This political ideology and organization were created in Italy in 1919 by Benito Mussolini. It claimed to be neither capitalist nor socialist, but advocated a corporativist State. It was the model for Germany (Nazism), Spain (Falangism), and Japan in that period. The British Fascist Union was founded in the United Kingdom, and the Croix de Feu in France. Together with national socialism (*), f. constitutes the most radical anti-humanist movement. F. denies human rights and leads to the degradation of the personality.

F. aspired to establish a new order (*) – the millennial fascist State – through war, and in this endeavor it was principally responsible for unleashing the Second World War, which by official count cost more than fifty million human lives.

The fascist regime is tyrannical, dictatorial, and rigidly hierarchical. Its principle is "the leader is always right," and the duty of each person is unconditional obedience to the leader. It is a totalitarian regime, which rejects democracy and establishes the monopoly of the fascist party, concentrating in its hands all economic, political, and ideological power. The fascist system is militaristic par excellence and converts all inhabitants of a country into soldiers who carry out the will of the leader. For f., the nation state stands above everything. It is a repressive regime that allows no opposition, no dissent.

The fascist ideology is eclectic and contradictory. It groups together mutually exclusive ideas, mixing elements of socialism, nationalism, paganism, elitism, egalitarianism, and militarism. It posits violence (*) as the absolute method for social and political control.

F. promotes the model of rapid social mobilization to carry out a "national objective." Since f. utilizes subversion and violence as its principal methods of political action, in addition to clandestine forms of organization, its parties have been declared illegal since the Second World War. This has obliged fascists to create neo-fascist organizations, which deny their fascist origins while using fascist methods and ideas, modernizing and disguising them in the form of xenophobic nationalist movements. These groups have gained strength especially in Italy, Germany, France, and Austria.

N.H. considers that the threat of fascism demands the urgent implementation of reforms to resolve the problems of unemployed youth, bankrupt small businesses, jobless professionals and public employees, impoverished retired workers, and other marginal groups. In order to avoid the rise of inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts in the current process of European and American regional integration, it is necessary to bear in mind the problem of national identity and of ethnic and cultural minorities; it is important to provide economic and social assistance to less developed countries in order to lessen the stimulus for migrations toward more developed areas. These measures can reduce the social base of neofascist movements and extend the reach of democracy.

FEMINISM. (From L. femina, woman, and -ism). Movement made up principally of women and dedicated to the denunciation of discrimination against women in contemporary society (*women’s issues). In general, the suffragettes who fought for the right to vote in England in the second half of the last century are regarded as the predecessors of modern feminists. Within the feminist movement, which has been especially active in Europe during the 1970s and 1980s, various positions have been identified, from extreme positions of separatism involving an almost naturalist struggle against men as genetic carriers of a violent and duplicitous culture, to more moderate variations in numerous associations and groups dedicated to work on specific issues (divorce, abortion, equal opportunities). F. has made important contributions to the debate on questions such as the relationship between personal and social life, sexuality, the crisis of the traditional family, education, etc.

N.H. considers f. an important contribution to the struggle against discrimination.

FEUDALISM. (From feudal, LL. feudalis, feudal, a vassal, from feudum, a feud, and from feud, LL. feudum, feodum, a feud, fief, fee; O.H.G. fihu, fehu, cattle, property). Based on the territorial grant a vassal received from a lord in exchange for military service. The origin of this institution in the Roman Empire, in the form of a colony, was the embryonic form of the fief, and f. existed in Europe from the end of the Carolingian era to the close of the Middle Ages. Marxists extended the content of this term beyond its applicability, regarding it as a universal socioeconomic formation which, according to them, predominated throughout the world from the collapse of slavery until the advent of capitalism (from the fifth to the eighteenth centuries). However, contemporary historiography does not recognize the existence of the feudal regimes in the Iberian world, with the exception of some parts of Cataluña, Navarra, and Aragón where it was imposed by Frankish kings in the Spanish March. The socioeconomic base of the feudal regime was land-bound servitude, which disappeared in the Iberian peninsula around the thirteenth century. Relationships of vassalage subsequently extended only to the nobility and high clergy. Aside from these relations there were peasant serfs and the third estate (inhabitants of villages and cities, free persons organized into corporations or guilds of artisans and merchants). The feudal regime was characterized by endless warfare among fiefdoms, which brought ruin to vast territories. Feudal states were very fragile and short-lived. Fiefdoms frequently passed from one lord to another, provoking the breakup of kingdoms, duchies, and principalities. The Catholic Church played a centripetal role in this period, seeking to exert moral authority and at times supreme political power. In this role, the Church assembled the nobility from different countries, organizing crusades against the infidels.

F. generated a cultural movement that, just as in the social realm, was characterized by a strict hierarchy. Spiritual life was governed by scholasticism and subordinated to the Catholic Church. Against this rule, movements of peasants and oppressed artisans not infrequently rose up, were labeled heretics by the official Church, and cruelly repressed by means of crusades against them.

The existence of f. in the Orient has not been confirmed by historical research, and this idea can be considered a modernist revision of the historical process and a manifestation of Eurocentrism. Marx and Western Marxists attempted to interpret the social phenomena of the Orient in terms of a supposed "Asian mode of production," designated by heterodox Soviet Orientalists by the term "primary formation," which comprised relations proper to barbarism, slavery, and feudalism; in other words, the extra-economic coercion necessary for the violent appropriation of any surplus and its subsequent redistribution in favor of the privileged castes and "classes" (estates). But this interpretation of the historical process of Asia – the majority of the population of the world – also errs in the direction of economic reductionism, just as it under-estimates the cultural diversity and specificity of world history.

Humanism, from its first emergence, spoke out against the reduction of human life to the priority of one or another isolated factor; rather it recognizes the integrity of human beings in all their multiple manifestations, and emphasizes the essential unity as well as cultural diversity of the human race. For this reason, N.H. does not a priori accept universal models that disregard the cultural uniqueness of different peoples, and at the same time rejects the positivist focus that prevents an analysis that can include the convergent aspects of different cultures in today’s world.

N.H. considers that there are no "laws written in stone" to which people are blindly obliged to submit. As human beings, we ourselves make our own history in correspondence with the circumstances of the times; we are free to choose between different models or variants, and we have personal responsibility for our actions. F. was one of these historical variants, stemming in large measure from the choice of European peoples in favor of Western Christianity, which predetermined the particulars of feudal society in Western Europe.

FRATERNITY. (LL. fraternitas, a brotherhood, from L. fraternus, brotherly, from frater, brother). Historical term for the universal love that unites all members of the human family. Such love is the tendency of human beings to join in solidarity with others on the basis of shared human dignity.

Among the ancient Greeks the concept of phratria was understood to refer to a part of the tribe that had its own sacrifices and rituals. During the Middle Ages f. came to mean the special form of address or treatment accorded to kings and emperors and the upper hierarchy of the Church, and the term is still used in this sense by the clergy.

During the French Revolution, the motto of f., along with liberty and equality, became a principle of social organization of the Republic. The sovereignty previously embodied in the monarch passed to the people, who demanded special treatment with corresponding rituals as the embodiment of f.

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