The Person-Centered Humanism

Humanism, in a broad sense, means “human-centeredness” and involves interest in human beings, their worth, capacities, needs, welfare, and development. This means giving people a primordial role in economic activity, but without neglecting economic outcomes. Humanism stands in contrast to economism, which focuses exclusively or primarily on economic results and values everything solely in economic terms. The need to humanize economic activity rests on the need to seek out a sound form of humanism. Here we propose a humanism initially developed in Western civilization when early Christian writers met Socratic philosophy and – to a lesser extent – certain Stoic philosophers, along with some Roman jurists. In this approach, Christian faith and reason are harmoniously intertwined without reducing either one to the other. Because of its rational content, this humanism can be appreciated by not only Christian believers but also some non-believers, who value its wisdom and internal logic. Augustine of Hippo (fifth century) brought about significant insights and with Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century) attained great splendor. Aquinas worked in the context of the nascent university, drawing from Aristotle, Augustine, and other sources, using the intellectually rigorous Scholastic method. Later Scholasticism, from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth century in Italy, Spain, and Portugal continued along the same lines of thought, addressing political, social, and economic problems in the context of the Commercial Revolution and the New World. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, secular humanism emerged, followed, in the next century, by influential anti-humanist streams of thought, while classical humanism stagnated. However, since the late nineteenth century, a neo-classical humanism emerged with a new vitality, incorporating elements not considered in medieval and Renaissance thought and emphasizing the human person as the subject, center, and purpose of social life and economic activity. Christian thinkers and Catholic social teaching had a significant role in this revival of humanism, emphasizing the transcendent dimension. Finally, the chapter presents a set of key elements for a renewed and sound person-centered humanism assumed in this work, which includes genuine aspects of classical humanism as well as significant contributions of modernity, through Personalist Philosophy, and some specific Catholic teachings. This renewed humanism seems promising to contribute to re-think business through a person-centric approach in order to overcome some convectional fragmented or incomplete visions of the human being in business.