anthropism

English

Etymology

From anthrop- +‎ -ism.

Noun

anthropism (uncountable)

1. The belief that human beings have a spiritual nature beyond the physical body characterized by in-dwelling Divinity.
   • 1866, John Quarry, Genesis and Its Authorship: Two Disserations, page 108:

     Such a representation would present a real difficulty, if we were obliged to understand all this in its strict literal import, implying, as it would, very unworthy conceptions of God on the part of the writer. The difficulty vanishes, however, when it is perceived that this is only and instance of a prevailing anthropism which characterises the whole narrative.

   • 1979, John Carew Eccles, The Human Mystery: The GIFFORD Lectures., →ISBN, page 2:

     I have seen the question asked "why should mind have a body?" the answer may well run "to mediate between it and other mind". It might be objected that such a view is undiluted 'anthropism.' To that we might reply, anthropism seems the present aim of the planet though presumably not its enduring aim.

   • 1992, David Kolb, New Perspectives on Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, →ISBN, page 67:

     Homeric, and to an extent Hesiodic, myth amounts to "perfected anthropism," depicting the divine-made-human

   • 2014, G. V. Loewen, Place Meant: Hermeneutic Landscapes of the Spatial Self, →ISBN, page 172:

     In transitioning from anywhere to everywhere, we must reinvent the means of reading the world as containing both an autograph—though we do not presume to attach it either to a divinity or to an anthropism—and an hermeneutic.

2. The belief that human beings are fundamentally different from everything else in nature and that the world was made for them.
   • 1866, John Quarry, Genesis and Its Authorship: Two Disserations, page 108:

     Such a representation would present a real difficulty, if we were obliged to understand all this in its strict literal import, implying, as it would, very unworthy conceptions of God on the part of the writer. The difficulty vanishes, however, when it is perceived that this is only and instance of a prevailing anthropism which characterises the whole narrative.

   • 1919, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia:

     Philosophy is absolutely opposed to theology, anthropism to theism ; but this must not be taken to imply that theism is utterly false, or that anthropism is atheistic, for all that is meant is that the anthropistic outlook and point of departure has come into its own in modern philosophy.

   • 2009, Benjamin Wiker, Jonathan Witt, A Meaningful World, →ISBN:

     Actually we are guilty of anthropism, not anthropomorphism, a guilt shared with an increasing number of scientists, for the universe and our place in the universe are guilty of anthropism as well.

Anagrams

• antimorphs, matronship