Concept

Paul Kurtz

Overview

Paul Kurtz (December 21, 1925 – October 20, 2012) was an American scientific skeptic, philosopher and secular humanist. He has been called "the father of secular humanism". He was a professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, having previously also taught at Vassar, Trinity, and Union colleges, and the New School for Social Research.

Kurtz founded the publishing house Prometheus Books in 1969. He was also the founder and past chairman of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, formerly the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP), the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center for Inquiry. He was editor in chief of Free Inquiry magazine, a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism.

He was co-chair of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) from 1986 to 1994. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Humanist Laureate, president of the International Academy of Humanism and Honorary Associate of Rationalist International. As a member of the American Humanist Association, he contributed to the writing of Humanist Manifesto II. He was an editor of The Humanist, 1967–78.

Kurtz published over 800 articles or reviews and authored and edited over 50 books. Many of his books have been translated into over 60 languages.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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In psychology, his fundamental doctrine was the formation of all human character by circumstances, through the universal Principle of Association, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving the moral and intellectual condition of mankind by education. Of all his doctrines none was more important than this, or needs more to be insisted on; unfortunately there is none which is more contradictory to the…
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
Close in meaning to Paul Kurtz; the term itself is not named.
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The struggle for religious toleration and religious liberty takes its place side by side with the struggles for intellectual and political liberty in the chapters of individualism.
John Dewey, Ethics
Close in meaning to Paul Kurtz; the term itself is not named.
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Unstable equilibrium, rapid fermentation, and a succession of explosive reports are thus the chief notes of modern ethics. Scepticism and traditionalism, empiricism and rationalism, crude naturalisms and all-embracing idealisms, flourish side by side--all the more flourish, one suspects, because side by side. Spencer exults because natural science reveals that a rapid transit system of evolution is carrying us…
John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thought
Close in meaning to Paul Kurtz; the term itself is not named.
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Philosophers who discussed Paul Kurtz

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Secular humanism

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Part of Humanism.

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