ABSTRACT
In the history of civilization in the Western world, there have so far been three main waves of humanism. The first wave arose in Greece in the fifth century BC when the Sophists and Socrates 'called philosophy down from heaven to earth', as Cicero put it, by introducing social, political and moral questions. The second wave, the Renaissance, was well under way in the fifteenth century in Florence. The powerful third wave began with the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and became the rational, scientific, secular and atheistic humanism of modern times. Humanistic Psychology had a clear affiliation with this third wave of humanism, as exemplified by its primary protagonists. Abraham Maslow insisted that he was an atheist, and as such regarded the peak experiences of his self-actualizing exemplars as simply an expression of the best of their selfhood. However, Maslow apparently took a turn toward the non-naturalistic spiritual, 'beyond humanistic', as he got a bit older.
