Humanitas

Humanitas is a Latin concept, drawn from the word for human, that combines the ideas of human nature, civilization and kindness into both a personal ideal and an ethical standard for how people, especially those with power, should treat others. In classical Rome the concept was closely tied to Greek paideia, and Cicero developed it into an educational ideal of the orator formed by a broad grounding in classical literature, the bonae litterae, that would go on enriching him throughout his life, alongside an obligation to act humanely toward those under his authority. Renaissance humanists such as Petrarch revived Cicero's version of the concept, and it directly shaped the studia humanitatis, the course of study in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy that became the core of Renaissance education. That curriculum treated the systematic study of the humanities, combined with moral and intellectual cultivation, as the path to human excellence, and its architects saw classical learning and Christian values as complementary rather than opposed. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/