Meaning of Humanization (What is it, Concept and Definition)

What is Humanization?

Humanization is the action and effect of humanizing. That is, humanization is the process by which something is endowed with human qualities. The object of humanization can be a thing, an animal, a person, a group of people, or an institution.

To understand it better it is necessary to understand what human qualities are. Symbolically, the word human represents the conscious and deliberate quality that people have of being empathic, supportive, effective, communicative, loving, social, rational, and relational.

In contrast, deliberately acting against empathy, solidarity, affection, communication, love, society, reason, and relationship is considered inhumane.

In this sense, human is opposed to animal or beast, beings in whom awareness of these qualities does not intervene and who do not act deliberately based on them. Thus, when someone has become inhuman or dehumanized, there is talk of the urgent need to re-humanize.

Given this, it is clear that most of the time the word humanization is anchored to a moral and ethical assessment of the nature of human behavior in the social context.

Examples of this are expressions such as "Society must be humanized again"; "The health sector must commit to its humanization."

 

Humanization in literature and art

In literature and art, it is very common to find references and stories about humanization processes, which are usually also called by the name of personification.

In genres such as fables and fantastic stories, animals or objects with human qualities are frequently represented: they walk, eat, talk, interact, think and feel like humans, that is, they act consciously and deliberately in the context of the story. . This is visible in stories like Beauty and the Beast or Pinocchio.

In addition, humanization or personification is very common as a figure of speech. Phrases such as "The walls hear" function as examples of the personification of objects for aesthetic and symbolic purposes.

Humanization as a theme is a recurring conflict in science fiction literature. Isaac Asimov, to name one of the best-known authors on the subject, has exhaustively addressed the problem of human quality through the laws of robotics that he applies in different stories.

In painting and the visual arts in general, one speaks more of anthropomorphization (transformation of an object into human form). For example, in ancient Egyptian art, the gods were frequently represented as anthropomorphic animals.

 

Humanization in religion

In some religions, the idea of humanization is a process that commits the development of the person until the last day of his life. The person must seek to evolve from her mere biological condition to a fully human quality of being. The human is thus an ideal, an end.

 

Thank You