Humanism centers individual agency and subjective intuition against received authority

Evidence

Humanism is centered upon the agency of human individuality and subjective intuition, rather than on received ideas and approved authority. Texts have to be read as texts that were produced and live on in the historical realm in all sorts of what I have called worldly ways. But this by no means excludes power, since on the contrary what I have tried to show in my book have been the insinuations, the imbrications of power into even the most recondite of studies. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 49

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the specific sense of humanism Said is defending: not received-authority deference but individual agency against approved authority.
• XREF: Connects to later Islamophobia-field readings on how power insinuates itself into apparently neutral scholarly domains. — connects to: Behaviorist accounts of persons fail by omitting their transcendence-transcended principle; Disobedience to authority is cognitively costlier than compliance — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 476; Individualism treats humans as autonomous accumulators detached from community. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 551
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 49