Altruism Arrives in America
1956; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2710296
ISSN1080-6490
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoSACRIFICING self for the sake of mankind is an ancient, protean idea. Yet the word is barely a hundred years old. Although, from the first, its meanings varied somewhat, it proved useful to many who tried again to assess human nature and to reshape human goals. It left its track in the fields of religion and ethical theory, economics, sociology, and literature. Tracing its career in the United States will clarify the chronicle of thought and event during the more than usually crucial 1890's and will point up a crisis in our native reform tradition. Just a neat synonym in our time, once served as a banner in the continuing campaign to persuade man to submerge himself in the welfare of others. Its origin is quite simple. Altruism by name sprang up in Western Europe. Adapting it from Latin, Auguste Comte coined the word for his System of Positive Polity (1851-1854) to denote the supreme virtue in his religion of humanity. George Henry Lewes, Harriet Martineau, and other admirers naturally spread the Frenchman's precepts in England. Altruism was borrowed also by many British and Americans who could not go all the way with Comte. Most influential among those who cared less for his hierarchy of sciences than his ethical doctrines was John Stuart Mill. For some, became the social-regarding branch of utilitarianism, and Leslie Stephen devoted an approving chapter to it in his Science of Ethics (1882). Whatever its chords were, by 1879 the Italian sweet sounds of altruism had enough volume in England to draw the ridicule of Fraser's Magazine.With Herbert Spencer's help the sweet sounds swelled into a steady hum that usually drowned out any Comtean overtones. In his 1870-1872
Referência(s)