Meliorism (

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''melior'', better) is the idea that

progress Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension wi ...

is a real concept leading to an improvement of the world. It holds that humans can, through their interference with processes that would otherwise be natural, produce an outcome which is an improvement over the aforementioned natural one. Meliorism, as a conception of the person and society, is at the foundation of contemporary

liberal democracy Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into diff ...

and

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

and is a basic component of

liberalism Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...

. Another important understanding of the meliorist tradition comes from the American Pragmatic tradition. One can read about it in the works of

Lester Frank Ward Lester Frank Ward (June 18, 1841 – April 18, 1913) was an American botanist, paleontologist, and sociologist. He served as the first president of the American Sociological Association. In service of democratic development, polymath Lester W ...

William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...

, and

John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...

. In James' works, however, meliorism does not pinpoint to progressivism and/or optimism. For James, meliorism stands in the middle between optimism and pessimism, and treats the salvation of the world as a probability rather than a certainty or impossibility. In the case of a meliorist praxis, the activist contemporary of the Pragmatists

Jane Addams Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 May 21, 1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage ...

stripped progressive ideals of any elitist privilege calling for a "lateral progress" whose concern was squarely with the common people. Meliorism has also been used by

Arthur Caplan Arthur L. Caplan (born 1950) is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine and the founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics. Caplan has made many contribut ...

to describe positions in

bioethics Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, med ...

that are in favor of ameliorating conditions which cause suffering, even if the conditions have long existed (e.g. being in favor of cures for common diseases, being in favor of serious anti-aging therapies as they are developed). A closely related concept discussed by

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...

and

Marquis de Condorcet Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet (; 17 September 1743 – 29 March 1794), known as Nicolas de Condorcet, was a French philosopher and mathematician. His ideas, including support for a liberal economy, free and equal pu ...

is that of

perfectibility of man Perfection is a state, variously, of completeness, flawlessness, or supreme excellence. The term is used to designate a range of diverse, if often kindred, concepts. These have historically been addressed in a number of discrete disciplines, ...

. Condorcet's statement, "Such is the object of the work I have undertaken; the result of which will be to show, from reasoning and from facts, that no bounds have been fixed to the improvement of the human faculties; that the ''perfectibility of man'' is absolutely indefinite; that the progress of this perfectibility, henceforth above the control of every power that would impede it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has placed us." anticipates James' meliorism. Rousseau's treatment is somewhat weaker. Modern thinkers in this tradition are Hans Rosling and Max Roser. Roser expressed a melioristic position in the mission statement for Our World in Data. He said that all three statements are true at the same time "The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better." Like William James before him Rosling held a halfway position between optimism and pessimism that emphasized humanity's capacity to improve their world.

References

External links

* Graebner, Norman
"The Limits of Meliorism in Foreign Affairs"
''Virginia Quarterly Review'', Winter 2000 {{philosophy-stub Change Metaphysical theories Progress Linear theories

See also

References

External links