Humanitarianism

Humanitarianism is a moral of kindness, benevolence, and sympathy extended to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically, but universality is a common theme in its evolution. No distinction is to be made on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, race, caste, age, religion, ability, or nationality.

The historian G. M. Trevelyan viewed humanitarianism as the product of rationalism upon Puritanism. However, in many areas of reform, Christians and rationalists worked together: in the case of slavery, William Wilberforce and the Buxtons, but also Jeremy Bentham and Condorcet; in the case of working conditions, evangelicals such as Lord Shaftesbury, but also Robert Owen and Edwin Chadwick; in the case of punishments, Cesare Beccaria and Samuel Romilly; in the case of the mentally ill, Shaftesbury and Pinel; and in the case of the treatment of animals, Bentham enlisted the aid of Wilberforce. The idea that mankind could be improved by deliberate social change distinct from the conferring of charity was relatively new.

Reform distinguished the humanitarian movement from philanthropy. Christian philanthropy tended to deprecate reform as political. In contrast, the humanitarian movement thought reform essential to remove abuses.

The principle of European individualism upon which the humanitarian movement was based was that all human beings are of equal moral significance and it was the disregard of that significance which constituted the abuses against which the movement was directed. European individualism can be traced to the Greeks. It was the stoics, who like Aristotle, attributed significance to the human soul, but who, unlike Aristotle, considered all human beings equal in that significance. Natural law, as the stoics conceived it, was based upon this principle of spiritual equality. Positive law was subject to the law of nature and, hence, uniquely to the ancient world, the stoics opposed slavery. In 18th century Enlightenment Europe, the individualistic idea of the equal moral significance of the individual in this world re-emerged grounded upon reason and personal autonomy.

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