Humanitarianism - Conclusion

Conclusion

The Christian ethic of active compassion combined with rationalism, individualism and reformism. Although "wrongness" was the ultimate criterion of social action for the humanitarian movement and "reform" the method by which it was achieved, this would not have taken place without the energy generated by the ethic of active compassion. Reform was usually led by a small number of humanitarians but with the advent of democracy would not have gone further without community acceptance. The observance of suffering by the community does not necessarily give rise to compassion. It may do so - but society seems able to accept the infliction of pain on other human beings where it has the support and apparent justification of current social values. Thus for centuries the suffering of witches and heretics being burnt at the stake failed to arouse a compassionate response: nor did brutal punishments such as boiling to death and whipping. Great crowds gathered to witness public executions. Until the 19th century visitors would go to Bedlam as if to a zoo. Bear baiting and cock-fighting were enjoyable pastimes.

A change in values from what had been the socially acceptable infliction of suffering may allow compassion to be released. The medical explanation of insanity advanced by Phillipe Pinel and others enabled the insane to be looked at through a quite different lens and reveal them to be sick human beings. Thereafter, lunatics were no longer chained, flogged or half-drowned in wells. And once crime had ceased to be viewed theologically as sin, the necessary infliction of pain involved in criminal punishments no longer provided an excuse for sadism. Harriet Beecher Stowe's moving description of the treatment of slaves in Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852, led her wide international readership to recognize—in some instances for the first time, the cruelty and oppression of slavery. In this and similar instances the resulting public reaction of outrage to cruelty and compassion for those who suffered was the final but necessary catalyst to reform.