Humanitarianism - Social Reform

Social Reform

The Enlightenment idea of reform combined with the ethic of active compassion to inspire the social action of the humanitarian movement. Professor G. M. Trevelyan in his Social History of England has explained the humanitarian movement as a product of the influence of rationalism upon puritanism. "The rationalist movement had shaken the persecutor's sword from the hand of faith and religion had been to school with her rival reason. From Milton to Wilberforce the road lay through Voltaire."

The reformers diverged widely in their underlying beliefs but were united in their humanitarianism. Thus the Christian individualism of the Quakers, that each person shares the "inner light" and the Arminianism of the Evangelicals were both differently based from the Lockean or Kantian individualism of a Philosophe or a Utilitarian, but all recognized the equal moral significance of the human person and that the disregard of it was wrong. What also united them was the new idea of reform to remove those wrongs. And so in many of the major areas of humanitarian reform, Christians and rationalists worked together: in the case of slavery; William Wilberforce, 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 Beccaria but also 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 as distinct from the conferring of charity and the doing of "good works" was relatively new. For all intents and purposes social and legal reform was a product of the Enlightenment. Its origins lay in the belief in the dominance of reason and that "Man" was perfectible, if only the social conditions in which he or she lived would allow it. Most Enlightenment thinkers believed "man" to be fundamentally good: "he was once free but is now everywhere in chains". Voltaire in his Portable Dictionary said that "it is want that subjects one man to another." Mankind would be perfected by knowledge – hence the great Encyclopaedia of Diderot and D'Alembert. Helvetius (1715–1771) made this philosophy very popular. He believed human character to be a product of social environment. The chief instruments enabling this to be done would be education and legislation. There thus grew up the demand for legal reform. If "laws are good, morals are good" said Diderot.

Reform distinguished the humanitarian movement from charity and philanthropy. Speaking of the charitable and philanthropic institutions of the 19th century industrial era, Ernst Troeltsch said, "their aim was a new spirit, not a new society." Christian philanthropy tended to deprecate reform as political. For the humanitarian movement, however, removal of the abuse causing suffering was the essence. The goal in almost every field of action undertaken by the humanitarian movement required changed social conditions and in many instances this could only be brought about through legislation.