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Meliorism - Wikipedia

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Meliorism (Latin melior, better) is the idea that progress is a real concept and that humans can interfere with natural processes in order to improve the world. Meliorism, as a conception of the person and society, is at the foundation of contemporary liberal democracy and human rights and is a basic component of liberalism.[1] 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, William James, and John Dewey. In James' works, however, meliorism does not pinpoint to progressivism and/or optimism. For James,[2] 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 stripped progressive ideals of any elitist privilege calling for a "lateral progress" whose concern was squarely with the co

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia William James was an early adherent to meliorism as a halfway position between metaphysical optimism and pessimism. Meliorism (Latin melior, better) is the idea that progress is a real concept and that humans can interfere with natural processes in order to improve the world. Meliorism, as a conception of the person and society, is at the foundation of contemporary liberal democracy and human rights and is a basic component of liberalism.[1] Another important understanding of the meliorist tradition comes from the American Pragmatic tradition, which…

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