Humanitarianism

UMANITARIANISM. — Humanitarianism is a concept of indefinable content, not to be confused with the sentiment of humanity or with humanism. The former is a spontaneous movement of the soul, which turns compassionately toward all who suffer or reacts against cruelties, and arises from the profound inclination of human nature toward solidarity. The latter, on the other hand, is a conception of life that seeks to enhance man and the laws of his rational nature, for the establishment of a social order corresponding in every respect to his most universal needs and respecting his dignity and rights. Humanitarianism, instead, may be described as a vague and elusive sentimentalism with a rather emotional foundation, without its own systematic structure or doctrine, by virtue of which the humanitarian feels moved before the suffering of all beings and seeks to remedy it through his action. Therefore, as a generic sentiment, it is found mingled with various tendencies and currents that have in common an attitude of opposition to anything that may cause pain and suffering. Although humanitarianism is present in movements and associations for the protection of animals and against vivisection, nevertheless, in accordance with the very derivation of the term, it refers above all to man, both as the subject who harbors delicate feelings and, principally, as the object whose protection against cruelties it seeks, in order to lessen and, if possible, eliminate the causes of his sufferings.

The universe, and Romanticism nourished by a vague naturalistic sentiment, contributed in no small measure to its birth and expansion, so as to make it almost fashionable in the nineteenth century, which was the period of its greatest flowering. The countries in which it has taken the firmest root are those of the Anglo-Saxon world, perhaps because of the influence exerted by certain religious denominations in which the veneration of human life was one of the principal themes of propaganda.

Although, as has been said, humanitarianism has no doctrinal structure, certain guiding ideas may nevertheless be discerned at its core. The most general is naturalism with a rationalistic background: a little-reflected philosophy that disregards transcendent values in order to concentrate its attention exclusively on man and humanity, toward which it looks with a certain religious mysticism. This was Comte (v.), who, after denying revealed religion and dogma as contrary to the canons of scientific inquiry, proposed as a substitute the so-called religion of humanity. Humanitarianism is consequently linked with an optimistic conception of human nature, of the kind devised by Rousseau, and it also has a certain tendency to assign special value to whatever is spontaneous in man, whose perfection and happiness it considers to consist in following his own impulses. These ideas, nonetheless, mingle and intertwine in a confused manner, without acquiring distinct contours, enveloped in a sentimental vaporousness that prevents them from being precisely distinguished.

Humanitarianism has given rise to several philanthropic initiatives and associations that, despite the different aims they pursued, shared the common tendency to relieve humanity. It was not alien, for example, to the movement that led to the abolition of slavery; to the measures adopted for the protection of women and children, particularly with regard to their working conditions; to the improvement of the treatment of prisoners and to the more humane and rational organization and maintenance of penal institutions; to the creation of the International Red Cross; and so forth. It reached the limits of utopia in the various pacifist movements, which, often exaggerating the horror of the carnage of war, proposed abstention from military service and civil disobedience (v. COSCIENZA), and maintained the necessity of abolishing frontiers, fatherlands, and religious divisions as the principal causes of conflicts among peoples.

On the whole, as a sentiment directed toward the alleviation of suffering and the condemnation of cruelties, it may be regarded as a derivative of the deepest human impulse toward solidarity and, leaving aside its naturalistic foundation and the exaggerations to which sentimentalism not supervised by reason commonly leads, as an expression of goodness, though lacking the supernatural breath that sustains and inspires Christian charity.

Giordani, L'u. razionalistico e l'imperialismo romantico in Germania, Roma 1918; F. D'Antonio, La filosofia politica tedesca. Gli ideali cosmopolitici, Crema 1938. Antonio Messineo