mel·io·rism

(mēl′yə-rĭz′əm, mē′lē-ə-)

1. The belief that the human condition can be improved through concerted effort.

2. The belief that there is an inherent tendency toward progress or improvement in the human condition.

[Latin melior, better; see mel- in Indo-European roots + -ism.]

mel′io·rist n.

mel′io·ris′tic adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

meliorism

(ˈmiːlɪəˌrɪzəm)

(Philosophy) the notion that the world can be improved by human effort

[C19: from Latin melior better]

ˈmeliorist adj, n

ˌmelioˈristic adj

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

mel•io•rism

(ˈmil yəˌrɪz əm, ˈmi li ə-)

n.

the doctrine that the world tends to become better or may be made better by human effort.

[1855–60; < Latin melior better + -ism]

mel′io•rist, n., adj.

meliorism

the doctrine that the world tends to become better of itself, or that it may improve more rapidly by proper human assistance. Cf. optimism, pessimism. — meliorist, n. — melioristic, adj.

See also: Improvement

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

meliorism - the belief that the world can be made better by human effort

belief - any cognitive content held as true

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References in periodicals archive

Instead of concentrating on rational meliorism, time is invested on manipulating the media and propaganda to accumulate power, exterminating opponents and expanding their power base through nepotism.

Cures of political incompetence

The book goes against one particular naivete related to the ideas of progress and meliorism. There is a common assumption that society develops in a linear manner, from unjust to more harmonious, by the means of human effort.

Race and Contention in Twenty-First Century U.S. Media

Founding editor Norman Lamm stated in its first issue: "The modern Jew has, by and large, given up his pat, dogmatic answers of doctrinaire liberalism and meliorism, and has now turned for direction to the classical sources of Jewish life." (18) The ferment which these journals expressed and channeled gave rise to a religious discourse that explored anew the notion of tradition and transformed it to make it meaningful for postwar American Jews.(19)

FURTHER FORWARD THROUGH THE PAST: POSTWAR AMERICAN JEWS RECONFIGURE THE EAST EUROPEAN TRADITION IN CULTURAL TERMS

In an essay on three books on American utopianism (also under review here), the writer Akash Kapur held that the best alternative to utopianism was bourgeois "meliorism," glacial improvement rather than revolutionary re-founding.

Twilight of the Idylls: Three new books on utopia in America

In his novella, Notes From Underground, written in 1864, Dostoyevsky fiercely engaged with Russian and British progressivism and meliorism. Is it true, he asked, that everything is getting better and better?

Delivered at the John F. Kennedy Library: 10 April 2016

Deweyan pragmatism's meliorism (celebrated by Vannatta) and emphasis on an almost revelatory role for "democracy" and "organized intelligence," combined with its dismissal of traditional conceptions of truth, opens the door to a political culture embracing radical innovation accompanied by majority tyranny, oppressive social engineering by elites, or a combination of the two.

Conservative pragmatism, pragmatic conservatism

Sander forsook such meliorism in favor of dispassionate observation" (44).

World War I and the idea of progress in Powers's Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

26) on social evolution, different from the meliorism of liberal Enlightenment and the Hayekian spontaneous order approach.

Division of labor and society: the social rationalism of Mises and Destutt de Tracy

Her thinking is premised on an assessment that differs sharply from the global meliorism favored by both neoconservative and neoliberal American foreign policy (and by a great many Americans who share the sentiment behind global meliorism).

!Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole

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