The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

76

TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)

Nineteenth-Century Social Theory

76 CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

76

Among nineteenth-century Euro-

pean intellectuals there developed

a serious debate over how to

address the social results of indus-

trial capitalism. Matters of social

reform were central to the devel-

opment of ideologies that dictated specific policies of polit-

ical and economic action. Traditionalconservativesstressed

the importance of maintaining order and perpetuating

conventional power structures and religious authority.

Liberals, on the other hand, whose ideas were rooted in

Enlightenment theories of human progress and perfectibil-

ity (see chapter 24), supported gradual

reform through enlightened legal

systems, constitutional guarantees,

and a generally equitable distribution

of material benefits. The British liber-

al Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

advanced the doctrine ofutilitarianism,

which held that governments should

work to secure “the greatest happiness

for the greatest number of people”;

while Bentham’s student, John Stuart

Mill (1806–1873), expounded the

ideology of social liberalism.

Mill emphasized freedom of

thought over equality and personal

happiness. He held that individuals

must be free to direct their own lives,

Figure 30.3 ADOLPH FRIEDRICH ERDMANN VON MENZEL,

Iron Mill (Das Eisenwalzwerk—Moderne Zyklopen), 1875.

Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 1 ⁄ 4 in. 8 ft. 35 ⁄ 8 in.

Figure 30.4 KATHE KOLLWITZ, March of the Weavers, from “The Weavers

Cycle,” 1897. Etching, 8^3 ⁄ 8  115 ⁄ 8 in. Kollwitz (1867–1945) was a German

social realist, a pacifist, and a feminist. The series of prints known as “The

Weavers” illustrates a play by Gerhart Hauptmann that dramatized the failed

revolt of Silesian weavers in 1842. A sculptor as well as a printmaker,

Kollwitz went on to create searing protest images of the two world wars.