Sentences with phrase «social idealism which»

Not exact matches

In this sense, one of the greatest present dangers to responsible moral discourse in social ethics is, I think, «moralism» and unrestrained idealism, which frequently operate to overcome these harsh realities I have described by attacking them — or worse, by simply ignoring them.

Meanwhile, Protestant thought, influenced by the moral idealism and historical optimism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, followed a similar course but moved closer and closer to a form of utopian pacifism in which war would be eliminated because of the increasing perfection of human social institutions.

He said, «In my parish duties I found that the simple idealism into which the classical faith had evaporated was as irrelevant to the crises of personal life as it was to the complex social issues of an industrial city.»

In the light of this analysis, then, my own scenario is cautiously hopeful, depending on (1) whether a creative minority of dreamers and doers with visions of a new life - fulfilling social order really emerges in strength, (2) the alliances that can be worked out with blacks, the poor, and other minorities now excluded from major social benefits, (3) the extent to which the populist idealism of the lower middle classes and working people generally favoring the extension of rights and equality to the «little man» everywhere wins out over the reactionary fears and prejudices which establishment elites and opportunist politicians are all too willing to exploit, and (4) what takes place at the center of the political spectrum itself under the pressure of events and in response to challenges to the established system from militant seekers of change.

But Underwood found his spiritual authority more in the academic ideology of rationalism than in the dark mystery of a crucified Messiah; his final vision is a rather flat social idealism in which the academic world is adulated.