Ethics ratings and subsets for every nation: United States
Moral Contours
Historical figures
Lifelong campaigner for women’s interests, education and social care provision. Inspired by writings of Charles Dickens and Tolstoy, as also by seeing the work of Toynbee Hall in London’s East End, she set about creating Hull-House - an equivalent educational facility and support agency for immigrant settlers in Chicago. From 1889 for over 40 years this was a continuing claim on her energies. Her leadership capacities in the cause of women’s political rights were recognised in her becoming Chair of the International Congress of Women. Though to do so was politically contentious she also campaigned against any national involvement in World War 1. She wrote extensively in defence of practical social action.
Life
Writings
Video
Morally inspired radical community organiser who developed experience-based strategies for future application. These involved working in situations of high ethnic diversity. He directly addressed the moral challenge of means v ends as encountered in local political contexts.
Life and writings
ThoughtCo biography of Alinsky
An introduction to Rules for Radicals
Video
Pioneer of an approach to individual psychology which focusses on the importance of motives in actions and behaviour, in contrast to the alternative emphasising of underlying conditioning factors. The individual is in the process of becoming. His research on prejudice and on religion is of particular importance for moral education; it includes the distinction between 'intrinsic' and 'extrinsic' versions of both religion and ethics.
Life
GoodTherapy brief introduction to the life and work of Allport
Verywell Mind brief introduction to the life and work of Allport
Writings
The Functional Autonomy of Motives
Video
Gordon Allport talks about Freud (5 mins)
A philosopher and social activist. Although her Jewish family background was secular, this provided no exemption from Nazi hostility, both in Germany and in exile in France, hence her escape to the USA. During and in the years immediately following the Second World War, she worked intensively with Jewish young people to achieve re-settlement, especially in Israel and America. Her personal experience of the crushing effect of power informed her scrutiny of how it is sourced and given moral legitimation. This strain runs through all her extensive writings. In 'Origins of Totalitarianism' she scrutinises the shared roots of both Stalinism and Nazism, and in 'Eichmann in Jerusalem: the Banality of Evil' she exposes the ordinariness of immoral action in everyday human behaviour. In her last writing she explored the notion of conscience as court of accountability for everyone in their own me-ness.
Life
The life of Arendt from the Jewish Virtual Library
Writings
Video
Hannah Arendt interview (German with English subtitles) (60 mins)
American novelist known for his vivid expression of what it means to be black and gay in a small-minded society. His life was spent in successive decades in Haarlem and Greenwich Village in New York and latterly the South of France. It included close friendship with well-known artists, musicians and film stars, as well as political activists. Civil rights and anti-war concerns exercised him greatly and in his perpetual and passionate searchings he continually drew on the black Pentecostal experience of his early years. It informed the moral conviction he used to repudiate a loveless version of white Christianity.
Life
Life of James Baldwin from Biography.com
James Baldwin photographs and papers
Writings
Video
Baldwin's Speech at Cambridge (8 mins)
Proponent of experimental psychology based on systematic observation of children's development. He drew on insights from evolutionary biology as well as philosophy and social theory. Thus he asserted an interactivity between the givens of collective and individual genetic inheritance and individual intention. His academic bases included Germany and France as well as Canada and the US. He was the originating editor of Psychological Review and collated the huge Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1906).
Life
The life and work of James M Baldwin from Encyclopedia.com
Writings
Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development
The Superstate and the "Eternal Values"
Video
Bateson’s early academic work was based in Cambridge UK. His extensive anthropological field work in New Guinea and Bali (latterly with first wife Margaret Mead) provided the observational basis for his theories of binary aspects of human personality, both symmetrical (equal) and complementarily oppressive/ submissive.
Following his move to California, he set out to develop a theory of the ecology of mind which chimed in with systems theory and the emerging cybernetics. The interrelation of mind and body is part of a complex ecological whole, which has to be grasped to be understood.
Life
- Brief biography of Bateson
- Extensive account of Bateson's life and work by John Brockman
- Obituary of Bateson from the Institute for Intercultural Studies
Writings
Video
Largely Cornell based historian who engaged with philosophical issues such as relativism and the nature of democracy.
Life
Writings
Protestant (Presbyterian/Congregationalist) preacher, renowned for his proclamation of love and justice. This informed his personal temperance and public campaigning for the abolition of slavery, which were characterised by the common touch of wit and dramatic gesture. His liberal theological views were visible in his beliefs that evolution and theistic belief are compatible and in his willingness to support the deployment of rifles in favour of the abolitionist cause. They may also have been implicit in his extra-marital relationships, but there was an evident tension between his affirmation of women’s liberation and an expectation of confidentiality.
Life
- The life of Beecher from connecticuthistory.org
- 'The Beecher-Tilton affair'
- Illustrated life of Beecher from Linda Hall Library
Writings
Childhood illness and unhappiness along with a range of cross-cultural field experience were aspects of the diverse range of experience on which Ruth Benedict was able to draw as a cultural anthropologist. So too were close relationships with Franz Boas and Margaret Mead. Early on she developed an interest in female emancipation – evident in her mini biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, but sadly, in spite of her scholarly stature even internationally, her full professorial elevation came too late for her to enjoy. The relevance of anthropological perspective in national defence became an incentive for her study of Japanese culture. The relativism which she identified in such variably predominant attitudes towards such as trance experience, paranoia and homosexuality did not dilute her sense of moral integrity which was also present in her scientific humanism.
Life
Writings
- An Anthropologist at Work: writings of Ruth Benedict
- Discussion of 'The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'
Hehaka Sapaand Nicholas Black Elk is one of the best known Native Americans. His experience spans the early years of conflict with the white man ‘settlers’, travelling to England and Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and later life as a Roman Catholic convert. His writings (orally shared and developed – he was largely illiterate and going blind) are authentic sources of the religious life of the Lakota. They include healing and dance traditions – from his own ill health and dream experiences he became a medicine man/shaman. They also reveal his lifelong concern for harmony with the natural world and between peoples.
Life
Writings
Emigrating from Germany where he had spent the first third of his life, and from an academic background in Geography, Boas was a key protagonist in the development of the discipline of Anthropology. His approach included a readiness to draw on archaeology, ethnography and linguistics in the service of better understanding the diversities of human culture. Field work and scientific rigour were necessary prerequisites. His early life experience of anti-semitic and nationalistic sentiments, which fuelled his naturalized US citizenship, contributed to his ever-readiness to expose racism. From his professorial base at Columbia, he became a significant shaping influence in both the personal and professional lives of successive generations of those within the US and beyond who helped define and establish what anthropology properly brings to human self-understanding and the moral worth within it.
Life
Writings
Video
Moscow born but living in USA since childhood and mainly based at Cornell. Responsible for a distinctive notion of the Ecology of Human Development in which the psychology of the individual child in a family setting is understood as shaped by the larger contexts of family, society economics and culture. In his Two Worlds of Childhood he contrasts the shaping effects of growing up in the different cultural contexts of the USA and USSR. He had a significant role in the building of the Head Start Programme.
Life
Video
Comic genius; ‘slapstick’ with serious intent. Generally seen as representing the ‘underdog’, specifically exposing the likes of Adolf Hitler. Suspicious of ‘the American way of life’ but only questionably warranting his investigation as Communist agitator. Sexually adventurous and serially married.
Life
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An illustrated account of Chaplin's life and work with links to other materials
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Simon Callow's review of Peyer Ackroyd's biography of Chaplin
Writings/films
Video
Charlie Chaplin receives his Honorary Academy Award (5 mins)
American activist and writer, distinguished by the continuity between her radical political views and her Christian faith. From early exposure to the effects of the San Francisco earthquake, through the Great Depression, the Hiroshima atom bomb, Cuban revolution and all subsequent occasions of suffering, whether near to hand or distant, she insisted that moral integrity had to be lived. Roman Catholic and political establishment were continually subject to her scrutiny and challenge, but by her own deeper sense of nation and church and not their passing rejection.
Life
Spartacus Educational biography of Day with excerpts from her writings
Concise account of Day's life work and influence
Short TV feature on Day and her work (with transcript)
Writings
Large collection of articles as well as four books
Video
Best known as a philosopher of education, with lifelong experience as both teacher and writer. His experiential and expressly pragmatic approach was extended into the field of psychology and social reform. His impact was extensive not only within the US, but also extended to China and Japan.
Life
Writings
Social anthropologist with a field work background with the Lele in Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), but recognised principally as a social theorist. She focussed on how people classify their boundaries in respect of family life and marriage, food and drink, dust and cleanliness, and dealing with risk. In doing this she extended the anthropological gaze from non-western tribal contexts to contemporary European and American society. She drew attention to the importance of symbols in the shaping of complex understandings. This she explored extensively in relation to biblical literature and Jewish self-understanding. She was herself a lifelong Roman Catholic
Life
Writings
Video
Joint founder in 1909 of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and editor of its magazine Crisis for most of next 25 years. Prolific in articulating the cause of Black enfranchisement and Pan-Africanism in scholarly texts, novels and public demonstrations. Finally naturalized as a citizen of Ghana 1961.
Life
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Biography of Du Bois from Spartacus Educational with links to primary sources
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Du Bois
Writings
Video
W.E.B. Du Bois - Activist Leader (4 mins)
Founder of the Christian Science movement/religion. This was rooted in her personal experience of healing and her response to the stories of Jesus and to the teaching of Phineas Quimby. She set out her contested belief that the mind is the best means of overcoming illness in her book Science and Health and this was and remains the platform of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
Life
Eddy's life and teachings, with links to her writings
'A philosophical critique of Christian Science'
Writings
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
Video
Mary Baker Eddy: her life and legacy (10 mins)
Christian preacher and writer recognised as an outstanding Puritan theologian, with strong links to Yale (main education and conversion)and Princeton (cut short by death from a smallpox injection chosen to be an example to others). Leader of 'Great Awakening' revival through persuasive argument. Whilst stressing the importance of individual free will he asserted that any long term human satisfaction must come from beyond as a divine gift. The prospect of hellish torment is an important prompt for moral response.
Life
Theopedia entry on Edwards with links to other resources
Writings
The Works of Jonathan Edwards volume 1
Originally Elijah Poole, son of a Protestant minister in Georgia, he grew up in a condition of relative poverty. Moving to Detroit in 1930 he became an enthusiastic follower of the ‘Prophet’ Fard. A year later on Fard’s death he became leader of the Black Muslim organisation Nation of Islam. In 1976 it became ‘the World Community of Islam in the West'. Retrospectively Fard was recognised as Allah, with Elijah Muhammad as his Messenger and Prophet. The emphasis was on the self-help and advancement of Black Americans through education, opening schools in Michigan in the 1930s. The movement continued over the next 40 years, in variable association with Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. Media representation was generally suspicious and often misrepresentative and hostile. Association with Muhammad Ali did much to raise his profile. There were significant exchanges with Martin Luther King and James Baldwin. His relevance for Moral Education lies in his interaction with racism, with ‘mainstream Islam’ and with Christianity.
Life
Writings
Video
Thomas Stearns Eliot, writer of poetry, plays and critical essays on contemporary society. He spent the first half of his life in the US, then relocated as a citizen to the UK. Much of his writing was concerned with exploring beliefs which he could live by. Though these were finally identified as Anglo-Catholic, they never lost a degree of doubt.
Life
Writings
Video
Though immersed from childhood years in the teachings of Unitarian Christianity, Ralph Waldo Emerson broke from these in his mid thirties, developing instead in company with others the philosophy of ‘Transcendentalism’. This shift away from institutional forms of tradition was In part triggered by his contact with Carlyle, Wordsworth and Coleridge during his travels in Europe. Instead he placed far greater emphasis on personal experience and judgement, along with love of good, of truth and of beauty.
Life
Writings
Leading exponent of children’s psycho-social development. He had a German Jewish background, and in 1933 relocated to N. America where he held a series of leading university and medical research positions. Drawing on his own training in psychoanalysis and Montessori educational theory and on his subsequent working experience with Sioux Indian families, with war-stressed American soldiers, and with disturbed children and adolescents, he developed a stage theory which takes account of both psychological factors and social contexts. He also applied his interpretative theories to the Young Man Luther and to Mahatma Gandhi.
Life
Writings
Thoroughly American novelist and screenwriter from the ‘Deep South’ who uses ‘stream of consciousness’ to convey an awareness of the interweaving complexity of emotions and motives in shaping the living fortunes of individuals and families. Much of his writing and the reading thereof, which engages with issues of class and culture, race and sex, and relationship with the natural can be seen as an exercise in moral education. In his own words a re-learning of “the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.”
Life
- Brief biography of Faulkner from the Nobel Prize website with links to other materials
- The life and work of Faulkner from Encyclopedia Virginia
- Illustrated account of Faulkner's career
Work
Video
Influential social psychologist, best known for the theories of cognitive dissonance and of social comparison. Festinger observed that the dissonance created by exposure to challengingly different beliefs often leads to even stronger attestation of those beliefs as a means of avoiding the unsettlement of rejecting or changing them. He also noted that people commonly compare themselves with others in forging their own self-understandings, and that they are most influenced by those nearest to them – the ‘propinquity theory’. The relevance of these observations for moral education is self-evident.
Life
Work
American Episcopalian moral theologian, best known for his exposition in the 1960s of an approach to moral problems characterised as ‘Situation Ethics’. This was widely welcomed as evidence of intelligent Christian engagement with ‘the real world’. Others, both fellow Christians and rejectors of Christianity saw it as a ‘sell-out’ of the true authority of the Church and moral law. In full accord with the official views of the wider Anglican Communion, he supported the use of contraceptive methods of birth control. He went on to extend the Christian freedom lovingly to act out moral responsibility in other ways too. For instance, he provided justification, in certain circumstances, for euthanasia and abortion. In the following twenty years, many at the Hastings Centre, he was much involved with medical and bio-ethics, including attempts to define what constitutes humanhood’. He eventually decided that religious belief was more harm than help in pursuing the moral agenda.
Life
Work
Best known for his part in negotiating American Independence, he initially made his name in journalism and subsequently in both scientific experimentation and diplomatic representation in the UK and France. There was an ordinary integrity about him, well reflected in his Silence Dogood writings on morality.
Life
'A quick biography of Benjamin Franklin'
The papers of Benjamin Franklin
From an educational background and both rabbinic and psychoanalytic training in Germany, he emigrated as Nazism took hold. In university teaching, clinical practice and a succession of well-received books, he pursued the priority of maximising human freedom. That fulfilment entailed escape from false versions of being free – economic, emotional and political. Instead he sought a rounded version which he couched in terms of humanist ethics.
Life
Work
Video
Influential American economist engaging in critical social commentary regarding the workings of capitalism in large companies and unions, advertising and affluence, and extending to foreign policy and war. An ethical gadfly with a challenging perspective on present trends – matching that of the distinctive view from his own physical height.
Life
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Biography of Galbraith from Spartacus Educational with links to other resources
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Assessment of Galbraith from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
Works
Video
Activist for black enhancement, initially in Jamaica, then the US and Canada and subsequently across Africa. He set about establishing black businesses and a Declaration of the Human Rights of the Negro People of the World. He was pessimistic about the prospect of equality with Whites in America and campaigned instead for a Black African Zion. Prompted by Psalm 68, he developed an earlier 19th century notion of Ethiopia and Africa as the leader of nations. This was also tied in with the development of Rastafarian religion, centred on Ras Tafari the Emperor of Ethiopia.
Life
Video
Pioneer in study of infant and child development, principally Yale based. His longitudinal metric followings of individual children from earliest years to adolescence are comprehensive in attention to motor skills, reasoning abilities and the structuring of beliefs. They provide the basis for constructing age-related gradients of growth which include all aspects of bodily activity, emotional expression, dream life, relationships, play, educational learning, moral sense and philosophy of life, including God and death. Though reflective of a particular social and cultural context, which qualifies any claim to general normativity, they are still informative. Parenting, adoption procedures and school education have all gained from his work.
Life
Works
American sociologist with particular interest in how people present themselves to each other and in human communication generally. Self-awareness and self-projection are important ingredients in moral education.
Life
Works
American Indian chief and religious leader, much involved in attempts at reconciliation between Native Americans and Whites. He drew on religious beliefs of Shaker Christians and his own Turtle Clan. Following a near death experience involving alcohol excess, he declared a code for moral transformation centred on education, lawful behaviour and support for the poor.
Life
- Thomas Jefferson's address to Brother Handsome Lake, 1802
- Handsome Lake: the Iroquois who saw visions
Leading Christian ‘process theologian’, reworking traditional religious beliefs along the lines of AN Whitehead’s philosophy. This has particular consequences for his understanding of evil and suffering, as also of God – better understood as within all that is in the universe but not confined to it (‘panentheist’). As such God is neither reducible to the universe (‘pantheist’) nor entirely separate from it – world inclusive AND transcending.
Life
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An overview of Hartshorne's life and thought with a full list of his works
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Entry on Hartshorne from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Works
Novelist and short story writer who was continually exercised regarding the nature of evil and any human responsibility for it.
Life
Works
Historian with special interest in identifying factors involved in shaping political behaviour and by implication human behaviour more generally. The relevance for moral education is in its exposure of the complex and often unconscious motives that operate in public and professional lives, and which therefore deserved to be brought to personal awareness much sooner. The relative position of economic self-interest as compared with social reputation is already a live issue in family and school.
Life
Works
Writer of science fiction and originator of the Church of Scientology based on beliefs set out in the book Dianetics. He claimed that Scientology provides a rational philosophy of life which will eliminate emotional ‘hang-ups’ and conceptual confusions. The claim is reinforced by extensive literature and elaborate training routines; these have attracted many thousands of adherents. Critics argue that Scientology is little more than a questionable form of psychotherapy, very costly for its subscriber and lucrative for the organisation.
Life
Writings
Video
Passionate and radical advocate of the ultimate worth of every individual human being. Inspired and sustained by biblical Christian sense of hope and love, directly addressing issues of race- and class-based prejudice, in local, regional and national contexts.
Life
Video
American novelist who thrived independently of his eminent family background (father distinctive theological writer, brother William psychologist). He was a keen observer of the American and British social scenes, undergoing challenge to their conventions and values.
Life
- Detailed biography of James from the Poetry Foundation
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A study of the relationship between James and his brother William
Writings
Philosopher and psychologist with a string sense of empirical grounding first established by his studies in human anatomy. The test of both religious and moral beliefs is their outcomes, especially in overcoming evil and wrongdoing. He took the actual experience of individuals, including ‘conversions’, very seriously as mattering more than abstract theory.
Life
Writings
Best known as the third US President, drafter of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and slave trade abolitionist. Accusations of moral hypocrisy now strongly made.
Life
Writings
Leader of People’s Temple movement in the US from 1975 in California, relocating to Guyana in 1977 where the community ended in an act of collective suicide. For much of his life and teaching he was seen to stand for socialism and racial equality, both a charismatic healer and prophet. Latterly criticisms surfaced of mistreatment and child abuse. There is dispute regarding his state of health and mind, as also over the use of force in the deaths. Issues of political naivete, psychological delusion, freedom of belief, power of personality are all prominent here.
Life
Video
Founder of Reconstructionist movement in Judaism which gave renewed impetus to Jewish community life. He highlighted the notion of Jewish civilisation with inherited characteristics which need renewal in the modern world. Amongst these is the long established Bar Mitzvah for boys and he complemented this by introducing the notion of Bat Mitzvah for girls. His views aroused strong sympathies for and against; for some he had to be ‘excommunicated’.
Life
Writings
American psychologist renowned for developing his ‘personal construct’ account of the distinctive ways in which we individually perceive others. This makes use of a ‘repertory grid’ personality test.
Life
Austrian-American legal theorist who stressed the importance of law as scientifically normative rather than deriving from or based on practice. Although the findings of social science or the values arising from religious beliefs have some relevance, law itself being a community-wide willed principle generates its own sense of ‘ought’.
Life
Writings
Baptist Christian pastor, moved by personal faith, social science and theological realism to challenge the violence of race relations and war. His role in creating the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and subsequent campaigning were central to the Civil Rights movement in the USA, and his powerful speechmaking had extensive and lasting impact. His reputation has been the subject of vicious distortion and attack, fuelled by the same kind of prejudice that led to his assassination.
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Lengthy illustrated Spartacus Educational biography of King with many links
- Biography of King from the Nobel Prize website with links to other materials
- Some of King's most important achievements
Works
Video
From an academic background in Zoology, he established the Institute for Sex Research in 1942 at the University of Indiana. Though controversial because of its subject matter and some of its methods, there is no doubt that he and his fellow workers provided much needed empirical data on the diversity of both male and female sexual experience and behaviour. These are informative for morality regarding sex, but not necessarily in themselves sufficient in determining any prescriptive oughts, except perhaps the need to avoid rigid assumptions.
Life
- An overview of Kinsey's life and work
- Alfred C Kinsey: a pioneer of sex research
- A brief biography of Kinsey
Writings
Cultural anthropologist, best known for his studies of Navaho Indians and for his contribution to the development of a theory of culture. This is inclusive of how each of the following is understood: human nature, social structure, attitude to the environment, sense of time and behavioural priorities. He throws direct light on how values develop in contemporary society.
Life
Writings
Probably the most influential protagonists in the field of moral education in the last century. Combining an academic background in moral philosophy and development psychology, plus a personal passion to reduce the risk of human self-destructiveness, Kohlberg created a distinctive approach to related learning. It worked with a Kantian notion of principled autonomy and conscience, along with the identification of a sequenced series of stages of cognitive moral development which he claimed is invariant and universal. Based on his empirical findings, he extended the application of his approach in the context of just community schools and related prison work. He did not ignore Freudian insights into the emotional depths of human behaviour and recognised that overcoming the gap between knowing and doing, words and actions, is a key priority.
Life
Writings
Video
Founding enthusiast for the creation of the Shaker Church in North America. Ann first became a Shaking Quaker in Manchester (UK) in her early twenties; she had no formal education starting work at the age of 8, with her father a blacksmith and in the nearby cotton mills. Whilst in gaol for disturbing the peace with her public testimony regarding the imminent return of Christ, she had such a direct experience of his presence that this inspired all her future activities. She persuaded others to celebrate a new of life characterised by sexual equality and celibacy, communal prayer and dance, and craftsmanship of beautiful simplicity. And the moral of this story?
Life
Writings
Influential Christian ethicist and campaigner for human rights, from Ukrainian American family background and Presbyterian belonging. Influenced in student years by friendship with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and academic engagement with Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr. In philosophical terms, his ethical stance is koinonia and communitarian based, qualifying the determinants confined only to an individual situation or to overridingly fixed principles. Politically, in the early 1950s he was founding chair of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee set up to challenge McCarthyism.
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Writings
16th President of the USA, renowned for his role in the abolition of slavery and the defeat of states challenging this in the American Civil War. He relied on a ‘common touch’ from his small-town background along with his legal training to frame the persuasive moral thrust of his political campaigning and judgement.
Life
Writings
Drawing on academic studies in archaeology, sociology and anthropology, and field work in Polynesia and with Native Americans, he set out the contours for studying humankind in terms of behaviour, culture, personality and social structure. There is a universal principle that values which benefit society persist.
Life
Writings
American specialist in the history of ideas, including that of the great chain of being which links all living creatures together hierarchically and believes damage to one to have repercussions on others – “take but degree away and hark what discord follows" (Shakespeare). There is a moral message in this story.
Life
Writings
Cultural anthropologist influenced by Franz Boas extrapolating from his field studies of Native American societies to characterise primitive human life and subsequent social organisation with the importance of moral reciprocity.
Life
Mahesh Yogi Maharishi was founder of the Transcendental Movement/ TM. From a Hindu kshratiyan caste background and after many years learning from his spiritual guru Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, he founded TM and the International Academy of Meditation in the late 1950s. The association with the Beatles raised their profile significantly and subsequently, centres were established throughout the world – both North and South America, Switzerland and Moscow. A notional link with moral education is evident from the claim that individual creativity and understanding is enhanced, along with social well being and health. Less sympathetic critics overlook his enormous wealth creation and simply characterise him as a ‘benign charlatan’.
Life
Writings
Video
Keen observer of American urban life through his many novels and short stories. Jewishness is an intrinsic ingredient rather than being either an incidental add-on or an all-determinative feature. The comic and the tragic alike belong to a humanity which lives with its potential to produce its opposite at home or abroad.
Life
Writings
From a Nebraskan background in petty criminal activity, and whilst in prison Malcolm Little was converted to the Nation of Islam. Under the influence of the leadership of Elijah Muhammad he became a powerful advocate and front man for Black Civil Rights and abrasive critic of White arrogance and injustice. Any racist ingredients in his adopted version of Islam were exposed as false by a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964. His embrace of mainstream Sunni Islam was at the root of his split from the Nation of Islam and his taking the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. His assassination the following year is contentiously attributed to distortions either of the white political establishment or of the Nation of Islam itself in retribution for his change of heart.
Life
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Life of Malcolm X from Spartacus Educational with links to further materials
- Review of a biography of Malcolm X
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Malcolm X reference archive with links to written and audio materials
- A guide to Malcolm X scholarship website with links to a wide range of resources
Video
Radical political theorist, challenging status quo assumptions, initially against National Socialism in Germany and from 1933 in the US against cultural commodification.
Life
Writings
Video
Herbert Marcuse on Marxism (10 mins)
A pioneer of ‘humanistic psychology’ focussing on how human potential of anyone and everyone can be maximised. The process of self-actualisation is developed through responding to human needs, from the most basic to the most refined. This hierarchy of needs includes access to peak experiences.
Life
- A brief biography of Maslow
- Biography of Maslow from VeryWellMind with some links to further materials
- 'Abraham Maslow and the pyramid that beguiled business'
Writings
- A Theory of Human Motivation
- Toward a Psychology of Being
- An analysis of Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Gynaecologist, turned sexologist, whose laboratory studies of human sexual responses were initially shocking for their detailed documentation. They raised questions about ‘normality’ in this area, about sexual morality, as also about research ethics. His research collaborator was Virginia Johnson and they built on the survey work previously carried out by Arthur Kinsey. Their primary motivation was therapeutic - to assist people in overcoming sexual dysfunction.
Life
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Philosopher and social psychologist focussed on the development of the self, generated through interaction with others. The self is constructed from sharing meanings, as in the form of symbolic language created in play.
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Writings
Probably the most widely published and read of 20th century cultural anthropologists. Her field work in Samoa and New Guinea with its implications that sexual behaviour and norms are socially malleable may explain some of the initial interest, but the quality of her ethnographic observation, as of her collaborators, together with the wider applications of her perspective added to to her reputation – and drew detractors. Her interest in collective human diversity led her to speak of ‘transcultural continuities’. She was also an active Episcopalian.
Life
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American journalist who used his powerful pen abrasively to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, both political and religious, including Prohibitionism and the ‘booboisie’ of the Bible belt.
Life
Writings
Video
American sociologist whose reflective analysis gave rise to notions that have become features of modern intellectual life. These include ‘focus groups and their use’, ‘role models’, ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’, ‘serendipity’ and ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’. He identified the cultural norms which constitute modern science as universalism, ‘communism’, disinterestedness and organised scepticism. Perhaps these are equally key features of good moral education..
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Stanley Milgram work in social psychology is famed for its exposure of human susceptibility to the influence of others on ‘moral’ behaviour. Specifically, an explanation is sought for the extent of collusion shown by ordinary German civilians and prison officers unquestioningly to ‘obey orders’ in horrendous cruelty against Jews in the Third Reich. He finds it in the readiness of those volunteering to take part in a scientific study which involves being encouraged to administer dangerous levels of electric shock on other perceived volunteers. That readiness to obey a scientific authority figure is presented by him as analogous to that shown in other pressured circumstances. In spite of some debate regarding the ethics of the deception which was part of the research method, the evidence is disturbing and has been replicated many times. From a Jewish background himself, he also developed other experiments which variously test the boundaries of human identity and relationship, eg the Cyranoid experiment and that known as the ‘6 degrees of difference’.
Life
Writings
American playwright stigmatised because of attribution of Communist links and gossiped over as a result of his marriage to Marilyn Munroe. Perhaps a result of his own Jewish family background, he had a lifelong concern with injustice and to expose it. Theatre for him is a major vehicle of moral education.
Life
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Native American leader of Ohio Delaware Indians, strongly opposed to European encroachment. He drew attention to moral failings (including alcohol abuse, sexual misbehaviour and inter-tribal squabblings) on the part of his fellow Indians in explanation of their losses.
Life
Christian ethicist and theologian. Younger brother of the better publicly known Reinhold; the sons of German immigrants to the US. From his PhD interest in the work of Ernst Troeltsch on the Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, he wrestled continually with the challenge of historical relativism, testing the credibility of any faith in a war-torn world. Denominational communities are no substitute for the self acting responsively and responsibly.
Life
Writings
Christian social ethicist who challenged the liberal inclinations of some fellow theologians. Like any easy optimism of wider public opinion, he found this to be groundless in the daylight of global warfare and individual human capacity blithely to pursue self-interest. Instead he asked for realism in any credible faith or political programme. Whilst recognising the attractions of a pacifist stance, he found it wanting as a response to the complexities of power.
Life
- Britannica biography of Niebuhr
- An overview of Niebuhr's life and thought
- Niebuhr and Martin Luther King
Writings
Welsh born educationalist and social reformer. Drawing on his experience in managing a cotton mill, he set out to create a model community in a village called New Lanark in Scotland. This combined living and working conditions which were fair and amicable for everyone. They included a school, an Institute for the Formation of Character, and a co-operative store. He sought to apply this model in the US, but after 5 years with mixed results returned to England. Emphasis on mutuality and collaborative endeavour were the main features of his lifelong campaigning, especially for the development of trade unions and latterly spiritualism as a means of exposure to moral exemplars.
Life
Brief biography of Owen with links to further biographical and autobiographical materials
Writings
From his department at Harvard Talcott Parsons was a key figure in the development of Sociology as an academic discipline in its own right. He drew especially on the work of both Durkheim, with his emphasis on social integration, and Weber with his attention to the determining role of beliefs. His approach was expressly open to interdisciplinary collaboration, with particular emphasis on the ways in which any patterns individual and social behaviour relate to the sustenance of social order. This led him to identify what he considered to be necessary moral and religious ingredients of the past, present and future societies.
Life
The life of Talcott Parsons and his influence on Sociology
Writings
The Structure of Social Action
William Penn was an international propagator of the principle of freedom of conscience and democracy which arose from his core beliefs as a Quaker. He campaigned actively and wrote extensively in their advocacy, being frequently imprisoned for his vehemence. Based on these beliefs he established Pennsylvania with a constitution designed to uphold them; they were basic to his meeting with Lenape Indians in his planned city of Philadelphia. Back in England, for over 30 years, legal, political, financial and theological tussles were his everyday experience. Based on his regard for the light which illuminates each and every human individual, he envisioned the development of a commonwealth of American Peoples and similarly of Europeans, each served by elected parliaments. The strange anomaly of his owning slaves in Pennsylvania may be explained by reference to the writings of Paul in the New Testament where all relationships including that of owner and slave are transformed by Christian love.`
Life
Writings
Works by Penn on Project Gutenberg
The Political Writings of William Penn
Francis Perkins was a social reformer and political campaigner in the US. Known for her support for health and safety, industrial relations and housing – and women’s issues on all fronts. She was regularly elected to positions of political leadership, inspired by a consistent sense of moral purpose.
Life
- An illustrated account of the life and work of Perkins
- Profile of Perkins with links to interviews with her
- Francis Perkins Center website with a wide range of materials about her
Writings
His early career included national recognition as a theoretical physicist, work in the life insurance industry, air force meteorologist. Thereafter, especially from his base at Columbia Teachers College in New York his attention turned to the philosophy of education, rooted openly in moral and religious sense. In a succession of books he expounded the theme of an integral architecture of knowledge, comprised by interweaving ‘realms of meaning’. An educated person will discover that literature and the arts, religion and ethics coinhere with the sciences in creating overall meaning in life. At the heart of them all is wondering; no surprise that music and play are essential parts of the mix.
Life
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Calcutta born businessman (Abban Charan De), who at the age of 37 took on a responsibility for the furtherance of Krishna Consciousness in the West, becoming known as Bhaktivedanta Swama Prabhupada. For 20 years he concentrated on translation of key texts while maintaining family responsibilities (these grew to some 90 volumes by the time of his death). Thereafter, he moved to the USA, briefly in New York and for the rest of his life California. From his base there he promoted the development of ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness), generating followers in many American and European cities. Their chanting enthusiasm was in the tradition of the 15th century Chaitanya and responding to the words of the Bhagavadgita. The consequent lifestyle was one of simplicity, with abstention from alcohol, drugs, meat and non-marital sex. He insisted that the sense of bliss arising from a life centred on the Gita would be transformative for both the individual and for all humanity, becoming attuned to cosmic unity.
Life
Writings
Video
One of the more controversial of modern gurus, Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh resigned his university teaching position in philosophy in 1966 to become a spiritual teacher – of undoubted charismatic power. This led to his creation of an ashram in Poona, referred to as the Orange People, designed for healing therapies, meditation and ‘shocking’ experiences. The shocks were intended to release energies and create more direct awareness, and included physical outbursts and sexual activities. These last contributed to increasing criticism of both him and the movement as a whole; drug abuse and financial scandal was a further challenge to credibility. His creation of a replacement base in the USA 1981 – 5 was a repeat of all these features; following expulsion, he returned to Poona now calling himself Osho with another set of followers. His life is an outstanding example of the need for clarity about the criteria by which any leader or exemplar figure is evaluated.
Life
- Britannica biography of Rajneesh and history of the Rajneesh movement
- Osho Source Book - a book-length treatment of Rajneesh and his teachings
Writings
Video
Pandita Ramabai was a social activist, who challenged dominant conventions from within Hindu, Unattached and then Christian starting points. Her own education and experience included several years in both the UK and USA. From a Brahminic family she chose a lower caste marriage. She went on to set up a school for child widows and continually campaigned in favour of educational provision for women.
Life
- An introduction to Ramabai's life and work
- Women's History Network appreciation of Ramabai's life and work
Writings
Russian educated, she moved to America in 1926 where she propounded a distinctive moral philosophy through her novels and academic writings. She styled herself a rationalist, believing in ethical egoism in preference to altruism and supporting unregulated free enterprise. These are the components of the stance which she termed ‘Objectivism’.
Life
- An account of Rand's life and work from the Jewish Virtual Library
- Entry on Rand in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Writings
- Overviews and analyses of all of Rand's writings
- Ayn Rand Institute website with links to a wide variety of resources
Video
Walter Rauschenbusch was a passionate advocate of ‘Social Gospel’ movement. His Christian convictions were centred on a notion of the Kingdom of God whose norms were demanding a radical transformation of the current social order. His direct exposure to the living and working conditions in the ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ of downtown New York gave realism to all his writing and preaching. Education and prayer alike were agencies for moral and social awakening.
Life
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Robert Redfield was a cultural anthropologist who drew on Mexican fieldwork to interpret contemporary urban society in America. He developed the notion of the folk-urban continuum, indicating that small scale societies and subcultures do interlink with larger scale settings. Moral self-understanding is not just one or the other, but is a both-and condition.
Life
- Brief Britannia biography of Redfield
- Redfield and systems thinking
- Brief illustrated biography of Redfield
Writings
Pioneering exponent of the Defining Issues Test (DIT). From his base in the University of Minnesota Psychology Department he led a collaborative team of scholars to develop a user-friendly means of testing the stage of a person’s moral development. This was an extension of the cognitive-developmental approach of Lawrence Kohlberg.
Life
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Carl Rogers was an American psychotherapist, greatly influential in developing and promoting a non-directive form of counselling which avoided preconceived theories. It is distinctive in focussing on the individual/client, encouraging them to talk openly and reflectively about themselves with a trusted counsellor or in a collegial ‘encounter group’. Each individual is a moral end in his/her own right.
Life
Writings
- Significant Aspects of Client-Centered Therapy
- Some selections from the works of Rogers
- Counselling and Psychotherapy
Video
George Santayana was internationally well respected as a reflective writer who expressed his philosopher in poetry as much as academic treatises. He was a shrewd observer of human failings, both individual and social, and sceptical of the claims and dangers of institutional religions and romantic idealisms. He had simultaneous regard for natural beauty and moral sense.
Life
- Biography of Santayana from Poetry Foundation with links to some of his poems
- Entry on Santayana from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Writings
Probably the best known and most influential of exponents of physical conditioning to explain animal and human behaviour. His theories were based on decades of laboratory experiments with animals complemented by others working nationally and internationally. The pattern of stimulation-response-reinforcement is remarked as dominant throughout all life. It shows why belief in freedom of the will is an illusion. Classically his Superstition in the pigeon is a model for declaring that all religious beliefs are of little worth, as is morality which has limited effect. However there is another way of interpreting his position. The utopian vision for community as illustrated in his novel Walden Two can be interpreted as an invitation to his readers not only to examine the determinants that are conditioning their behaviour but to go on to identify what they might do to behave differently.
Life
Writings
- 'Superstition' in the Pigeon
- The Origins of Cognitive Thought
- Verbal Behavior
- Skinner's rat experiment and operant conditioning
Video
Founder of the Mormons in 1830, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. He based this on his experience of an angel messenger some eight years earlier telling where revelatory golden tablets might be found which tell of the earlier settlement of the lost tribes of Israel in America in the 5th century followed by appearances there of the risen Christ. His desire to share this message with others – his missionary zeal – has become a characteristic obligation on those who have become Mormon followers, whether in Utah or throughout the world. His distinctive beliefs were accompanied by distinctive values, including multiple marriage and baptism as a mark of repentance for entry to a coming millennial kingdom – which could also be carried out on behalf of those already dead. Morality and supportive education were a necessary priority for him. However, as with any religious truth claims in which history is involved, independent analysis raises some challenging questions about the extent to which factual corroboration is at all decisive.
Life
- The life of Smith and the early history of the Mormons
- Britannica biography of Smith
- Smith and polygamy
Writings
Widely influential within the US and beyond through his books providing child-rearing advice. Critics subsequently attributed to him a general permissive attitude which contributed to growing social opposition to the Vietnam war. That there might be a connection between early childhood education and political convictions is a reminder that how any adults interact with young children is a fundamental issue for moral education. That Benjamin Spock won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics is certain fact; that the Star Trek character played by Leonard Nimoy is derived from him is conjecture..
Life
- Entry on Spock from the Encyclopedia of World Biography
- Spock, Darwin and morality
- An overview of Spock's life and work
- Spock's life, work and influence
Video
John Steinbeck was a journalist and novelist who in his writing conveyed in graphic detail the questions of human value and meaning, justice and fairness arising in everyday life. Though most of his writing is rooted in and around California, he conveys an appreciation of diversity and universal moral anguish.
Life
- Nobel Prize biography of Steinbeck with links to other resources
- An obituary of Steinbeck
- Biography of Steinbeck from the Steinbeck Center website with links to other resources
Writings
Video
Shawnee Indian leader who campaigned against continuing land sales to White settlers and for a separate Indian state for Native American people. This would have extended from the Great Lakes in the north to Mexico in the south west. He lived, taught and fought with the moral conviction that like the oceans and the air, land cannot be bought.
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Henry Thoreau was an enthusiast for a simple style of life – appreciating natural surrounds of a rural environment and avoiding the impositions of corrupt bureaucracy. He develops a clear rationale for civil disobedience against injustice, including that of slavery.
Life
- Entry on Thoreau from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Biography of Thoreau from the Thoreau Society website
Writings
Paul Tillich spent the first half of his life in Germany, including work as an army chaplain during World War 1, engaging in post-war re-thinking and activity from university positions, and challenging the anti-Jewish momentum. Following loss of university job in 1933, he relocated to New York and for the second half of his life sought to address the challenge of relevance: what genuine contribution can Christianity – or other religions – make to human understanding in a world of increasingly pervasive secular science, culture and politics? He drew on existentialist philosophy, depth psychology and sociology and expressed his thinking in works of systematic theology, student encounter and sermons.
Life
- Tillich's life and thought
- Tillich and his influence on Martin Luther King
- Tillich's life, work and significance
Writings
- A Tillich bibliography with links to other resources
- 'The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich' by Alexander J McKelway
- The New Being
Video
Mark Twain is the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was a reporter and editor for a succession of newspapers, his writings were extensive and especially with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn widely read within North America and abroad. He was a keen observer of everyday human behaviour and society at large. He ‘debunked’ unthinking pretensions in a way that combined humour with common sense morality. His opposition to slavery and empathy for American Indians became stronger in his later years.
Life
- Biography of Twain with links to many of his works
- Illustrated biography of Twain with links
- Substantial Poetry Foundation biography of Twain
Writings
From a Burmese Buddhist background, as a teacher he became active in national politics. He had senior ministerial roles including responsibility for Education and subsequently as Ambassador to the UN. He became Secretary General of the United Nations following Dag Hammarskjold’s death. He held that position 1961 – 71 coincidental with the UN’s Development Decade. Mediation in conflict situations and global equity were his evident priorities throughout.
Life
- A substantial illustrated biography of U Thant
- U Thant and the United Nations
- U Thant: Buddhism in action
Writings
Video
George Washington was the first President of the USA. Experienced in estate management and the use of arms from his own family background, he had a major leadership role in the military struggle against British domination. His position as Chief Magistrate and President emerged during two years of constitutional discussions 1787-9. Seen by many as ‘a Christian soldier defending rights and liberties’, his status as a moral mentor relies on a mixture of historical and apocryphal. There is evidence that his own character was shaped by his youthful focus on a popular list of 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.
Life
- A biography of Washington
- The life, career and times of Washington with links to a wide range of resources
Writings
Also known as Jack Wilson, Wovoka was the initiator of Ghost Dance Movement amongst North American Indians. Drawing on personal visions and tribal traditions, his own initiating message was to call for a radically peaceable lifestyle in response to oppression by White people – they faced imminent destruction. Though it was the Sioux who were massacred at Wounded Knee, Wovoka’s message of living a moral life continued to have an appeal in the development of Pan-Indian identity.
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John Yoder was an American social ethicist with strong Mennonite/Anabaptist roots. Until recently he was best known for his exposition of Christian pacifism which is the direct expression of a radical response to the gospel message of Jesus. Now as a result of documented sexual wrongdoing this scandal is what is most remarked. The question of whether or not that invalidates his moral and religious views is now widely debated. It coincides with the extensive documentation of sexual abuse on the part of senior figures across the world’s religions. This leads some to observe that this exposes the hypocrisy of religions and therefore the world would be better off without all of them. A wiser conclusion may be that there is confirmation here regarding the urgency of more open debate within every world view regarding sexual behaviour and related ethics.
Life
Video
Brigham Young was a Mormon preacher who did much to make the faith known in Canada and England, attracting thousands of followers. He succeeded Joseph Smith as leader and following expulsion of the community from Illinois, he headed the drive to Utah which became and has remained the secure home for the faithful and their extended families. His own polygamous life style is well documented, including his tussles with both state and federal authorities; less noticed is the motivation from his faith to establish public utilities in the region – road, rail, and distribution services for farming.
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Writings