William Graham Sumner
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Before the tribunal of nature a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake; he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence..."— William Graham Sumner's criticism of natural rights, in Earth-Hunger and Other Essays, p. 234. "The English language has no derivative noun from "mores," and no equivalent for it. The French mœurs is trivial compared with "mores." The German Sitte renders "mores" but very imperfectly. The modern peoples have made morals and morality a separate domain, by the side of religion, philosophy, and politics. In that sense, morals is an impossible and unreal category. It has no existence, and can have none."--Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals (1907) by William Graham Sumner |
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William Graham Sumner (October 30, 1840 – April 12, 1910) was an American sociologist.
He was a polymath with numerous books and essays on American history, economic history, political theory, sociology, and anthropology.
He is credited with introducing the term "ethnocentrism," a term intended to identify imperialists' chief means of justification, in his book Folkways (1906). Sumner is often seen as a proto-libertarian.
He supported laissez-faire economics, free markets, and the gold standard. He was a spokesman against it he was in favor of the "forgotten man" of the middle class, a term he coined. He had a long-term influence on conservatism in the United States.
Sumner was a critic of natural rights, famously arguing
- "Before the tribunal of nature a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake; he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence..."
Sociologist
As a sociologist, his major accomplishments were developing the concepts of diffusion, folkways, and ethnocentrism. Sumner's work with folkways led him to conclude that attempts at government-mandated reform were useless.
Folkways
Sumner's most popular book is Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals (1907). Starting with four theoretical chapters, it provides a frank, objective, and candid description of the nature of many of the more important customs and institutions in societies past and present around the world. The book promotes a sociological or relativistic approach to moral behavior, as expressed in his thesis that "the mores can make anything right and prevent condemnation of anything." (p. 521)
