perfectibility love

Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The doctrine that historical religion will gradually lose its tempoary and local character and be perfected according to the ideal formed by reason. This idea was suggested by Lessing.
  • noun The property of being perfectible; the property of being susceptible of becoming or being made perfect; specifically, the capability of arriving at perfection in this life, whether a general perfection of the human faculties or Christian perfection.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being perfectible.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The possibility of achieving perfection.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the capability of becoming perfect

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Last week I reread Gulliver's Travels, it's for the chapter I'm writing for the book on breeding the chapter's about the idea of perfectibility, Swift to Godwin, with digressions on horse-breeding and cultural versus genetic perfectibility; Swift really is the most amazing writer, there's no one else like him.

    Derek Mahon on Swift's poetry Jenny Davidson 2006

  • Where then is the sense of calling the perfectibility of man as used by modern philosophers to be mere words without a meaning, that is mere nonsense.

    The Thirsty Theologian 2008

  • Returning to that "perfectibility" argument I was making a couple of weeks ago, Luthor believes he's earned the right to occupy Superman's cultural role--his idea of perfection is defined in terms of power and prestige, and you don't get much more of that than being the U.S.

    Week 3: The Not-So-Amazing Story of Luthor-Green and Luthor-Blue! Douglas Wolk 2006

  • Returning to that "perfectibility" argument I was making a couple of weeks ago, Luthor believes he's earned the right to occupy Superman's cultural role--his idea of perfection is defined in terms of power and prestige, and you don't get much more of that than being the U.S.

    Archive 2006-05-01 Douglas Wolk 2006

  • Hogg laughed at him for his belief in the 'perfectibility' of the race, but Hogg knew the belief was vital to the poet.

    Recent Developments in European Thought Various

  • Malthus argues that 'perfectibility' gives an impossible end because equality would lead to vice and misery.

    The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) James Mill Leslie Stephen 1868

  • "perfectibility," which rests on much less impressive evidence.

    The Idea of Progress An inguiry into its origin and growth 1894

  • But the complexity of his own world view he opposed British involvement in the war but was himself a power-worshiper with a totalitarian itch who believed passionately in human perfectibility charges what might have been a standard-issue Shavian sermon with the multilayered ambiguity of high art.

    Smile as the Bomb Goes Off Terry Teachout 2011

  • Does his benevolent intention, his belief in "the perfectibility of mankind," mitigate his culpability in any way?

    The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd: Questions 2009

  • Sociologists have been seduced by Marxist ideas about the perfectibility of mankind.

    ID/Evolution 2009

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