John Stuart Stuart-Glennie (1841–1910) was a Scottish barrister, folklorist, philosopher, founding sociologist, and socialist.
Life
He was the son of Alexander Glennie of Maybank Aberdeen; John Stuart of Inchbreck was his maternal grandfather He was educated in law at the University of Aberdeen and University of Bonn and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple.
Stuart-Glennie later left the law and travelled in Europe and Asia to collect folklore. He wrote a series of books and numerous articles, developing a broad philosophy of history. He also contributed to the Folklore Society. His ideas were ahead of the time.
Views and associations
Eugene Halton has claimed that Stuart-Glennie’s most significant idea was his theory, first published in 1873, of what he termed "the moral revolution", delineating deep changes across different civilizations in the period 2,500 years ago, roughly centered around 600-500 BCE. It formed the second stage of his three stage "Ultimate Law of History." This historical shift around roughly 600 BCE in a variety of civilizations, most notably ancient China, India, Judaism, and Greece, was termed the axial age ("die Achsenzeit") by Karl Jaspers in 1949.
In his last publication on the moral revolution, published in 1906 in Sociological Papers, Stuart-Glennie reiterated his thesis: “…one great epoch can be signalised—that which I was, I believe, the first, thirty-two years ago ([In the Morningland:] “New Philosophy of History,” 1873), to point out as having occurred in the sixth (or fifth-sixth) century B.C. in all the countries of civilisation from the Hoangho to the Tiber. There arose then, as revolts against the old religions of outward observance or custom, new religions of inward purification or conscience—in China, Confucianism; in India, Buddhism; in Persia, Zoroastrianism; in Syria, Yahvehism (as a religion of the people rather than merely of the prophets), and changes of a similar character in the religions also of Egypt, of Greece, and of Italy.”
Stuart-Glennie's theory of the moral revolution was part of a broader three phase critical philosophy of history, which included gradations unexplored by Jaspers, such as a view of prehistory as “panzoonist” in outlook, a worldview of revering “all life” as a religious basis for conceiving nature. Stuart-Glennie proposed panzooinism in 1873 as an alternative to E. B. Tylor’s theory of animism, which appeared in 1871. Whereas Tylor’s idea of animism held that spirit inhabits things from without, Stuart-Glennie’s panzooinism allowed that inherent powers of nature are worthy of attention and devotion. Stuart-Glennie's model of religion and history thus originates out of perceptive relations to habitat, that is, as motivated by the belief in the livingness of things as providing clues for human living. As he put it in 1876, "the Civilisations prior to the Sixth Century B.C. were chiefly determined by the Powers and Aspects of Nature, and those posterior thereto by the Activities and Myths of Mind." By contrast, Jaspers denied major significance to religions prior to the axial age. Stuart-Glennie’s theory of the moral revolution is set in the context of a comparative theory of history that gave great attention to material conditions, as well as to pre-axial folk cultures and civilizations, both of which Jaspers undervalued or ignored. Where Jaspers’ theory of the axial age was flawed by ethnocentrism, Stuart-Glennie’s philosophy of history was unfortunately flawed by his acceptance of the “scientific” racism of the times, illustrated in his claim that civilization began in the “Conflict of Higher and Lower Races.”
As a young man of twenty-one Stuart-Glennie had met and traveled with the well-known philosopher John Stuart-Mill, whose middle name was given to him by his father, philosopher James Mill, to honor Stuart-Glennie's grandfather, Sir John Stuart. Mill approved of Stuart-Glennie's interests in positive science and history, and also influenced his conception of humanitarianism, which became a key element of Stuart-Glennie’s third phase of history. Mill said of Stuart-Glennie that he was, "a young man of, I think, considerable promise, who occupies himself very earnestly with the higher philosophical problems on the basis of positive science."