moralism

From French moralisme

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmɒɹəlɪzm/

moralism (usually uncountable, plural moralisms)

1. (uncountable, often derogatory) The act or practice of moralizing (making moral reflections or judging the morality of others).
   • 1937, Helen Foster Snow (as Nym Wales), “The Modern Chinese Literary Movement” in Edgar Snow (ed.), Living China: Modern Chinese Short Stories, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 337,

     The Romantic movement […] struggled for ‘art for art’s sake’ against the old moralism and didacticism […]

   • 1982, Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air, Penguin, 1988, Part 1, pp. 53-54,

     It is a bitter fact of life that, despite the air of pious moralism that chokes this cramped town, a rich man’s mistress still counts for more than a hungry saint.

   • 2011, Donald Weinstein, Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet, New Haven: Yale University Press, Chapter 1, p. 8,

     Reared by conventionally pious parents, Girolamo also imbibed more than a little of his grandfather’s dour moralism along with his Latin lessons, Bible studies, and Saint Thomas.

2. (countable, often derogatory) A maxim or saying believed by the speaker to embody a moral truth; an instance of moralizing.
   • 1859, Frederic Farrar, Julian Home, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1860, Chapter 20, p. 244,

     There was a delicious spice of worldliness in the topics of conversation which was quite refreshing to him, accustomed as he was to the somewhat droning moralisms of his “congenial friends.”

   • 1923, D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, New York: Viking, 1964, Chapter 2, p. 21,

     Now is your chance, Europe. […] paddle your own canoe on a new sea, while clever America lies on her muck-heaps of gold, strangled in her own barbed wire of shalt-not ideals and shalt-not moralisms.

3. (uncountable, dated) Religious practice that focuses on morality while placing little emphasis on doctrine or the metaphysical; adherence to a system of morality with little or no reference to religion.
   • 1904, Robert Herrick, The Common Lot, New York: Macmillan, Chapter 17, p. 230,

     That thin, colorless protestantism of her fathers had faded into a nameless moralism. She had no Christ before whom she could pour her adoration and love. Instead, she had taken to herself a man; and now the clay of his being was crumbling in her hands....

   • 1948, Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (translator), Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann, New York: Knopf, Chapter 11,

     The scientific superiority of liberal theology, it is now said, is indeed incontestable, but its theological position is weak, for its moralism and humanism lack insight into the dæmonic character of human existence.

• amoralism
• immoralism
• moralise, moralize
• moralist
• moralistic