Literary notes about disinterested (AI summary)
The term “disinterested” has been employed by authors over time to evoke a range of meanings—from a stance of objective impartiality to an expression of selfless, noble affection. In works like Kant’s Critique of Judgement ([1]) and sociological treatises ([2], [3]), "disinterested" describes the detached, unbiased observer, essential for aesthetic or scientific evaluation. Conversely, in texts such as Shelley's Frankenstein ([4]), Rousseau’s social philosophy ([5]), and Jacobs’s personal narrative ([6]), the word conveys a selfless, even pure, mode of affection and duty, unmarred by personal gain. Authors like Dickens ([7], [8], [9]), Hardy ([10], [11]), and Thoreau ([12], [13]) demonstrate this dual usage—where a “disinterested” character may either be seen as a courteous, objective bystander or as someone whose love and virtue are entirely unselfish—which reflects the evolving nuance of the term in literature.
- The satisfaction which determines the judgement of taste is disinterested 46 § 3.
— from Kant's Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant - All this has prepared the way for a science of human nature and of society based upon objective and disinterested observation.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - This negative criticism of preconceived notions and speculations about human nature prepared the way for disinterested observation and comparison.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - I, who have so disinterested an affection for you, may increase your miseries tenfold by being an obstacle to your wishes.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Filled with a tender and disinterested love for my distant fellow-citizens, I should have addressed them from my heart, much in the following terms.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - When my friend came for the letters, I said, "God bless and reward you, Peter, for this disinterested kindness.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. Jacobs - 'Here's a perfectly disinterested person, Lizzie dear,' said the knowing Miss Wren, 'come to talk with you, for your own sake and your brother's.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens - Considerations of duty and responsibility apart, the change might have taken its rise in feelings of the purest and most disinterested charity.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens - Now, his devotion to you must be a disinterested one; mustn't it?
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens - She had not known that men could be so disinterested, chivalrous, protective, in their love for women as he.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy - Felix, though an offshoot from a far more recent point in the devolution of theology than his father, was less self-sacrificing and disinterested.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy - The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau - The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.
— from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
