"civilize" is a correct and usable word in written English.
It is a verb meaning to bring someone or something to a more advanced state of development. Example sentence: "The Romans helped to civilize parts of Europe during their rule."
Civilizing people's speech will eventually civilize their mind (and hopefully in turn their non-linguistic actions) and — so Elster claims — "on the average, yield more equitable outcomes" (Elster 1995, 251).
There is a collective duty to enhance the civilizing potential of civilizing rational principles because of its potential to further civilize in the future, something that is intrinsically valuable.
Answering the first question is easy: if there's no evidence – even indirect evidence – for the civilizing value of literary fiction, we ought not to assume that it does civilize.
Motivated by Christian missionary zeal, the two believed that Africans in the New World should return to their homelands and convert and civilize the inhabitants there.
He employed typical empire-building logic in justifying continued military intervention in the Philippine archipelago, claiming that the United States had a moral and religious obligation to "civilize and Christianize" its residents.
Their social organization and traditional way of life destroyed, subjected to alien disease and attempts to "civilize" them, they soon died.
Caliban, too, must be freed, since Prospero has done what he could to educate and civilize this Natural Man.
Local counts did less to civilize the country than churchmen did; and under Charlemagne the abbot Alcuin enhanced its cultural prestige.
The Protestant missionaries encouraged settlement of the region by European Americans, thinking it would help in their attempts to "civilize" native peoples.
Although the labeling of a group as "savage" or "barbarous" was to some extent intended to convey specific technical information, the use of such easily misinterpreted labels also made the era's overtly racist colonial policies more palatable to the general public: it was considerably less morally taxing to "civilize the savages" than to "forcibly assimilate an indigenous people".
His thorough policies aimed to make Ireland financially self-sufficient; to enforce religious conformity with the Church of England as defined by Laud, Wentworth's close friend and ally; to "civilize" the Irish; and to extend royal control throughout Ireland by establishing British plantations and challenging Irish titles to land.
