Thomas Hill Green
Encyclopedia
Thomas Hill Green was an English
philosopher, political radical
and temperance
reformer, and a member of the British idealism
movement. Like all the British idealists, Green was influenced by the metaphysical
historicism
of G.W.F. Hegel. He was one of the thinkers behind the philosophy of social liberalism
.
, in the West Riding of Yorkshire
, England, where his father was rector. On the paternal side, he was descended from Oliver Cromwell
. His education was conducted entirely at home until, at the age of 14, he entered Rugby
, where he remained for five years.
In 1855, he became an undergraduate member of Balliol College, Oxford
, and was elected fellow in 1860. He began a life of teaching (mainly philosophical) in the university — first as college tutor, afterwards, from 1878 until his death, as Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy
.
The lectures he delivered as professor form the substance of his two most important works, viz, the Prolegomena to Ethics and the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation,which contain the whole of his positive constructive teaching. These works were not published until after his death, but Green's views were previously known indirectly through the Introduction to the standard edition of Hume
's works by Green and T. H. Grose, fellow of Queen's College
, in which the doctrine of the "English" or "empirical" philosophy was exhaustively examined.
(The Philosophical Works of David Hume, ed. by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, 4 vol. (1882–86)).
Green was involved in local politics for many years, through the University, temperance societies and the local Oxford Liberal association. During the passage of the Second Reform Act, he campaigned for the franchise to be extended to all men living in boroughs, even if they did not own real property. In this sense, Green's position was more radical than that of most other Advanced Liberals, including Gladstone
.
It was in the context of his Liberal party activities that in 1881 Green gave what became one of his most famous statements of his liberal political philosophy, the Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract. At this time, he was also lecturing on religion, epistemology, ethics and political philosophy.
Most of his major works were published posthumously, including his lay sermons on Faith and The Witness of God, the essay On the Different Senses of "Freedom" as Applied to Will and the Moral Progress of Man, Prolegomena to Ethics, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, and the Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract.
Green died from blood poisoning on March 15, 1882, age 45. In addition to Green's friends from his academic life, approximately two thousand local townspeople attended his funeral.
He helped to found the City of Oxford High School for Boys
.
and biological evolution
(including Herbert Spencer
) were chief features in English thought during the third quarter of the 19th century. Green represents primarily the reaction against such doctrines. Green argued that when these doctrines were carried to their logical conclusion, they not only "rendered all philosophy futile", but were fatal to practical life. By reducing the human mind to a series of unrelated atomic sensations, these related teachings destroyed the possibility of knowledge
, he argued. These teachings were especially important for Green to refute because they had underpinned the conception of mind that was held by the nascent science of psychology. Green tried to deflate the pretensions of psychologists who had claimed that their young field would provide a scientific replacement for traditional epistemology and metaphysics.
Green further objected that such empiricists represented a person as a "being who is simply the result of natural forces", and thereby made conduct, or any theory of conduct, meaningless; for life in any human, intelligible sense implies a personal self that (1) knows what to do, and (2) has power to do it. Green was thus driven, not theoretically, but as a practical necessity, to raise again the whole question of humankind in relation to nature. When (he held) we have discovered what a person in themselves are, and what their relation to their environment is, we shall then know their function—what they are fitted to do. In the light of this knowledge, we shall be able to formulate the moral code, which, in turn, will serve as a criterion of actual civic and social institutions. These form, naturally and necessarily, the objective expression of moral ideas, and it is in some civic or social whole that the moral ideal must finally take concrete shape.
are the only facts that, to begin with, we are justified in asserting to exist. On the other hand, they are valid evidence for whatever is necessary to their own explanation, i.e. for whatever is logically involved in them. Now the most striking characteristic of humans, that in fact which marks them specially, as contrasted with other animals, is self-consciousness. The simplest mental act into which we can analyse the operations of the human mind—the act of sense-perception—is never merely a change, physical or psychical, but is the consciousness of a change.
Human experience consists, not of processes in an animal organism, but of these processes recognized as such. That which we perceive is from the outset an apprehended fact—that is to say, it cannot be analysed into isolated elements (so-called sensations) which, as such, are not constituents of consciousness at all, but exist from the first as a synthesis of relations in a consciousness which keeps distinct the "self" and the various elements of the "object," though holding all together in the unity of the act of perception. In other words, the whole mental structure we call knowledge consists, in its simplest equally with its most complex constituents, of the "work of the mind." Locke
and Hume held that the work of the mind was eo ipso [by that very act] unreal because it was "made by" humans and not "given to" humans. It thus represented a subjective creation, not an objective fact. But this consequence follows only upon the assumption that the work of the mind is arbitrary, an assumption shown to be unjustified by the results of exact science, with the distinction, universally recognized, which such science draws between truth and falsehood, between the real and "mere ideas." This (obviously valid) distinction logically involves the consequence that the object, or content, of knowledge, viz., reality, is an intelligible ideal reality, a system of thought relations, a spiritual cosmos. How is the existence of this ideal whole to be accounted for? Only by the existence of some "principle which renders all relations possible and is itself determined by none of them"; an eternal self-consciousness which knows in whole what we know in part. To God
the world is, to humans the world becomes. Human experience is God gradually made manifest.
applies to the peculiar conditions of social life—that investigation into human nature which metaphysics began. The faculty employed in this further investigation is no "separate moral faculty," but that same reason which is the source of all our knowledge - ethical and other.
Self-reflection gradually reveals to us human capacity, human function, with, consequently, human responsibility. It brings out into clear consciousness certain potentialities in the realization of which human's true good must consist. As the result of this analysis, combined with an investigation into the surroundings humans live in, a "content"—a moral code—becomes gradually evolved. Personal good is perceived to be realizable only by making real and actual the conceptions thus arrived at. So long as these remain potential or ideal, they form the motive of action; motive consisting always in the idea of some "end" or "good" that humans present to themselves as an end in the attainment of which he would be satisfied; that is, in the realization of which he would find his true self.
The determination to realize the self in some definite way constitutes an "act of will," which, as thus constituted, is neither arbitrary nor externally determined. For the motive which may be said to be its cause lies in the person himself, and the identification of the self with such a motive is a self-determination, which is at once both rational and free. The "freedom of man" is constituted, not by a supposed ability to do anything he may choose, but in the power to identify himself with that true good that reason reveals to him as his true good.
This good consists in the realization of personal character; hence the final good, i.e. the moral ideal, as a whole, can be realized only in some society of persons who, while remaining ends to themselves in the sense that their individuality is not lost but rendered more perfect, find this perfection attainable only when the separate individualities are integrated as part of a social whole.
Society is as necessary to form persons as persons are to constitute society. Social union is the indispensable condition of the development of the special capacities of its individual members. Human self-perfection cannot be gained in isolation; it is attainable only in inter-relation with fellow-citizens in the social community.
The law of our being, so revealed, involves in its turn civic or political duties
. Moral goodness cannot be limited to, still less constituted by, the cultivation of self-regarding virtues, but consists in the attempt to realize in practice that moral ideal that self-analysis has revealed to us as our ideal. From this fact arises the ground of political obligation, because the institutions of political or civic life are the concrete embodiment of moral ideas in terms of our day and generation. But, since society exists only for the proper development of Persons, we have a criterion by which to test these institutions—namely, do they, or do they not, contribute to the development of moral character in the individual citizens?
It is obvious that the final moral ideal is not realized in any body of civic institutions actually existing, but the same analysis that demonstrates this deficiency points out the direction that a true development will take.
Hence arises the conception of rights and duties that should be maintained by law, as opposed to those actually maintained; with the further consequence that it may become occasionally a moral duty to rebel against the state in the interest of the state itself—that is, in order better to subserve that end or function that constitutes the raison d'être of the state. The state does not consist in any definite concrete organization formed once for all. It represents a "general will" that is a desire for a common good. Its basis is not a coercive authority imposed upon the citizens from without, but consists in the spiritual recognition, on the part of the citizens, of that which constitutes their true nature. "Will, not force, is the basis of the state."
Green stressed the need for specific solutions to be tailored to fit specific problems. He stressed that there are no eternal solutions, no timeless division of responsibilities between national and local governmental units. The distribution of responsibilities should be guided by the imperative to enable as many individuals as possible to exercise their conscientious wills in particular contingent circumstances, as only in this way was it possible to foster individual self-realisation in the long-run. Deciding on the distribution of responsibilities was more a matter for practical politics than for ethical or political philosophy. Experience may show that the local and municipal levels are unable to control the harmful influences of, say, the brewery industry. When it did show this, the national state should take responsibility for this area of public policy.
Green argued that the ultimate power to decide on the allocation of such tasks should rest with the national state (in Britain, for instance, embodied in Parliament). The national state itself is legitimate for Green to the extent that it upholds a system of rights and obligations that is most likely to foster individual self-realisation. Yet, the most appropriate structure of this system is determined neither by purely political calculation nor by philosophical speculation. It is more accurate to say that it arose from the underlying conceptual and normative structure of one's particular society.
, and his personal example in practical municipal life, inspired much of the effort made in the years succeeding his death to bring the universities more into touch with the people, and to break down the rigour of class
distinctions. His ideas spread to the University of St. Andrews through the influence of Prof. David George Ritchie
, a former student of his, who eventually helped found the Aristotelian Society
.
Green was directly cited by many social liberal politicians, such as Herbert Samuel
and H. H. Asquith
, as an influence on their thought. It is no coincidence that these politicians were educated at Balliol College, Oxford. Roy Hattersley
called for Green's work to be applied to the problems of 21st century Britain.
(4th ed., 1899). Shortly afterwards, R. L. Nettleship
's standard edition of his Works (exclusive of the Prolegomena) appeared in three volumes:
All three volumes are available for download at Internet Archive
The Principles of Political Obligation was afterwards published in separate form. A criticism of Neo-Hegelianism will be found in Andrew Seth (Pringle Pattison), Hegelianism and Personality.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
philosopher, political radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
and temperance
Temperance movement
A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...
reformer, and a member of the British idealism
British idealism
A species of absolute idealism, British idealism was a philosophical movement that was influential in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The leading figures in the movement were T.H. Green , F. H. Bradley , and Bernard Bosanquet . They were succeeded by the...
movement. Like all the British idealists, Green was influenced by the metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
historicism
Historicism
Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...
of G.W.F. Hegel. He was one of the thinkers behind the philosophy of social liberalism
Social liberalism
Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...
.
Life
Green was born at BirkinBirkin
Birkin is a village and civil parish in the south-west of the Selby district of North Yorkshire, England. It is north of the River Aire, near Beal, North Yorkshire. The closest town is Knottingley, in West Yorkshire, four miles to the south-west. According to the 2001 census the parish had a...
, in the West Riding of Yorkshire
West Riding of Yorkshire
The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of the three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county, County of York, West Riding , was based closely on the historic boundaries...
, England, where his father was rector. On the paternal side, he was descended from Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
. His education was conducted entirely at home until, at the age of 14, he entered Rugby
Rugby School
Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...
, where he remained for five years.
In 1855, he became an undergraduate member of Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
, and was elected fellow in 1860. He began a life of teaching (mainly philosophical) in the university — first as college tutor, afterwards, from 1878 until his death, as Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy
White's Chair of Moral Philosophy
Endowed in 1621 by Thomas White , DD, Canon of Christ Church, the White's Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford is, according to the website of the Oxford Centre for Ethics and Philosophy of Law, perhaps the most prestigious chair of moral philosophy in the world.Under the original...
.
The lectures he delivered as professor form the substance of his two most important works, viz, the Prolegomena to Ethics and the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation,which contain the whole of his positive constructive teaching. These works were not published until after his death, but Green's views were previously known indirectly through the Introduction to the standard edition of Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
's works by Green and T. H. Grose, fellow of Queen's College
The Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its 18th-century architecture...
, in which the doctrine of the "English" or "empirical" philosophy was exhaustively examined.
(The Philosophical Works of David Hume, ed. by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, 4 vol. (1882–86)).
Green was involved in local politics for many years, through the University, temperance societies and the local Oxford Liberal association. During the passage of the Second Reform Act, he campaigned for the franchise to be extended to all men living in boroughs, even if they did not own real property. In this sense, Green's position was more radical than that of most other Advanced Liberals, including Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
.
It was in the context of his Liberal party activities that in 1881 Green gave what became one of his most famous statements of his liberal political philosophy, the Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract. At this time, he was also lecturing on religion, epistemology, ethics and political philosophy.
Most of his major works were published posthumously, including his lay sermons on Faith and The Witness of God, the essay On the Different Senses of "Freedom" as Applied to Will and the Moral Progress of Man, Prolegomena to Ethics, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, and the Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract.
Green died from blood poisoning on March 15, 1882, age 45. In addition to Green's friends from his academic life, approximately two thousand local townspeople attended his funeral.
He helped to found the City of Oxford High School for Boys
City of Oxford High School for Boys
The City of Oxford High School for Boys was founded in 1881 by Thomas Hill Green to provide Oxford boys with an education which would enable them to prepare for University.-History:...
.
Thought
Hume's empiricismEmpiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
and biological evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
(including Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
) were chief features in English thought during the third quarter of the 19th century. Green represents primarily the reaction against such doctrines. Green argued that when these doctrines were carried to their logical conclusion, they not only "rendered all philosophy futile", but were fatal to practical life. By reducing the human mind to a series of unrelated atomic sensations, these related teachings destroyed the possibility of knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
, he argued. These teachings were especially important for Green to refute because they had underpinned the conception of mind that was held by the nascent science of psychology. Green tried to deflate the pretensions of psychologists who had claimed that their young field would provide a scientific replacement for traditional epistemology and metaphysics.
Green further objected that such empiricists represented a person as a "being who is simply the result of natural forces", and thereby made conduct, or any theory of conduct, meaningless; for life in any human, intelligible sense implies a personal self that (1) knows what to do, and (2) has power to do it. Green was thus driven, not theoretically, but as a practical necessity, to raise again the whole question of humankind in relation to nature. When (he held) we have discovered what a person in themselves are, and what their relation to their environment is, we shall then know their function—what they are fitted to do. In the light of this knowledge, we shall be able to formulate the moral code, which, in turn, will serve as a criterion of actual civic and social institutions. These form, naturally and necessarily, the objective expression of moral ideas, and it is in some civic or social whole that the moral ideal must finally take concrete shape.
What is man?
To ask "What is man?" is to ask "What is experience?" for experience means that of which I am conscious. The facts of consciousnessConsciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
are the only facts that, to begin with, we are justified in asserting to exist. On the other hand, they are valid evidence for whatever is necessary to their own explanation, i.e. for whatever is logically involved in them. Now the most striking characteristic of humans, that in fact which marks them specially, as contrasted with other animals, is self-consciousness. The simplest mental act into which we can analyse the operations of the human mind—the act of sense-perception—is never merely a change, physical or psychical, but is the consciousness of a change.
Human experience consists, not of processes in an animal organism, but of these processes recognized as such. That which we perceive is from the outset an apprehended fact—that is to say, it cannot be analysed into isolated elements (so-called sensations) which, as such, are not constituents of consciousness at all, but exist from the first as a synthesis of relations in a consciousness which keeps distinct the "self" and the various elements of the "object," though holding all together in the unity of the act of perception. In other words, the whole mental structure we call knowledge consists, in its simplest equally with its most complex constituents, of the "work of the mind." Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
and Hume held that the work of the mind was eo ipso [by that very act] unreal because it was "made by" humans and not "given to" humans. It thus represented a subjective creation, not an objective fact. But this consequence follows only upon the assumption that the work of the mind is arbitrary, an assumption shown to be unjustified by the results of exact science, with the distinction, universally recognized, which such science draws between truth and falsehood, between the real and "mere ideas." This (obviously valid) distinction logically involves the consequence that the object, or content, of knowledge, viz., reality, is an intelligible ideal reality, a system of thought relations, a spiritual cosmos. How is the existence of this ideal whole to be accounted for? Only by the existence of some "principle which renders all relations possible and is itself determined by none of them"; an eternal self-consciousness which knows in whole what we know in part. To God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
the world is, to humans the world becomes. Human experience is God gradually made manifest.
Moral philosophy
Carrying on the same analytical method into the area of moral philosophy, Green argued that ethicsEthics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
applies to the peculiar conditions of social life—that investigation into human nature which metaphysics began. The faculty employed in this further investigation is no "separate moral faculty," but that same reason which is the source of all our knowledge - ethical and other.
Self-reflection gradually reveals to us human capacity, human function, with, consequently, human responsibility. It brings out into clear consciousness certain potentialities in the realization of which human's true good must consist. As the result of this analysis, combined with an investigation into the surroundings humans live in, a "content"—a moral code—becomes gradually evolved. Personal good is perceived to be realizable only by making real and actual the conceptions thus arrived at. So long as these remain potential or ideal, they form the motive of action; motive consisting always in the idea of some "end" or "good" that humans present to themselves as an end in the attainment of which he would be satisfied; that is, in the realization of which he would find his true self.
The determination to realize the self in some definite way constitutes an "act of will," which, as thus constituted, is neither arbitrary nor externally determined. For the motive which may be said to be its cause lies in the person himself, and the identification of the self with such a motive is a self-determination, which is at once both rational and free. The "freedom of man" is constituted, not by a supposed ability to do anything he may choose, but in the power to identify himself with that true good that reason reveals to him as his true good.
This good consists in the realization of personal character; hence the final good, i.e. the moral ideal, as a whole, can be realized only in some society of persons who, while remaining ends to themselves in the sense that their individuality is not lost but rendered more perfect, find this perfection attainable only when the separate individualities are integrated as part of a social whole.
Society is as necessary to form persons as persons are to constitute society. Social union is the indispensable condition of the development of the special capacities of its individual members. Human self-perfection cannot be gained in isolation; it is attainable only in inter-relation with fellow-citizens in the social community.
The law of our being, so revealed, involves in its turn civic or political duties
Duty
Duty is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action and it is not a matter of passive feeling or mere recognition...
. Moral goodness cannot be limited to, still less constituted by, the cultivation of self-regarding virtues, but consists in the attempt to realize in practice that moral ideal that self-analysis has revealed to us as our ideal. From this fact arises the ground of political obligation, because the institutions of political or civic life are the concrete embodiment of moral ideas in terms of our day and generation. But, since society exists only for the proper development of Persons, we have a criterion by which to test these institutions—namely, do they, or do they not, contribute to the development of moral character in the individual citizens?
It is obvious that the final moral ideal is not realized in any body of civic institutions actually existing, but the same analysis that demonstrates this deficiency points out the direction that a true development will take.
Hence arises the conception of rights and duties that should be maintained by law, as opposed to those actually maintained; with the further consequence that it may become occasionally a moral duty to rebel against the state in the interest of the state itself—that is, in order better to subserve that end or function that constitutes the raison d'être of the state. The state does not consist in any definite concrete organization formed once for all. It represents a "general will" that is a desire for a common good. Its basis is not a coercive authority imposed upon the citizens from without, but consists in the spiritual recognition, on the part of the citizens, of that which constitutes their true nature. "Will, not force, is the basis of the state."
Philosophy of State Action
Green believed that the state should foster and protect the social, political and economic environments in which individuals will have the best chance of acting according to their consciences. But the state must be careful when deciding which liberties to curtail and in which ways to curtail them. Over-enthusiastic or clumsy state intervention could easily close down opportunities for conscientious action thereby stifling the moral development of the individual. The state should intervene only where there is a clear, proven and strong tendency of a liberty to enslave the individual. Even when such a hazard had been identified, Green tended to favour action by the affected community itself rather than national state action itself — local councils and municipal authorities tended to produce measures that were more imaginative and better suited to the daily reality of a social problem. Hence he favoured the "local option" where local people decided on the issuing of liquor licences in their area, through their town councils.Green stressed the need for specific solutions to be tailored to fit specific problems. He stressed that there are no eternal solutions, no timeless division of responsibilities between national and local governmental units. The distribution of responsibilities should be guided by the imperative to enable as many individuals as possible to exercise their conscientious wills in particular contingent circumstances, as only in this way was it possible to foster individual self-realisation in the long-run. Deciding on the distribution of responsibilities was more a matter for practical politics than for ethical or political philosophy. Experience may show that the local and municipal levels are unable to control the harmful influences of, say, the brewery industry. When it did show this, the national state should take responsibility for this area of public policy.
Green argued that the ultimate power to decide on the allocation of such tasks should rest with the national state (in Britain, for instance, embodied in Parliament). The national state itself is legitimate for Green to the extent that it upholds a system of rights and obligations that is most likely to foster individual self-realisation. Yet, the most appropriate structure of this system is determined neither by purely political calculation nor by philosophical speculation. It is more accurate to say that it arose from the underlying conceptual and normative structure of one's particular society.
Influence of Green's thought
Green's teaching was, directly and indirectly, the most potent philosophical influence in England during the last quarter of the 19th century, while his enthusiasm for a common citizenshipCitizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
, and his personal example in practical municipal life, inspired much of the effort made in the years succeeding his death to bring the universities more into touch with the people, and to break down the rigour of class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
distinctions. His ideas spread to the University of St. Andrews through the influence of Prof. David George Ritchie
David George Ritchie
David George Ritchie was a Scottish philosopher who had a distinguished university career at Edinburgh, and Balliol College, Oxford, and after being fellow of Jesus and tutor of Balliol was elected professor of logic and metaphysics at St Andrews...
, a former student of his, who eventually helped found the Aristotelian Society
Aristotelian Society
The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Square which resolved "to constitute a society of about twenty and to include ladies; the society to meet fortnightly, on Mondays at 8 o'clock, at the rooms of the Spelling...
.
Green was directly cited by many social liberal politicians, such as Herbert Samuel
Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel
Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel GCB OM GBE PC was a British politician and diplomat.-Early years:...
and H. H. Asquith
H. H. Asquith
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, PC, KC served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916...
, as an influence on their thought. It is no coincidence that these politicians were educated at Balliol College, Oxford. Roy Hattersley
Roy Hattersley
Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley is a British Labour politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.-Early life:...
called for Green's work to be applied to the problems of 21st century Britain.
Works and commentary
Green's most important treatise—the Prolegomena to Ethics, practically complete in manuscript at his death—was published in the year following, under the editorship of A. C. BradleyAndrew Cecil Bradley
Andrew Cecil Bradley was an English literary scholar, best remembered for his work on Shakespeare.-Life:...
(4th ed., 1899). Shortly afterwards, R. L. Nettleship
Richard Lewis Nettleship
Richard Lewis Nettleship , English philosopher, youngest brother of Henry Nettleship, was educated at Uppingham and Balliol College, Oxford, where he held a scholarship....
's standard edition of his Works (exclusive of the Prolegomena) appeared in three volumes:
- Reprints of Green's criticism of Hume, Spencer, G. H. Lewes
- Lectures on Kant, on Logic, on the Principles of Political Obligation
- Miscellanies, preceded by a full Memoir by the Editor.
All three volumes are available for download at Internet Archive
The Principles of Political Obligation was afterwards published in separate form. A criticism of Neo-Hegelianism will be found in Andrew Seth (Pringle Pattison), Hegelianism and Personality.
- Hume and Locke, Apollo Editions, 425 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016, 1968 (Reprint of Thomas Y. Crowell Company edition). Contains Green's "Introductions to Hume's Treatise of Human Nature" and also Green's "Introduction to the Moral Part of Hume's Treatise"
See also
- Articles in Mind (January and April 1884) by A. J. Balfour and Henry SidgwickHenry SidgwickHenry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women...
- In the Academy (xxviii. 242 and xxv. 297) by S. Alexander
- In the Philosophical Review (vi., 1897) by S. S. Laurie
- Geoffrey ThomasGeoffrey ThomasGeoffrey Price Thomas was President of Kellogg College, Oxford and Director of Oxford University Department for Continuing Education until 2008....
, The Moral Philosophy of T. H. Green (Oxford and New York 1988) - W. H. Fairbrother, Philosophy of T.H. Green (London and New York, 1896)
- David George RitchieDavid George RitchieDavid George Ritchie was a Scottish philosopher who had a distinguished university career at Edinburgh, and Balliol College, Oxford, and after being fellow of Jesus and tutor of Balliol was elected professor of logic and metaphysics at St Andrews...
, The Principles of State Interference (London, 1891) - Henry SidgwickHenry SidgwickHenry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women...
, Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant (London, 1905) - J. H. Muirhead, The Service of the State: Four Lectures on the Political Teaching of T. H. Green (1908)
- A. W. BennA. W. BennAlfred William Benn was an agnostic and an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association. His book A History of Modern Philosophy was published in the Thinker's Library series in 1930....
, English Rationalism in the XIXth Century (1906), vol. ii., pp. 401 foll. - T. H. Green, edited by John Morrow, The University of Auckland, New Zealand Series: International Library of Essays in the History of Social and Political Thought, Ashgate (New Zealand), 2007. ISBN 978-0-7546-2554-4
- T. H. Green: "Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy", William J. Mander and Maria Dimova-Cookson. Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0199271666
- T. H. Green's Moral and Political Philosophy: "A Phenomenological Perspective", Maria Dimova-Cookson. Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. ISBN 0333914457, ISBN 978-0333914458
- "The New Liberalism: An ideology of Social Reform", M. Freeden. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978
- "Thomas Hill-Green and the Development of Liberal-Democratic Thought", I. M. Greengarten, University of Toronto PressUniversity of Toronto PressUniversity of Toronto Press is Canada's leading scholarly publisher and one of the largest university presses in North America. Founded in 1901, UTP has published over 6,500 books, with well over 3,500 of these still in print....
, Toronto, 1981 - "T. H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism", Matt Carter. Imprint Academic, 2003. ISBN 9780907845324, ISBN 0907845320.
- "Human Rights in Ancient Rome", Richard Bauman. Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0415173205, ISBN 978-0415173209
- "Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green", David O. Brink. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.
- "T.H. Green: the common good society" by Avital Simhony, History of Political Thought, Vol. 14, Number 2, 1993, pp. 225–247