Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882)

Green was professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford and had major influence during the later 19th and early 20th century in the shift from classical liberalism to the modern socialistic liberalism of both England and America. This selection from his lectures covers two major parts of his thought and message. The first and shorter is his discussion of the ‘senses of freedom’. After looking into and discarding the ‘free will’ religious controversy, Green finally defines freedom as having the ability to act in ways that advance our society. His view seems to me very relativistic, with major effects (and not good ones to an individualist) on views of ethics, justice, and rights.

Greens major subject is the title one of political obligations; which he defines as “…obligations of the subject towards the sovereign,… the citizen toward the state, and…individuals toward each other as enforced by a political superior.” He expects his results to be reasons to obey the law and what those laws should be. He proceeds in great detail to trace the history of his duties and rights from the ancient Greeks and Romans through Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. His conclusion appears to be that rights are defined by the state, which in turn is defined by popular will. Duties are to supports those rights, and obey the laws.

One of the things I expect to see in a review for this type of work is an opinion as to validity of the reasoning and conclusions. In this case, one can only say that if you are left or government oriented you will approve, yet if you are right or individual oriented you won’t. What Green did was to lay a framework or logical ground for the welfare state, especially including education and justice. The logical implementation of some of his obligations gives rise to social security and modern positions as espoused by Labor and Social Democratic Parties; and ultimately to things like Rawls ‘distributive justice’.

Overall, I found the style oppressive. Although sometimes very clear, other sections must be read aloud and the atmosphere of a lecture recreated to enable understanding. It is important only to deep students, but does have the use of applying reason and morality to the left or modern liberal positions. While that student may agree or disagree with Green, that reasoning is important in that it is usually omitted from discussion.… (mere)