T. H.
Green
British educator and philosopher
born April
7, 1836, Birkin, Yorkshire, Eng.
died March 26, 1882, Oxford, Oxfordshire
Main
English educator, political theorist, and Idealist
philosopher of the so-called Neo-Kantian school. Through his
teaching, Green exerted great influence on philosophy in
late 19th-century England. Most of his life centred at
Oxford, where he was educated, elected a fellow in 1860,
served as a lecturer, and in 1878 was appointed professor of
moral philosophy. His lectures provided the basis for his
most significant works, Prolegomena to Ethics (1883) and
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation,
published in the collected Works, 3 vol. (1885–88).
Green’s
metaphysics begins with the question of man’s relation to
nature. Man, he said, is self-conscious. The simplest mental
act involves consciousness of changes and of distinctions
between the self and the object observed. To know, Green
asserted, is to be aware of relations between objects. Above
man—who can know only a small portion of such relations—is
God. This “principle which renders all relations possible
and is itself determined by none of them” is an eternal
self-consciousness.
Green based
his ethics on the spiritual nature of man. He maintained
that man’s determination to act upon his reflections is an
“act of will” and is not externally determined by God or any
other factor. According to Green, freedom is not the
supposed ability to do anything desired but is the power to
identify one’s self with the good that reason reveals as
one’s own true good.
Green’s
political philosophy enlarged upon his ethical system.
Ideally, political institutions embody the community’s moral
ideas and help develop the character of individual citizens.
Although existing institutions do not fully realize the
common ideal, the analysis that exposes their deficiencies
also indicates the path of true development. His original
view of personal self-realization also contained the notion
of political obligation, for citizens intent upon realizing
themselves will act as if by duty to improve the
institutions of the state. Because the state represents the
“general will” and is not a timeless entity, citizens have
the moral right to rebel against it in the state’s own
interest when the general will becomes subverted.
Green’s
influence on English philosophy was complemented by his
social influence—in part through his efforts to bring the
universities into closer touch with practical and political
affairs and in part through his attempt to reformulate
political liberalism so that it laid more stress on the need
for positive actions by the state than on the negative
rights of the individual. His address “Liberal Legislation
and Freedom of Contract” (1881) gave early expression to
ideas central to the modern “welfare state.”
