Thomas Hill Green and the Development of Liberal-Democratic Thought (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 411 I. M. Greengarten, Thomas Hill Green and the Development of LiberaLDemocratic Thought. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1981. Pp. x : 151. $90.00 T. H. Green is a much underestimated thinker. I. M. Greengarten rightly points out that "Green has received far too little attention from political theorists of all persuasions ." There are various ways in which this is true. First, it is not easy to understand the course of thought in the closing part of the.nineteenth century, and the considerable impact of this on life and culture generally, without appreciating how much of it stems from themes in Green's philosophy which ripened into subsequent British Idealism. Green has been properly described as "the Father of British Idealism," and I think that we shall find that most that is distinctive and important in British Idealism, and thereby in the same strain of thought elsewhere, comes directly from T. H. Green. Some later idealists, notably Bradley, introduced modifications of substantial importance . The theory of "internal relations," for example, begins with the insistence that there can be no mere relations without terms to be related; and this makes an end of the notion of a "system of all-inclusive relations." The insistence on some "thisness" in perception, however elusive a mere datum may be, and on the reference to reality, and on the supra-rational nature of ultimate being, take us a long way beyond the exhaustive rationalism of Green. The greater philosophical genius of Bradley, and his impressive literary style, may have obscured the far-reaching extent of his indebtedness (and that of many others) to Green. The basis of much that Bradley held may be found in his less spectacular precursor. Second, the mistakes of T. H. Green, and the tortuous ways in which he tried to cope with the complexities and difficulties of his views, are very revealing and turn out to be exceptionally significant pointers to the ways we must properly think the subject. It was for this reason, as he often insisted, that H. A. Prichard found the study of Green, to which he was much addicted, highly rewarding. This is as evident in Green's political thought as in his ethical and metaphysical work. In political philosophy Green owed a great deal to Rousseau, and especially to that blend, in Rousseau's work, of his initial commitment to the unmitigated individualism of Locke with his mature appreciation of our indebtedness to society and its ordinances. This is how extreme individualism passed into equally extreme collectivism. Ordinances and restrictions were unavoidable, but they had somehow to leave men "as free as before ." The justification of enforcement had to be based on "recognition" and our being forced to be free ultimately on the basis of our own willing this. Where there is no recognition there can be no right, and this made it exceptionally difficult to justify enforcement of anything which was not so general as to have little import. T. H. Green's very genuine concern to remove social evils, such as poverty, ignorance, and degradation, was thus stifled extensively in practice by his reluctance to justify social and political enactments which, in some ways, were bound to limit severely the freedom of individuals to do as they pleased with their own. Theoretical and practical ambiguities result. This is well brought out by Greengarten. However, 4~2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY He inclines to interpret it all too much in terms of adherence to the economic climate of the age and the bias in favour of "the industrial-capitalist basis of that society." The limitations had their source more, I believe, in intellectual confusions, and less in the pressures and social conditioning to which Green would be exposed. I am not altogether carried along by the frequent references to "capitalist market society," and the incompatibility "between man as self-realizer and market man," or to Green's solution to poverty being to "transform members of the labouring class into fullfledged capitalists." There seems to be too much hindsight here, and the use of idioms of our own time may turn out to give a slightly misleading impression. But there is no...