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Notes on Social Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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- Additional Information
Formed after the Oxford Conference of 1937 by J. H. Oldham, the Moot was a group of intellectuals who met periodically on long weekends from 1938 to 1947 to discuss religious, social, and political issues in relation to the idea of a Christian order. TSE was an active member, contributor, and respondent from the first meeting in Apr 1938. He prepared this paper for the group’s ninth meeting, held 12-15 July 1940 at Old Jordans Hostel, Beaconsfield. Four other members of the twelve present were also commissioned to write short papers – pre-circulated before the meeting on Sunday, 14 July – on “Social Philosophy.” The discussion focused particularly on H. A. Hodges’s criticism of Natural Law in his paper. As Eric Fenn, acting as secretary, noted, Hodges’s essay “represented an entire departure from the whole philosophical basis of Catholicism, which he regarded as an historical mistake. . . . The mediaeval unity was historically conditioned, and was a codification of what was ‘all about you.’ It was then as obviously true as it was now obviously false. You looked out of the window and you saw God and the Church. But the history of philosophy was the weaning of Europe from the belief that these principles were the fixed principles they appeared to be. The assumptions of a particular age could not be the common principles for all mankind; and we know now that there were no such common principles.” Fenn’s transcription of the discussion at the meeting (without the papers) is printed in
I propose to limit the scope of my two pages to a few remarks on one important respect in which it seems to me that social philosophy must differ in the future – or one consideration that will have to be taken account of in the future as an essential part of the art of government, a consideration that has not been recognised in the past. That is the obligation of government to interest itself in the moral education of the people. In the past, the inculcation of moral values has been the function of the Church, and with the disappearance of the power of the Church over the mass of the population, we have perhaps assumed that the conservation and development of the sense of values could vaguely be left to “human nature.” But under the conditions of highly industrialised society, in a machine age, without the sanctions of religious faith, it is doubtful whether “human nature” is able to preserve its values. And by values here I mean appreciation of right and wrong in something wider than an ordinary moral sense: I include health and recreation, artistic appreciation, and a proper
It seems probable that in the stage of society in which we are, and that with which we shall be concerned so far as we can see, Government will find itself obliged to direct and inculcate some kind of values, instead of traditional values which have disappeared, merely in order to be able to govern. This has happened abroad, and is likely to happen here. So far, I cannot see that it is in itself, in the modern world, a misfortune: the question is entirely
