Thomas Hill Green

111
Thomas Hill Green bigraphy, stories - Philosophers

Thomas Hill Green : biography

April 7, 1836 – March 26, 1882

Thomas Hill Green (April 7, 1836 – March 15, 1882) 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 ethical socialism.

Life

Green was born at Birkin, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, where his father was rector. On the paternal side, he was descended from Thomas 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 and the ,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.

Works online

  • (1883)
  • (1883)
  • Works (excluding Prolegomena to Ethics) edited by R L Nettleship in three volumes (first published 1885): ; : on (a) the Philosophy of Kant; (b) Logic, including J S Mill’s System of Logic; (c) the different senses of freedom as applied to will and to moral progress; and (d) the Principles of Political Obligation; and

Thought

Hume’s empiricism 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.Alexander Klein,