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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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[Click here for a picture of T.H. Green] A Conversation with Thomas Hill Green by George J. Irbe
Introduction I have been studying Thomas Hill Green's Prolegomena to Ethics, his very thorough work on moral philosophy. I find myself in agreement with most of his philosophy which is largely based on Aristotle. However, there are certain views in Green's philosophy I take issue with. I surmise that Green's mind-set was inevitably conditioned by certain philosophical currents that were coursing through the public psyche during the productive years of his much too short (1836-1882) life. The zeit-geist then among the intellectual elite and the clergy of Victorian Britain was exuberantly missionary in both the social and religious sense. Therefore, I permit myself to imagine that his overly optimistic expectations of man's moral perfectibility would have a duller cast and that some of his philosophical views would be somewhat modified were he living and writing the Prolegomena today. If that were the case, I would expect that the differences in our points of view would be diminished accordingly. I wish I could discuss these matters with Professor Green. But of course I cannot do that with him directly; instead, I am resorting to a second-best alternative to an actual conversation between us by conducting a dialogue of sorts with Green's written words. What follows, then, is an imaginary dialogue between the two of us. On Green's 'Hegelianism' GJI: Professor Green, I want first of all to say that some of us think that the pejorative label of 'Hegelian' with which you have been tagged does not fit you. I suspect that it was probably hung on you by some spiteful people who were infuriated by your devastatingly effective demolition of the ramparts of Utilitarianism, and your criticism of some of Locke's, Hume's and Kant's ideas. It was indeed audacious of you to take on the very popular (and very wrong) ideas of the Utilitarians at the height of their dominance in the English-speaking world. In the opinion of many, including myself, Hegel is considered to be hardly worth the name of philosopher. He was a sycophant of the Prussian autocrats. The short outline of Hegel's philosophy at the Radical Academy's website says that Hegel exalted the State as the embodiment of the living God and insisted that a State must be aggressive and militaristic in order to be a successful State. I want to point out that your views are obviously in no way like those of Hegel by quoting from the Prolegomena to Ethics,
Contrary to Hegel's low regard for the worth of the individual person, you esteem it highly, as you state in the following:
I value greatly Karl Popper's opinions because they are honest and straightforward. On p. 260, Vol. 1 of The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper states that ".. Green has clearly shown (in his Lectures on Political Obligation) that it is impossible for the state to enforce morality by law. He would certainly have agreed with the formula: 'We want to moralize politics, and not to politicize morals.' And on p. 79, Vol. 2 of The Open Society and Its Enemies, referring to a history of British philosophy written in 1935 by a German Hegelian, R. Metz , Popper testifies to his high regard for Thomas Hill Green by saying: "A man of the excellence of T.H. Green is here [in Metz's work] criticized, not of course because he was influenced by Hegel, but because he 'fell back into the typical individualism of the English. . . He shrank from such radical consequences as Hegel has drawn'." In my estimation, Karl Popper's endorsement of you debunks the 'Hegelian' label in unequivocal terms. On Morality and Moral Development GJI: Professor Green, I would now like to ask you to explain your understanding of how man came to possess his moral characteristics. THG: (#241). . if the idea of the good is an idea of something which man should become for the sake of becoming it, or in order to fulfill his capabilities and in so doing to satisfy himself, . . [t]he idea of the good, according to this view, is an idea . . which gradually creates its own filling. It is not an idea like that of any pleasure, which a man retains from an experience that he has had and would like to have again. It is an idea to which nothing that has happened to us or that we can find in experience corresponds, but which sets us upon causing certain things to happen, upon bringing certain things into existence. Acting in us, to begin with, as a demand which is ignorant of what will satisfy itself, it only arrives at a more definite consciousness of its own nature and tendency through reflection on its own creations -- on habits and institutions and modes of life which, as a demand not reflected upon, it has brought into being. GJI: I agree with your speculation that moral concepts evolved when man began to reflect on the absolute goodness and utility of his own creations -- his habits and institutions and modes of life. THG: (#241) Moral development then will not be merely progress in the discovery and practice of means to an end which throughout remains the same for the subject of the development. It will imply a progressive determination of the idea of the end itself, as the subject of it, through reflection on that which, under the influence of the idea but without adequate reflection upon it, he has done and has become, comes to be more fully aware of what he has in him to do and to become. GJI: I agree that moral development began when man started to reflect on, and refine his understanding of, the ideas intrinsic to the goals and ends which he is striving to attain. THG: Of a moral development in this sense we have evidence in the result; and we can understand the principle of it; but the stages in the process by which the principle thus unfolds itself remain obscure. GJI: Indeed, we can only make reasonable assumptions about the most likely way in which our moral development evolved. F.A. Hayek offers a reasonable theory in Law, Legislation and Liberty, which I also favor, and which states that the customs and rules of conduct that became established and have survived from the times of our primitive origins are those that promoted the success and growth of the human societies in which they were tried. THG: (#242) . . such an end as provision for the maintenance of a family, if pursued not instinctively but with consciousness of the end pursued, implies in the person pursuing it [as] motive . . a possibly permanent satisfaction . . in the satisfaction of others. Here is already a moral and spiritual, as distinct from an animal or merely natural, interest -- an interest in an object which only thought constitutes, an interest in bringing about something that should be, as distinct from desire to feel again a pleasure already felt. But to be actuated by such an interest does not necessarily imply any reflection on its nature; and hence in men under its influence there need not be any conception of a moral as other than a material good. Food and drink, warmth and clothing, may still seem to them to be the only good things which they desire for themselves or for others. This may probably still be the case with some wholly savage tribes; it may have once been the case with our own ancestors. If it was, of the process by which they emerged from it we know nothing, for they have already emerged from it in the earliest state of mind which has left any record of itself. All that we can say is that an interest moral and spiritual in the sense explained -- however unaware of its own nature, however unable to describe itself as directed to other than material objects -- must have been at work to bring about the habits and institutions, the standards of praise and blame, which we inherit, even the remotest and most elementary which our investigations can reach. GJI: First, I would like to interject here that, of course, the still "wholly savage tribes" have progressed little, if at all, beyond the very basics in societal and moral development because they have clung stubbornly to customs and rules of conduct inimical to progress in such development. Second, I would like to emphasize from your last statement the words ". . an interest moral and spiritual . .must have been at work [in our ancestors] to bring about the habits and institutions, the standards of praise and blame, which we inherit .." as indicative of the great antiquity of our moral heritage. THG: (#242) We know further that if that interest, even in the form of interest in the mere provision for the material support of a family, were duly reflected upon, those who were influenced by it must have become aware that they had objects independent of the gratification of their animal nature; and having become aware of this, they could not fail with more or less distinctness to conceive that permanent welfare of the family, which it was their great object to promote, as consisting, at any rate among other things, in the continuance in others of an interest like their own; in other words, as consisting in the propagation of virtue. GJI: I interpret this to mean that when men recognized, while reflecting introspectively on such matters, how essential is the caring for one's family to the health and success of one's direct progeny and one's social group in general, then such care became a moral obligation and a virtue. THG: (#243) When and how and by what degrees this process of reflection may take place, we cannot say. It is reasonable that till a certain amount of shelter had been secured from the pressure of natural wants, it would be impossible. The work of making provision for the family would be too absorbing for a man to ask himself what was implied in his interest in making it, and thus to become aware of there being such a thing as a moral nature in himself and others, or of a moral value as distinct from the value of that which can be seen and touched and tasted. However strong in him the interest in the welfare of his society -- which, as we have seen, is essentially a moral interest -- until some relief had been won from the constant care of providing for that welfare in material forms, he would have no time to think of any intrinsic value in the persons for whom the provision was made, or in the qualities which enabled it to be made. Somehow or other, however -- by what steps we know not -- with all peoples that have a history the time of reflection has come, and with it the supervention upon those moral interests that are unconscious of their morality, of an interest in moral qualities as such. An interest has arisen, over and above that in keeping members of a family or tribe alive, in rendering them persons of a certain kind; in forming in them certain qualities, not as a means to anything ulterior which the possession of these qualities might bring about, but simply for the sake of that possession; in inducing in them habits of action on account of the intrinsic value of those habits, as forms of activity in which man achieves what he has it in him to achieve, and so far satisfies himself. There has arisen, in short, a conception of good things of the soul, as having a value distinct from and independent of the good things of the body, if not as the only things truly good, to which all other goodness is merely relative. (#201) We may take it, then, as an ultimate fact of human history -- a fact without which there would not be such a history, and which is not in turn deducible from any other history -- that out of sympathies of animal origin, through their presence in a self-conscious soul, there arise interests as of a person in persons. Out of the process common to man's life with the life of animals there arise for man, as there do not apparently arise for animals, Of father, son, and brother and of those relations and charities self-consciousness on the part of all concerned in them is the condition. At the risk of provoking a charge of pedantry, this point must be insisted on. It is not any mere sympathy with pleasure and pain that can by itself yield the affections and recognized obligations of the family. The man for whom they are to be possible must be able, through consciousness of himself as an end to himself, to enter into a like consciousness as belonging to others, whose expression of it corresponds to his own. He must have practical understanding of what is meant for them, as for himself, by saying 'I'. Having found his pleasures and pains dependent on the pleasures and pains of others, he must be able in the contemplation of a possible satisfaction of himself to include the satisfaction of those others, and that a satisfaction of them as ends to themselves and not as mean to his pleasure. He must, in short, be capable of conceiving and seeking a permanent well-being in which the permanent well-being of others is included. |
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