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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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by George J. Irbe
INTRODUCTION Just like a large plant will often grow by chance and in an unlikely place from a tiny wind-blown seed, so it frequently happens to me that a chance encounter of a reference or citation in a book that I am reading will capture my interest which will lead me to pursue a new project that will grow to substantial size and take up much of my time. My first encounter with Thomas Hill Green (picture) was in such incidental manner. While engaged in research on the history of religion, I was reading Origin and Evolution of Religion, by E. Washburn Hopkins, PH.D., LL.D (1923) where I found a remark that "Professor Green gives today as the foundation of rights and of right the capacity of the individual to conceive a good as the same for himself and others; rights are determined by that conception. Ethics thus becomes altogether divorced from religion." The reference cited was T.H. Green's Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. My interest was sparked immediately by Green's belief that a good is the same for an individual as for others - in other words, a universal good. This sounded like 'pure' Aristotle, and like Aristotle's noted exponent in the 20th century, Mortimer J. Adler. Was it possible that another Aristotelian thinker had preceded Adler in the 19th century? Forthwith, I obtained a copy of the book cited by Hopkins. This particular edition is a reprint from Green's Philosophical Works, Vol. II, reprinted in 1941 with an introduction by Lord Lindsay of Birker, former Master of Balliol College, Oxford. Lindsay's introduction states that Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation were delivered by T.H. Green in 1879 and published after his death in 1882. Green was Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford. Lindsay identifies Green with the school of thought known as the Oxford Idealists. Subsequently, by searching internet sources on Green, I discovered that today he is largely consigned to obscurity, and almost always characterized tersely only as an 'idealist' without any further elaboration. Lindsay says in his introduction that "Green and his fellow-idealists represent the renewed liberalism of the last quarter of the nineteenth century." This characterization had a special appeal to me, because I like to think of myself as having a philosophical and political affinity with the liberals of that era. Their idealism had a benign effect on society, in contrast to the corrosive Marxist and Socialist ideologies which were already eating away at the social fabric even while classical liberalism was at its most popular. Although I read all of the Lectures, I realized at the start of the very first one that I will not find Green's full dissertation on the nature of the Aristotelian 'good' in this book, because Green states in the second paragraph of the first lecture that he has explained in previous lectures what he understands " . . moral goodness to be, and how it is possible that there should be such a thing; in other words, what are the conditions on the part of reason and will which are implied in our being able to conceive moral goodness as an object to be aimed at, and to give some partial reality to the conception." To me, this sentence was replete with evidence of the abstract intellectual tools of Aristotle's thought and provided for me the conclusive proof that Green was an Aristotelian philosopher worth knowing. I realized that I must search for other sources that would contain material from Green's 'previous lectures.' Without too much effort, thanks to the internet, I soon identified the book I had to have: Green's Prolegomena to Ethics, first published in 1883; I obtained a Oxford University Press 1924 issue of it. The Prolegomena is a very thorough work; frequently, it is also rather difficult to read. Green not only develops his own beliefs and theories about man and his morality, but he also states and refutes many of the objections raised against them by other competing philosophies. The basic organization of Prolegomena is by small (usually one to two pages long) consecutively numbered sections. The Introduction takes up the first eight sections. The body of the work is divided by Book and Chapter in the following manner: Book I: Metaphysics of Knowledge Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Book II: The Will Chapter I
Chapter II
Book III: The Moral Ideal and Moral Progress Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Book IV: The Application of Moral Philosophy to the Guidance of Conduct Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
In this essay I will discuss the contents of the first three books and compare some of Green's ideas with my own and with Aristotle's. I will use only the consecutively numbered sections when making reference to, or quoting from, Green's work. The table of contents of Prolegomena has been reproduced in detail so that the reader can easily determine the general topic to which a referenced section belongs. |
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