| 1875 | works |
| p.8 | 23027 | Ideals and metaphysics are practical, not imaginative or speculative | |
| Full Idea: To T.H. Green an ideal was no creation of an idle imagination, metaphysics no mere play of the speculative reason. Ideals were the most solid, and metaphysics the most practical thing about a man. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |||
| A reaction: This is despite the fact that Green was an idealist in the Hegelian tradition. I like this. I see it not just as ideals having practical guiding influence, but also that ideals themselves arising out of experience. |
| p.13 | 23030 | Truth is a relation to a whole of organised knowledge in the collection of rational minds | |
| Full Idea: When we speak of anything as true or false, we do so on the ground of its relation to a whole of organised knowledge existing actually in no human mind, but prefigured in every mind which is possessed of reason. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I n1 | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be the super-idealist view of the coherence account of truth. I have no idea what 'prefigured' means here. |
| p.17 | 23031 | God is the ideal end of the mature mind's final development | |
| Full Idea: God is a subject which is eternally all that the self-conscious subject as developed in time has the possibility of becoming. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |||
| A reaction: [Ethics p.197] Reminiscent of Peirce's account of truth, as the ideal end of enquiry. If God is a human ideal, we either limit God, or exaggerate our powers of idealisation. |
| p.27 | 23032 | What is distinctive of human life is the desire for self-improvement | |
| Full Idea: All that is distinctively human in the life of man springs not from the desire to possess this or that object, and so far to realise a better, but to be something more and better than he is. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: An example of Victorian optimism, I think. I'm guessing that people who are not motivated by this impulse are not behaving in a way that is 'distinctively human'. That said, this is an interesting aspect of human nature. |
| p.27 | 23033 | Hedonism offers no satisfaction, because what we desire is self-betterment | |
| Full Idea: Hedonism failed because it offered as an end of human aspiration an object in which the human spirit, pledged by its own nature to self-betterment, …could never find satisfaction. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: It is always both sad and amusing to see that 150 years ago someone wrote of a doctrine that is still with us that it has 'failed'. Nowadays they try to say the same of physicalism. His objection rests on optimism about humanity. |
| p.28 | 23034 | The ultimate test for truth is the systematic interdependence in nature | |
| Full Idea: Systematic interdependence in the world of nature is the ultimate test of truth. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: Green (or Muirhead) drifts between coherence as the nature of truth and coherence as the nature of justification. He it is the 'test' for truth, which was Russell's view. |
| p.33 | 23036 | The good is identified by the capacities of its participants | |
| Full Idea: The modern idea of the good has developed in respect of the range of persons who have the capacity and therefore the right to participate in this good. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: Green is a notable Victorian liberal, starting from an idealist metaphysics. This is an intriguing view of liberal values. The concept of the good should be what suits persons with full capacity. Having the capacity bestows the right of access to it. Hm. |
| p.37 | 23039 | A true state is only unified and stabilised by acknowledging individuality | |
| Full Idea: In so far as society commits itself to the principle of individuality of its citizens does it realise the unity and stability that constitute it a true 'State'. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: This asserts the liberal vision of a state, rather than asserting a fact. A state consistently mostly of slaves still seems to be a state, and may achieve a lot. |
| p.37 | 23038 | People only develop their personality through co-operation with the social whole | |
| Full Idea: In so far as the individual commits himself to the principle of co-operation in a social whole does he realise his end as individual personality. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: This makes for a very communitarian type of liberalism. The question is whether we create insitutions which suck our free citizens into a communal way of life, or whether that is a matter of their own initiative. |
| p.47 | 23044 | All knowledge rests on a fundamental unity between the knower and what is known | |
| Full Idea: All knowledge is seen on ultimate analysis to rest upon the idea of a fundamental unity between subject and object, between the knower and that which there is to be known. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |||
| A reaction: I don't really understand this thought, but I think it embodies the essence of Hegelian idealism. If I know a tree in the wood, any 'unity' between us strikes as merely imaginary. If the tree isn't separate, what does 'knowing' it mean? |
| p.67 | 23045 | Politics is compromises, which seem supported by a social contract, but express the will of no one | |
| Full Idea: Where laws and institutions are apparently the work of deliberate volition, they are in reality the result of a compromise, which while by a kind of social contract it has the acquiescence of all, expresses the will of none. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |||
| A reaction: Politicians who claim to be enacting the 'will of the people' (e.g. when they won a referendum 52-48) are simply lying. Committees usually end up enacting one person's will, but often without realising what has happened. |
| p.83 | 23050 | The ideal is a society in which all citizens are ladies and gentlemen | |
| Full Idea: With all seriousness and reverence we may hope and pray for a condition of English society in which all honest citizens will recognise themselves and be recognised by each other as gentlemen. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |||
| A reaction: Call me old fashioned but, as long as we expand this to include ladies, I like this thought. Chaucer's knight (in his Prologue) should be our national role model. The true gentleman is an Aristotelian ideal. |
| iii: 224 | p.41 | 23040 | If something develops, its true nature is embodied in its end |
| Full Idea: To anyone who understands a process of development, the result being developed is the reality; and it is its ability to become this that the subject undergoing development has its true nature. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875], iii: 224), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: Although this contains the dubious Hegelian idea that development tends towards some 'end', presented as fixed and final, it still seems important that anything accepted as a 'development' is the expression of some natural potential. |
| iii:226-7 | p.43 | 23041 | God is the realisation of the possibilities of each man's self |
| Full Idea: God is identical with the self of every man in the sense of being the realisation of its determinate possibilities.…In being conscious of himself man is conscious of God and thus knows that God is, but only in so far as he knows what he himself really is. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875], iii:226-7), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: Does this, by the transitivity of identity, imply the identity of all individual men? Do we all contain identical possibilities, which converge on a unified concept of God? I always take the monotheistic God to far exceed mere human possibilities. |
| iii:436 | p.85 | 23052 | Enfranchisement is an end in itself; it makes a person moral, and gives a basis for respect |
| Full Idea: Enfranchisement of the people is an end in itself. …Only citizenship makes the moral man; only citizenship gives that respect which is the true basis of the respect for others. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875], iii:436), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |||
| A reaction: Should people respect their betters? If so, that is a sort of deferential respect which is different from the mutual respect between equals. That said, I wholly approve of this idea. |
| 1882 | Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation |
| p.4 | 23028 | The highest political efforts express our deeper social spirit | |
| Full Idea: Political effort in all its highest forms is the expression of a belief in the reality of the social spirit as the deeper element in the individual. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |||
| A reaction: Although Green is rather literally spiritual, if we express it as a central aspect of human nature, this idea strikes me as correct. Writing in 2021, I am totally bewildered by the entire absence of any 'higher' forms of political expression. |
| p.11 | 23029 | Knowledge is secured by the relations between its parts, through differences and identities | |
| Full Idea: What gives reality and stability to our knowledge is the reality and stability of the relations established between its parts..…by the differences and identities with other things which have similarly achieved comparative fixity and substantiality. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |||
| A reaction: Although I don't sympathise with Green's idealist metaphysics, and nevertheless think that this internalist account of knowledge is correct. |
| p.44 | 23042 | National spirit only exists in the individuals who embody it | |
| Full Idea: A national spirit cannot exist apart from the individuals who embody it. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: We see this in football supporters. They are thrilled by the glory of a great victory, but the reality is just the thrill of the players, and the exuberance in each supporter's mind. There is no further entity called the 'glory'. Green was a liberal. |
| p.79 | 23048 | The ground of property ownership is not force but the power to use it for social ends | |
| Full Idea: It is not the power of forcible tenure but the power of utilisation for social ends that is the ground of the permanent recognition that constitutes a right to property. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |||
| A reaction: Tell that to the aristocratic owners of British grouse moors! This just seems to be wishful thinking. Does that mean that I have no right to property if my ends are not 'social'? |
| p.84 | 23051 | Equality also implies liberty, because equality must be of opportunity as well as possessions | |
| Full Idea: Liberty was essential, not only as a means to equality, but as part of it. …because the opportunity which was to be equalised was not merely to have and to be happy, but to do and to realise. It was 'the right of man to make the best of himself'. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |||
| A reaction: This nicely identifies the core idea of civilised liberalism (as opposed to the crazy self-seeking kind). I think 'give people the right to make the best of themselves' makes a good slogan, because it implies ensuring that they have the means. |
| p.93 | 23054 | Communism is wrong because it restricts the freedom of individuals to contribute to the community | |
| Full Idea: Green condemned pure communism, not in the name of any abstract rights of the individual, but of the right of the community itself to the best that individuals can contribute through the free and spontaneous exercise of their powers of self-expression. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |||
| A reaction: Interesting. In a very authoritarian communist state it does seem that citizens are less able to contribute to the general good. But extreme liberty seems also to undermine the general good. Hm. |
| §146 | p.72 | 23046 | States only have full authority if they heed the claims of human fellowship |
| Full Idea: The claim of the state is only absolutely paramount on the supposition that in its commands and prohibitions it takes account of all the claims that arise out of human fellowship. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882], §146), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |||
| A reaction: He rejects the idea of the general will in ordinary political activity, so it is not clear how this condition could ever be met in practice. Hideous governments just pay lip service to 'human fellowship'. How could you tell whether they believe it? |
| §218 | p.77 | 23047 | Original common ownership is securing private property, not denying it |
| Full Idea: Common ownership in early societies is not the denial of a man's private property in the products of his own labour, but the only way under the circumstances of securing it. | |||
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882], §218) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |||
| A reaction: This is announced with some confidence, but it is very speculative. I think there is some truth in Locke's thought that putting work into a creation creates natural ownership. But who owns the raw materials? Why is work valued highly? |
| §220 | p.80 | 23049 | Property is needed by all citizens, to empower them to achieve social goods |
| Full Idea: The rationale of property is that every one should be secured by society in the power of getting and keeping the means of realising a will which in possibility is a will directed to social good. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882], §220), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |||
| A reaction: An interesting argument. If you want free citizens in a liberal society to be capable of achieving social good, you must allow them the right to acquire the means of doing so. |
| 1882 | Prolegomena to Ethics |
| p.134 | p.29 | 23035 | The good life aims at perfections, or absolute laws, or what is absolutely desirable |
| Full Idea: The differentia of the good life …is controlled by the consciousness of there being some perfection which has to be fulfilled, some law which has to be obeyed, something absolutely desirable whatever the individual may for the time desire. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (Prolegomena to Ethics [1882], p.134), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: The 'perfection' suggests Plato, and the 'law' suggests Kant. The idea that something is 'absolutely desirable' is, I suspect, aimed at the utilitarians, who don't care what is desired. I'm no idealist, but have some sympathy with this idea. |
| p.180 | p.34 | 23037 | People are improved by egalitarian institutions and habits |
| Full Idea: Man has bettered himself through institutions and habits which tend to make the welfare of all the welfare of each. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (Prolegomena to Ethics [1882], p.180), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: I like this a lot. We underestimate how the best social values are promoted by the existence of enlightened institutions, rather than by preaching and teaching. Schools, law courts and churche embody their values. |
| p.193 | p.44 | 23043 | All talk of the progress of a nation must reduce to the progress of its individual members |
| Full Idea: Our ultimate standard of worth is an ideal of personal worth. All other values are relative to personal values. To speak of any progress of a nation or society or mankind except as relative to some greater worth of persons is to use words without meaning. | |||
| From: T.H. Green (Prolegomena to Ethics [1882], p.193), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |||
| A reaction: Note that, pre-verificationism, a Victorian talks of plausible words actually being meaningless. This is a good statement of the core doctrine of liberalism. |