Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

T. H. Green: Christianity and Moral Philosophy

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Mrs Humphry Ward and Greenian Philosophy

  • 88 Accesses

Abstract

T. H. Green was one of several idealists associated with Balliol College, Oxford who tried to rescue philosophy from science and foreground Christianity. One of his most famous students, Arnold Toynbee claimed that while ‘other thinkers have assailed the orthodox foundations of religion to overthrow it, Mr Green assailed them to save it.’ This chapter forms the basis of the main theoretical discussions in relation to Green’s moral philosophy that underpin the remainder of the book. Green’s ideas and concepts will be developed and expanded in the subsequent chapters in order to explore how Mary Ward interpreted, adapted and applied them as a writer and reformer in the late-Victorian and Edwardian period.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Green, The Witness of God and Faith: Two Lay Sermons. Edited with an Introductory Notice by the Late Arnold Toynbee, M.A., Preface, p. vi.

  2. 2.

    T. H. Green used male pronouns extensively in his work but he was clear that he considered his ideas were applicable to both sexes and to avoid overuse of ‘sic’ in quotations cited in this book, ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ have been retained.

  3. 3.

    Raymond Plant, “T. H. Green: Citizenship, Education and the Law,” Oxford Review of Education 32, no. 1 (2006): 25. This included the work of philosophers such as John Locke , Jeremy Bentham and David Hume .

  4. 4.

    Craig Jenks, “T. H. Green, the Oxford Philosophy of Duty and the English Middle Class,” British Journal of Sociology 28, no. 4 (1977): 487.

  5. 5.

    T. P. Boultbee, A Commentary on the Thirty-Nine Articles Forming an Introduction to the Theology of the Church of England, 10th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1895).

  6. 6.

    Jenks, “T. H. Green, the Oxford Philosophy of Duty and the English Middle Class,” p. 486.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., p. 487.

  8. 8.

    Plant, “T. H. Green: Citizenship, Education and the Law,” p. 9.

  9. 9.

    For further commentary concerning the debates within the University Colleges, see Strachey, Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, General Gordon.

  10. 10.

    Chapman, “Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882),” p. 524. The requirement to take Holy Orders in the Church of England was abolished in the 1870s. Some publications use ‘White’ as opposed to Whyte.

  11. 11.

    Nettleship, Memoir of Thomas Hill Green, Late Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, p. 137.

  12. 12.

    James Bryce, “Professor T. H. Green: In Memoriam,” Contemporary Review 41 (May 1882): 859.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., p. 861.

  14. 14.

    Scotland, Squires in the Slums: Settlements and Missions in Late Victorian London; Bryce, “Professor T. H. Green: In Memoriam.”

  15. 15.

    Richter, Politics.

  16. 16.

    Series 3: T. H. Green comprises six titles (Series 1: Michael Oakshott and Series 2: R. G. Collingwood).

  17. 17.

    Edward Caird (1835–1908) was educated at St Andrews Scotland, became a tutor and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford and succeeded Benjamin Jowett as Master of Balliol in 1893. The other idealists discussed as part of Cowling’s work include: and William Wallace (1843–1897) who attended St Andrews, also then Balliol College, Oxford and succeeded Green as the Whyte Professor of Moral Philosophy; Maurice Cowling, Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England, vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 130.

  18. 18.

    Bryce, “Professor T. H. Green: In Memoriam.” p. 31

  19. 19.

    Nettleship, Memoir of Thomas Hill Green, Late Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, pp. 24–25.

  20. 20.

    Ibid.; R. Barrow, Moral Philosophy for Education (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975); Robert Stern, “G. W. F. Hegel,” in An Introduction to Modern European Philosophy, ed. Jenny Teichman and Graham White (Houndmills and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998); I. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Macmillan, 1990).

  21. 21.

    Jenks, “T. H. Green, the Oxford Philosophy of Duty and the English Middle Class,” p. 483.

  22. 22.

    George F. Kneller, Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York, London, and Sydney: Wiley), pp. 33–38.

  23. 23.

    Nettleship, Memoir of Thomas Hill Green, Late Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, p. 151.

  24. 24.

    Green, “Faith (1878),” p. 92.

  25. 25.

    Green expressed his views on the development of dogma within Christianity and the reductive consequences it had in “Essay on Christian Dogma,” pp. 184–185.

  26. 26.

    Ibid.

  27. 27.

    “The Witness of God (1870),” p. 16.

  28. 28.

    “Faith (1878),” p. 91.

  29. 29.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §5.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.

  31. 31.

    “The Witness of God (1870),” p. 25.

  32. 32.

    “Faith (1878),” pp. 104–105.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., p. 99.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., p. 100.

  35. 35.

    “The Witness of God (1870),” p. 35.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., p. 41.

  37. 37.

    “Faith (1878),” p. 102.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., pp. 101–102.

  39. 39.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §1.

  40. 40.

    Ibid.

  41. 41.

    Ibid.

  42. 42.

    Nettleship, Memoir of Thomas Hill Green, Late Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, p. 25.

  43. 43.

    Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, §1.

  44. 44.

    Ibid.

  45. 45.

    Ibid.

  46. 46.

    “The Witness of God (1870),” p. 22.

  47. 47.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §184.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., §29. This reference is cited as being one of the most helpful for the purposes of the present book. The others include: ‘a self-originating “mind” in the universe’ ibid., §77. For a discussion of these, see W. J. Mander, “In Defence of the Eternal Consciousness,” in T. H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy, ed. Maria Dimova-Cookson and W. J. Mander (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 189, Footnote 184. Green also referred to this concept as ‘the spiritual principle’ but scholars of his work most commonly use the term ‘eternal consciousness’. Colin Tyler, The Metaphysics of Self-Realisation and Freedom: Part 1 of the Liberal Socialism of Thomas Hill Green (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010), p. 11.

  49. 49.

    Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, §187.

  50. 50.

    “The Witness of God (1870),” p. 21.

  51. 51.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §68.

  52. 52.

    “The Witness of God (1870),” p. 39.

  53. 53.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §69.

  54. 54.

    For a detailed examination of the difficulties presented by Green’s eternal consciousness see the collected works in Maria Dimova-Cookson and W. J. Mander, eds., T. H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

  55. 55.

    Nicholson, “Green’s ‘Eternal Consciousness’,” pp. 148–149.

  56. 56.

    Andrew Vincent, “Metaphysics and Ethics in the Philosophy of T. H. Green,” ibid.

  57. 57.

    Green, “Faith (1878),” pp. 88–89.

  58. 58.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §286.

  59. 59.

    Ibid., §186.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., §353.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., §172.

  62. 62.

    Ibid., §194.

  63. 63.

    Ibid., §178.

  64. 64.

    Ibid.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., §288.

  66. 66.

    Ibid.

  67. 67.

    Ibid.

  68. 68.

    Ibid.

  69. 69.

    Ibid., §352–382.

  70. 70.

    Ibid., §361.

  71. 71.

    Ibid.

  72. 72.

    Ibid.

  73. 73.

    Ibid., §244.

  74. 74.

    Ibid., §243.

  75. 75.

    Ibid., §244.

  76. 76.

    Ibid., §286.

  77. 77.

    Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, with a Preface by Bernard Bosanquet, §6.

  78. 78.

    Ibid.

  79. 79.

    Ibid., §7.

  80. 80.

    Ibid., §6.

  81. 81.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §244.

  82. 82.

    “Faith (1878),” p. 103.

  83. 83.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §253.

  84. 84.

    “Faith (1878),” p. 64.

  85. 85.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §354, §239.

  86. 86.

    Matt Carter, T. H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003), Chapter 1.

  87. 87.

    Green’s explanation of this is threaded through his discussion of ‘The Spiritual Principle in Nature’, in Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, §10, §55.

  88. 88.

    Ibid., §74.

  89. 89.

    Ibid., §74–75.

  90. 90.

    Ibid., §85.

  91. 91.

    Ibid., §80.

  92. 92.

    Ben Wempe, T.H. Green’s Theory of Positive Freedom: From Metaphysics to Political Theory (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004), p. 83.

  93. 93.

    Richter, Politics, p. 228.

  94. 94.

    Ibid., pp. 180–183.

  95. 95.

    Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, §69.

  96. 96.

    Ibid., §201.

  97. 97.

    Ibid., §309.

  98. 98.

    Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, with a Preface by Bernard Bosanquet, §241.

  99. 99.

    Prolegomena to Ethics, §201.

  100. 100.

    Richter, Politics, p. 179. The definition of ‘a priori’ is: ‘denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience’ and is taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, http://www.oed.com/.

  101. 101.

    Carter, T. H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism, p. 26.

  102. 102.

    Ibid., p. 38.

  103. 103.

    Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, §184.

  104. 104.

    Ibid.

  105. 105.

    Ibid.

  106. 106.

    Ibid., §186.

  107. 107.

    Ibid., §184.

  108. 108.

    Richter, Politics, p. 254; Carter, T. H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism, p. 27.

  109. 109.

    Green, “The Witness of God (1870),” p. 25.

  110. 110.

    Ibid., pp. 25, 41.

  111. 111.

    “Faith (1878),” p. 102.

  112. 112.

    James W. Allard, “T. H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy,” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 3 (2007), http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/25250/?id=9163.

  113. 113.

    Ibid.

Bibliography

  • Allard, James W. “T. H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy.” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 3 (2007). http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/25250/?id=9163.

  • Barrow, R. Moral Philosophy for Education. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boultbee, T. P. A Commentary on the Thirty-Nine Articles Forming an Introduction to the Theology of the Church of England. 10th ed. London: Longmans, Green, 1895.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryce, James. “Professor T. H. Green: In Memoriam.” Contemporary Review 41 (May 1882): 857–881.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carter, Matt. T. H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chapman, Richard A. “Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882).” The Review of Politics 27, no. 4 (1965): 516–531.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowling, Maurice. Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England. Vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dimova-Cookson, Maria, and W. J. Mander, eds. T. H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, T. H. “Faith (1878).” In The Witness of God and Faith: Two Lay Sermons, edited by Arnold Toynbee. London: Longmans, Green, 1886.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “The Witness of God (1870).” In The Witness of God and Faith: Two Lay Sermons, edited by Arnold Toynbee. London: Longmans, Green, 1886.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. The Witness of God and Faith: Two Lay Sermons. Edited with an Introductory Notice by the Late Arnold Toynbee, M.A. London: Longmans, Green, 1886.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Essay on Christian Dogma.” In Works of Thomas Hill Green: Vol. III Miscellanies and Memoir, edited by R. L. Nettleship, pp. 161–185. London and New York: Longmans, Green, 1888.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Prolegomena to Ethics. Edited by A. C. Bradley. 4th ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, with a Preface by Bernard Bosanquet. London, New York, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, 1921.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenks, Craig. “T. H. Green, the Oxford Philosophy of Duty and the English Middle Class.” British Journal of Sociology 28, no. 4 (1977): 481–497.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kant, I. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. New York: Macmillan, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kneller, George F. Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York, London, and Sydney: Wiley, 1964.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mander, W. J. “In Defence of the Eternal Consciousness.” Chap. 8 In T. H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy, edited by Maria Dimova-Cookson and W. J. Mander, pp. 187–206. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nettleship, R. L. Memoir of Thomas Hill Green, Late Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford. London, New York, and Bombay: Longmans, Green, 1906.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicholson, Peter. “Green’s ‘Eternal Consciousness’.” In T. H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy, edited by Maria Dimova-Cookson and W. J. Mander, pp. 139–159. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, http://www.oed.com/.

  • Plant, Raymond. “T. H. Green: Citizenship, Education and the Law.” Oxford Review of Education 32, no. 1 (2006): 23–37.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richter, Melvin. The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and His Age. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scotland, Nigel. Squires in the Slums: Settlements and Missions in Late Victorian London. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stern, Robert. “G. W. F. Hegel.” Chap. 3 In An Introduction to Modern European Philosophy, edited by Jenny Teichman and Graham White, pp. 18–37. Houndmills and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strachey, Giles Lytton. Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, General Gordon. London: Chatto & Windus, 1918.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tyler, Colin. The Metaphysics of Self-Realisation and Freedom: Part 1 of the Liberal Socialism of Thomas Hill Green. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vincent, Andrew. “Metaphysics and Ethics in the Philosophy of T. H. Green.” In T. H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy, edited by Maria Dimova-Cookson and W. J. Mander, pp. 77–105. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wempe, Ben. T.H. Green’s Theory of Positive Freedom: From Metaphysics to Political Theory. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for History of Women’s Education, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

    Helen Loader

Authors
  1. Helen Loader
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Helen Loader .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Loader, H. (2019). T. H. Green: Christianity and Moral Philosophy. In: Mrs Humphry Ward and Greenian Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14109-7_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14109-7_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14108-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14109-7

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation