Green, Bosanquet and the philosophy of coherenceGerald F.GausINTRODUCTIONAlong with F.H.Bradley (Bradley, F.H.), T.H.Green and Bernard Bosanquet were the chieffigures in what is commonly called British idealism. Bradley is widely regarded as themost eminent philosopher of the three; his
Ethical Studies, published in 1876, was thefirst in-depth presentation of idealist ethics, including an account of the individual’srelation to society (Nicholson, [14.45], 6). But after this initial work, Bradley had littlemore to say about ethics;1 the development of the moral, and especially the political,philosophy of British idealism was carried on by Green and his followers, particularlyBosanquet.Though he published little in his lifetime, Green (1836–82) had enormous influencethrough his teaching at Oxford. Green was appointed tutor in philosophy at Balliol in1866 and in 1878 became White’s Professor of Philosophy, a post he held until his deathin 1882. Green’s influence on his students apparently stemmed as much from his moralearnestness and the religious implications of idealism as from his philosophy, promptingC.D.Broad’s jibe that he turned more undergraduates into prigs than Sidgwick ever madeinto philosophers ([14.20], 144).2 As was the case with many of the British idealists,Green was a political and social reformer, being especially influential in educationalreform (Gordon and White, [14.33]). Both of his major works were published after hisdeath. Parts of his
Prolegomena to Ethics were in a final form prior to his death; his maincontribution to political philosophy was his
Lectures on the Principles of PoliticalObligation, edited by R.L.Nettleship.Green, while sometimes dismissed as a philosopher, is almost always treated nowadayswith sympathy; Bosanquet (1840–1923) cuts a much less sympathetic figure.In his manypublished works, he presented a more systematic—and apparently much harsher andmore Hegelian—version of Green’s philosophy. Not only was he more obviouslyHegelian, but Bosanquet seemed inevitably attracted to statements of his views that weremost likely to outrage traditional English liberals, speaking, for example, of ‘theconfluence of selves’ ([14.16], 107) and insisting that the moral person composingsociety is more real than what we call individual persons ([14.14], 145). Thus, the mostfamous attack on Bosanquet, L.T.Hobhouse’s
Metaphysical Theory of the State, chargesthat Bosanquet’s theory is deeply illiberal: it is unable to account for the ‘irreducible’separateness of selves and ultimately endorses a sort of State worship ([14.37], 62;Freeden, [14.29], 35). Yet Hobhouse absolves Green from his most serious charges;indeed, Hobhouse claimed that his own theory was the true successor to Green’s ([14.38],chapters 7–8; [14.39], chapters 5–6). Whereas Hobhouse can be called a ‘Left Greenian’,arguing in support of something like a welfare state, Bosanquet can be understood as a‘right Greenian’ (Collini, [14.24], 107–8). Bosanquet spent very little of his life insideacademia, the most important exception being his tenure as professor of philosophy at StAndrews University from 1903 to 1908. Most of his life was devoted to the CharityOrganization Society (COS), which objected to State provision of welfare such asoutdoor relief to the poor. Bosanquet and the COS insisted that such ‘mechanical’measures are typically failures that produce dependency; in so far as the poor should beassisted, it must be accomplished through charity focusing on the detailed needs of eachrecipient—thus pointing to the importance of private social work. This separatedBosanquet from the ‘new liberals’ (who endorsed the welfare state), reinforcing theerroneous perception that Bosanquet was a Tory; throughout his life he was an activepolitical liberal and reformer.3The problem of the relation of Green’s and Bosanquet’s idealisms to their liberalpolitics can be resolved into three more specific questions. Firstly, in what ways are thepolitical and moral views of Green and Bosanquet affected by their idealism? Thoughalmost invariably referred to as the ‘British idealists’, the relation of their philosophy(logic, epistemology and metaphysics) to their moral and political theory remains, I think,obscure. Secondly, are their moral and political views liberal or, as is often charged,statist and illiberal? Thirdly, our answers to these questions should enlighten us on athird: is Bosanquet a
bona fide follower of Green, or was Hobhouse right that heperverted Green’s teachings?
EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICSPhilosophy and coherenceBosanquet called his major work in political philosophy
The Philosophical Theory of theState; as I have said, Hobhouse’s critique was entitled
The Metaphysical Theory of theState, suggesting that Bosanquet understood philosophy as essentially metaphysics. Yetthis is not quite right. In the first paragraph of the
Philosophical Theory of the State,Bosanquet explains what he means by a ‘philosophical theory’: ‘a philosophicaltreatment is the study of something as a whole and for its own sake’ ([14.14], 1). Later onhe tells us that philosophy aims to establish ‘degrees of value, degrees of reality, degreesof completeness and coherence’ ([14.14], 47). For Bosanquet, as for Green, philosophy inits various guises aims at completion and harmony: epistemology, metaphysics,philosophical ethics and political philosophy are all manifestations of philosophy’s searchfor coherence and completion.
Reason and knowledgeGiven this, it is most helpful to start from the perspective of epistemology. Coherence isthe basic demand of reason itself. In contrast to, say, Hobbes, reason is not understood asessentially calculative—a matter of ‘reckoning, that is, adding and subtracting, of theconsequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying ofthoughts’ (Hobbes, [14.34], 26). The ‘inherent nature of reason’, argues Bosanquet, is‘the absolute demand for totality and consistency’ ([14.11], 8). It cannot beoveremphasized that reason is a demand or, as Bosanquet says elsewhere, an‘impulse’ ([14.13]:130). Logic ‘is merely the same as the impulse to the whole’ ([14.11],7). That reason is an impulse driving us to expand and systematize our experiencesallows us to make sense of Bosanquet’s otherwise obscure remark that ‘it is a strictfundamental truth that love is the mainspring of logic’ ([14.15], 341); both areexpressions of the unifying and expanding impulse.4To obtain knowledge, then, is to bring unity to our particular experiences, ‘throughwhich phenomena become the connected system called the world of experience’ (Green[14.1], 15). We are thus led to a coherence theory of knowledge; to know that
p is for
p tobe related to, and to cohere with, the rest of one’s beliefs or experiences. We need,though, to be careful here, for coherence goes considerably beyond requirements offormal consistency (Bosanquet [14.6], 2, chapter VII). Most importantly, coherenceincludes connectedness among beliefs and a richness of content ([14.15], 146); one whoobtains consistency by compartmentalizing his or her system so that some beliefs arenever related to others, or by impoverishing his or her experience (so that there is lessthat can conflict with the rest) to that extent falls short of the ideal of coherence. The fullycoherent system would have to be complete, i.e., contain all true propositions.
Knowers and the knownExcept for their insistence on the affective nature of reason, Green’s and Bosanquet’sepistemology is not terribly different from contemporary coherence theories ofknowledge. The great gulf separating classical idealism from contemporary philosophy isthe relation of the theory of knowledge to truth.5 One contemporary view, endorsed byLaurence Bonjour, is to combine a coherence theory of knowledge with a correspondencetheory of truth. He writes:[O]ur concern is with coherence theories of
empirical justification and notcoherence theories
of truth; the latter hold that truth is to be simply
identifiedwith coherence…. The classical idealist proponents of coherence theories in factgenerally held views of both these sorts and unfortunately failed for the mostpart to distinguish them. And this sort of confusion is abetted by views whichuse the phrase ‘theory of truth’ to mean a theory of the
criteria, of truth, that is,a theory of the standards or rules which should be appealed to in deciding orjudging whether something is true; if, as is virtually always the case, such atheory is meant to be an account of the criteria which can be used to arrive at arational or warranted judgment of truth or falsity, then a coherence theory oftruth in that sense would seem to be indiscernible from what is here called acoherence theory of justification, and is quite distinct from a coherence theoryof the very nature or meaning of truth. But if these confusions are avoided, it isclear that coherence theories of empirical justification are both distinct from andinitially a good deal more plausible than coherence theories of the very nature ormeaning of empirical truth and moreover that there is no manifest absurdity incombining a coherence theory of justification with a
correspondence theory oftruth.([14.18], 88)Now whatever other philosophical errors the classical idealists committed (and no doubtthere were many), confusing coherence theories of justification (or, as they might say,understanding) with coherence theories of truth was not one of them. Indeed, it is theapparent implausibility of a Bonjour-like proposal that, for Green, makes it necessary toembrace a coherence theory of truth. In the
Prolegomena, having analysed ourunderstanding of nature in terms of systematizing the objects of consciousness, Greenwrites:Now that which the understanding thus presents to itself consists, as we haveseen, in certain relations regarded as forming a single system. The next question,then, will be whether understanding can be held to ‘make nature’ in the furthersense that it is the source, or at any rate a condition, of there being theserelations. If it cannot, we are left in the awkward position of having to supposethat, while the conception of nature on the one side, and that of the order itselfon the other, are of different and independent origin, there is yet someunaccountable pre-established harmony through which there comes to be suchan order corresponding to our conception of it.([14.1], 22–3)For Green, to suppose that our understanding was achieved through coherence but thattruth consisted in the correspondence of our beliefs with a pre-existing nature would makeit utterly mysterious how pursuit of coherence reveals the truth about nature; only bysupposing an established harmony between our reason and nature could this be so, butsuch a harmony is an implausibly strong assumption. The core idealist conviction is that,having replaced a representational theory of knowledge with a coherence account, thisaccount can be maintained only by characterizing truth itself in terms of coherence.6 It isnot simply that justified belief is a matter of coherence, but the very essence of truth iscoherence and completeness. ‘The truth is the whole’ ([14.6], 2:204).Idealism guarantees that the truth—what nature is really like—is the coherent wholesince nature is ultimately mind-dependent; nature is constituted by the unifying andcompleting force of mind. That being so, what the coherent mind knows
is nature. But, ofcourse, actual individual minds disagree about what nature is like; if each personal mindconstituted its own nature, there would be as many natures as there are minds. Moreover,it would be obscure what scientific discovery could amount to; science searches for whatexists but is yet not known. To avoid such difficulties reality cannot be dependent uponindividual minds; hence we are led from personal idealism to Absolute idealism. ThoughGreen is sometimes called a personal and not an Absolute idealist, this is surely wrong,for Green’s idea of an ‘Eternal Consciousness’ is straightforwardly Hegelian:That there is one spiritual self-conscious being, of which all that is real is theactivity or expression; that we are related to this spiritual being, not merely asparts of the world which is its expression, but as partakers in some inchoatemeasure of the self-consciousness through which it at once constitutes anddistinguishes itself from the world; that this participation is the source ofmorality and religion; this is what we take as to be the vital truth which Hegelhad to teach.([14.2], 146)7The Eternal Consciousness—which Green identifies with God—is an all-inclusiveconsciousness; it is the mind upon which reality rests. Green apparently conceives offinite minds as somehow participating in the Eternal Consciousness—coming toconsciousness of the relations in the Eternal Consciousness. The growth of our knowledgeis, then, our increasing awareness of the Eternal Consciousness ([14.1], 75).Though much more developed, Bosanquet’s theory of the Absolute is not, I think,fundamentally different.8 For Bosanquet, the Absolute is the perfection of mind’s pursuitof coherence; it is the complete and harmonious mind. Or, rather, it is the systematizationand completion of finite minds.9 ‘The general formula of the Absolute’, Bosanquet wrote,is ‘the transmutation and rearrangement of particular experiences, and also the contents ofindividual minds, by inclusion in a more complete whole of experience’ ([14.15], 373).And being the more complete and more harmonious mind, it is ultimate reality, sincereality is mind-dependent. A recurring theme in Bosanquet’s philosophy is that the moreharmonious and complete is the more real, a position that follows easily enough from thecoherence view of knowledge combined with Absolute idealism. The upshot of this, ofcourse, is that finite (i.e., personal) minds are incomplete and contradictory, and so lessreal. Though not as relentless as Bosanquet in insisting on this point, Green’s idealismbased on the Eternal Consciousness too identifies the real with ‘everything’ ([14.1], 27).
Idealist metaphysics, ethics and politicsOn the account I have sketched, it is misguided to understand Green’s and Bosanquet’sidealism as primarily a metaphysical theory, i.e., a theory about the nature of reality.Rather, their philosophy is based on (1) a conception of reason as a unifying, affective,force, (2) a coherence theory of knowledge or understanding, according to whichknowledge is a system of relations, and so to know something is to relate it to our otherbeliefs; (3) an Absolute idealism, which was understood as the most plausibleconcomitant of (1) and (2).10 None of these elements is fundamental in the sense of beingthe basic doctrine from which the others are derived. On my account, the epistemologicalproject leads to the metaphysical; that is, I believe that the former is the best way toexplain the motivation behind the latter. But certainly the metaphysics in no way derivesfrom the accounts of reason and knowledge (recall here Bonjour’s position). All threedoctrines are manifestations of the overarching notion of coherence, the real key tounderstanding the idealism of Green and Bosanquet.Understanding the philosophy of the British idealists in this way allows us to approachan old question in a new light: do their moral and political philosophies derive from theirmetaphysics? My answer should not be surprising: talk of ‘derivation’ is misleading.Their accounts of the self, moral perfection, the common good, general will and the Stateare all applications of the ideal of coherence. This is not to say they are unrelated to theother elements of their philosophy; the analysis of reason, knowledge and reality lendsplausibility to, and helps justify, their moral and political doctrines. In true coherentistfashion, the various doctrines are mutually reinforcing and justifying.11 It is, then,fruitless to look for any single doctrine from which the rest follow.
THE SELF AND ITS PERFECTIONThe self as a system of contentHaving stressed that point, it also must be acknowledged that Bosanquet’s and Green’sanalyses of selfhood are applications of their accounts of mind. If ‘the peculiarity ofmind, for us, is to be a world of experience working itself out towards harmony andcompleteness’ (Bosanquet [14.15], 193), the same applies to selfhood; the self is anorganization of content striving for coherence and completion (Bosanquet [14.11], 48;[14.15], 242). To say this is to emphasize that selfhood is not understood as beingconstituted by an abstract entity or pure ego (Green [14.1], 103–4; Bosanquet [14.10],55); for Bosanquet and Green the self is not something apart from ‘feelings, desires andthoughts’ (Green [14.1], 104), but their unification and systematization. Bosanquet mademuch of the contrast to J.S.Mill, for whom true individuality consisted in the cultivationof ‘an inner self, to be cherished by enclosing it’ ([14.14], 57). This, Bosanquetadmonished, was to get things precisely wrong; it locates individuality in a core ofessentially empty privateness rather than an expansion of feelings, interests andexperiences. ‘Individuality is essentially a positive conception…. Its essence lies in therichness and completeness of a self’ ([14.15], 69; [14.10], 89).12On one side, then, Bosanquet and Green rejected ‘formal’ accounts of the self in termsof an abstract ego. However, they also criticized Humean or associationist accounts,which located the self (or, rather, failed to) in a series of contents. No mere succession ofdesires, feelings and thoughts could constitute a self; though the self is ‘not somethingapart from feelings, desires and thoughts’, it is not just simply them: it is ‘that whichunites them’ (Green [14.1], 104; [14.4], 339–41).13 This, though, immediately threatensto lead back towards positing a ‘mysterious abstract entity which you call the self ([14.1],104) that is different from, but unites, the feelings, desires and ideas that form the contentof the self. In responding to this problem, I would suggest, Green and Bosanquet displaytheir most important divergence, one which, we shall see, has significant consequencesfor their ethics and political philosophy.Green’s proposal has two elements. Firstly (and with this Bosanquet agrees), hestresses that the self cannot be a mere succession of thoughts, feelings and desires, butmust form an organized system. Here Green’s epistemology and metaphysics do comeinto play. For to understand an experience is to relate it to the rest of one’s experiences,and for something to be real is for it to be located in such a web of understanding. Thisallows Green to turn the tables on Hume:If we are told that the Ego or self is an abstraction from the facts of our innerexperience—something which we ‘accustom ourselves to suppose’ as the basisor substratum for these, but which exists only logically, not really,—it is a fairrejoinder, that these so-called facts, our particular feelings, desires, andthoughts, are abstractions, if considered otherwise than as united in an agentwho is an object to himself.([14.1], 104; see Thomas [14.56], 177)Green introduces here the second element of his reply: not only must desires, feelings andthoughts be systematized for them to be real and not abstract but the system must be selfconscious—one must be able to be an object to oneself. For Green such consciousness isabsolutely fundamental to selfhood; indeed, his account of selfhood is essentially anaccount of self-consciousness, of an agent who is able to grasp his system of desires as‘an object to himself.Though both elements are present in Bosanquet’s theory of the self, there is a markedstress on the organizational aspect and a deemphasising of self-consciousness. Bosanquettoo rejects associationist views of the self: ‘In mind…the higher stage of association isorganization. The characteristic of organization is control by a general scheme, asopposed to juxtaposition of units’ ([14.14] 152). In his
Psychology of the Moral SelfBosanquet developed his account of the organization of the self in depth. ‘The psychicalelements of the mind are so grouped and interconnected’, he wrote, ‘as to constitute whatare technically known as Appercipient masses or systems’ ([14.10], 42).14 Such a system,Bosanquet writes, is aset of ideas, bound together by a common rule or scheme, which dictates thepoint of view from which perception will take place, so far as the system inquestion is active. And without some ‘apperception’, some point of view in themind which enables the new-comer to be classed, there cannot be perception atall. The eye only sees what it brings with it the power of seeing…. A child callsan orange a ‘ball’; a Polynesian calls a horse a ‘pig’. These are the nearest‘heads’ or rules under which the new perception can be brought.([14.14], 155)A person organizes experience in terms of these ‘schemes of attention’; as differentsituations arise, one mass will arise to prominence in consciousness, leaving the othersinert ([14.14], 162). The self,15 then, is a multiplicity of such systems. However, becauseone appercipient mass forces the others from consciousness, the self is alwaysimperfectly coherent; inconsistencies and contradictions are hidden because differentsystems do not rise to consciousness at the same time.Note that, though consciousness is a necessary element of this theory, it does not havethe dominant role that Green ascribes to a person who can grasp his system of desires as‘an object to himself. In contrast to Green, Bosanquet makes a great deal of the extent towhich ‘an adult mind contains an immense structure of automatic machinery’ ([14.15],181); the automatic, and so unconscious, aspect of selfhood always looms large inBosanquet’s theory. The idea of an ‘I’ who unites desires into a system is replaced by thetheory of appercipient mass. Self-consciousness now seems to be more a recognizer thana forger of unity.16
Self-perfectionPerhaps not quite. Bosanquet certainly recognizes that the self strives for greatercoherence. Our nature as self-conscious beings is, he says, to strive for harmony andunity ([14.11], 193–4; [14.16], 189). Indeed, he classifies himself and Green as‘Perfectionists’ ([14.16], 208ff.). Their account of self-perfection can be analysed intofour claims.The goodGreen and Bosanquet accept the Hegelian critique of Kant: his doctrine of the ‘GoodWill’ is ‘ultimately an empty abstraction, an idea of nothing in particular to bedone’ ([14.4], 154). The first step in rectifying this over-formality is an account of thegood: the good, says, Green, satisfies desire ([14.1], 178). The argument, though, quicklytakes an Aristotelian turn, stressing the pursuit of perfection, or the development ofcapacities, as the basis of self-satisfaction:The reason and will of man have their common ground in that characteristic ofbeing an object to himself…. It is thus that he not merely desires but seeks tosatisfy himself in gaining the objects of his desire; presents to himself a certainstate of himself, which is the gratification of the desire he seeks to reach; inshort wills. It is thus, again, that he has an impulse to make himself what he hasthe possibility of becoming but actually is not, and hence not merely, like theplant or animal, undergoes a process of development but seeks to, and does,develop himself.([14.1], 182)This impulse to develop, Green goes on to say, is an impulse to realize one’s capacities.Thus Green ultimately holds that a person’s good is identified with the development ofhis capacities, especially the intellectual. Both Green and Bosanquet maintain thatindividuals have natural capacities for intellectual, social and artistic endeavours(including handicrafts),18 the cultivation of which is the ground of self-perfection.Self-satisfaction and coherenceThus far the impulse to develop is not moralized; it is, says Green, ‘the source, accordingto the direction it takes, both of vice and virtue’ ([14.1], 183). Some attempts at selfsatisfactionare ‘self-defeating’, as ‘is the quest for self-satisfaction in the life of thevoluptuary’ (183). The self, we have seen, is a system of content, and reason is animpulse towards completion and unity. Applied to the development of our capacities, thisleads to the idea that self-satisfaction—as opposed to the satisfaction of discrete desiresor capacities—requires the development of our capacities into a coherent whole. ‘Thestate of mind in question…is that in which the impulse towards self-satisfaction sets itselfupon an object which represents the self as a whole, as free from contradiction or at itsmaximum of being, and triumphs over the alien and partial will, the tendency to narrowertracks of indulgence’ ([14.14], 132). Green’s view is much the same, though as always hestresses the role of self-consciousness as crucial, in this instance its role in distinguishingmere desires from those that are self-satisfying ([14.4], 304). In any event, this distinctionallows Green and Bosanquet to identify capacities as good or evil in terms of their abilityto be integrated into a coherent system of developed capacities. A person developingcapacities that cannot be integrated into the whole, such as the voluptuary, can satisfysome of his or her desires, but cannot find self-satisfaction.An obvious rejoinder presents itself: if a self is organized around only voluptuaryinterests, coherence can be obtained and, it would seem, self-satisfaction too. But thiswill not do. As we have seen, coherence goes beyond mere consistency to includefullness of content. Consequently, Bosanquet analyses selfishness as an effort to seekcoherence through narrowing rather than expanding the self ([14.10], 97). This path tocoherence is ultimately self-defeating. Since reason is an impulse to coherence andcompletion, seeking coherence through narrowing is irrational, or, as Bosanquet says inhis sometimes colourful way, it ‘involves stupidity’ ([14.13], 232).19 Remember here thatreason is an impulse; such stupidity thus seeks to block our rational impulse towardscoherence. Consequently, the success of the narrowing strategy is always illusory:It is the narrowness of a man’s mind that makes him do wrong. He desires morethan he can deal with; indeed he aspires to be self-complete. But what he canmake his own, as a set of values which do not conflict, is little. And of what isextruded something refuses to be suppressed and forms the nucleus of rebellion.Thus the good we are able to aim at is narrow and distorted, and more than that,the elements of the good which our narrowness forces us to reject lie in ambushto conflict with the good we recognise, itself poor and narrow and so weakenedfor the struggle.([14.13] 107; see also [14.14], 135–7)This is Bosanquet’s description of the ‘bad self or evil will’. The ‘good will’, then, isdetermined by ‘the connected system of values, that is to say, as much of it as we canappreciate’ ([14.13], 133). The Kantian concept of the good will is thus transformed intoa will determined by reason in the sense of a coherent system of capacities or values.20DiversityIt may appear to follow from this that the impulse towards self-satisfaction would lead tothe development of essentially similar selves. We all seem committed to essentially thesame project: the harmonization of as many capacities or values as possible. This, though,is precisely the view Green and Bosanquet reject (see Green [14.1], 201). As Bosanquetputs it, ‘It takes all sorts to make a world’ ([14.15], 37). Individual quests for selfsatisfactionlead to the development of diverse personalities, and this for at least threereasons. Firstly, individual natures differ: people are born with different capacities, someexcelling in intellectual pursuits, some in the arts, some in crafts and so forth. Given thesedifferent starting points, the quest for coherence leads us in different directions.21Secondly, Green ([14.2] 3–19; [14.1], 201, 256) and especially Bosanquet recognized thatexternal circumstances can profoundly influence the course of one’s self-development.Bosanquet repeatedly stressed that ‘The soul or self is formed by the requirements of itssurroundings; that is, the universe so far as it has contact with it’ ([14.11], 91).22 Ourdifferent circumstances thus lead us to develop our capacities in different directions.Lastly, even apart from differences in individual natures and circumstances, the veryrichness of human possibilities means that, if we are to cultivate our capacities at all, wemust specialize: ‘in the development of human nature, which we take to be the ultimatestandard of life, no one individual can cover the whole ground’ ([14.14], 164).Our inherent imperfectionIf no one individual can cover the full ground of human nature, no one can attain absoluteperfection—a coherent self encompassing all values. As Bosanquet would say, our finitenature limits us, absolute perfection is impossible; at one point Bosanquet goes so far asto declare that ‘man is a self-contradictory being, in an environment to which he cannever be adapted’ ([14.12], 300). The best we can accomplish is a narrow, imperfectcoherence. And since a narrow coherence is the root of evil, ‘evil and suffering must bepermanent in the world’ (300). In one of his rare criticisms of Green, Bosanquet chargesthat Green underestimated the gap ‘between human experience and perfection’ ([14.16],165). And it is, I think, true that the gap between the human condition and perfection is amuch more important theme in Bosanquet than in Green.23 To be sure, Green is explicitthat we cannot have an adequate conception of what perfection would look like, since wehave not as yet obtained it: ‘[o]f what ultimate well-being may be, therefore, we areunable to say anything but that it must be the complete fulfillment of capacities.’ YetGreen goes on to insist that ‘the idea that there is such an ultimate well-being may be theguiding idea of our lives’, and so we judge a particular person’s life on the basis of howclosely it approaches ‘the end in which alone he can find satisfaction for himself’ ([14.1],256).In all this there is at least a suggestion that we do not fall hopelessly short ofperfection. Yet the difference between Green and Bosanquet here is a matter of nuance.Green too accepts that the individual has absolute limitations on the possibility for selfrealization;the ‘dream’ that these can be done away with is ‘the frenzy ofphilosophy’ ([14.2], 86). In true idealist fashion Green insists that ‘the whole can neverbe fully seen in the parts’ (86). True perfection can exist only in the overall coherentsystem of values, which no individual life can fully express.
SOCIETY, THE COMMON GOOD AND THE GENERAL WILLSociety as an organic wholeAn individual’s pursuit of perfection requires participation in social life. This isobviously true, of course, in the perfectly straightforward sense that society ‘supplies allthe higher content’ to one’s conception of oneself, ‘all those objects of a man’s personalinterest, in living for which he lives for his own satisfaction, except such as are derivedfrom his purely animal nature’ (Green [14.1], 201). More fundamentally, Green andBosanquet follow Hegel in insisting that ‘it is through the action of society that theindividual comes at once to practically conceive his personality—his nature of an objectto himself—and to conceive the same personality as belonging to others’ (Green [14.1]).It is only through ‘some practical recognition of personality by another, of an “I” by a“Thou” and a “Thou” by an “I”’ (Green [14.1], 210) that consciousness of personalityarises (see Bosanquet [14.10], 49–50).All this, though, is commonplace. Of much more interest is that reason—the impulse tocoherence—leads us to participate in a more inclusive scheme of value, which covers theground of human nature more fully than can any single life. One who pursues perfectionmust, as I have said, develop only some of the many capacities inherent in human nature;no matter how successful one is in doing so, one ultimately realizes that one’s perfectionis really imperfect, i.e., partial and incomplete. It is here that our impulse to unite valuesinto a coherent scheme leads us into social life. As Bosanquet understands it, ‘ourimperfection [i.e., partiality] enables us to better stand for something which is to have itsdue stress in the whole’ ([14.11], 61). But the overall system, encompassing these manypartial excellences, more closely approaches perfection than any single element. Thedifferent partial perfections of others thus complement and complete one’s own; the‘ultimate coherence of all excellences’ ([14.15, 379) is better manifested in a complexsocial life that unites and harmonizes the diverse partial excellences of individuals.Consequently, the same principle that unifies the self also explains the unity of the selfwith others ([14.15], 315).This allows us to make sense of the much-abused claim that society is an organism.Bosanquet quite clearly did not mean that, just as the end of all the body parts is thesurvival of the organism, we should all make service to society our end ([14.15], 9). Theidea, rather, is that organic unity is a mode of organization based on interlocking andcomplementary differences, the totality of which is in some way more complete than anyof the elements. Often Bosanquet called such a unity a ‘world’ or a ‘cosmos’:A world or a cosmos is a system of members, such that every member, being
exhypothesi distinct, nevertheless contributes to the unity of the whole in virtue ofthe peculiarities which constitute its distinctness. And the important point for usat present is the distinction between a world and a class. It takes all sorts tomake a world; a class is essentially of one sort only.([14.11] 37)So understood, the idea that society is an organism is not illiberal. It stresses that cooperativesystems based on diverse individual aims and capacities can accomplish morethan can any single individual alone, something a student of the market should not findtroubling, at least so long as, in Bosanquet’s words, every member remains ‘distinct’. It ishere, perhaps, that Bosanquet gets into difficulty. Recall that according to Bosanquet’stheory of appercipient masses, a self is composed of a number of such systems (pp. 414–16). This suggests a three-level theory of coherence: (1) each appercipient system isunified by a leading idea, and so organizes an aspect of experience or personality; (2) theindividual self is an organization of these appercipient systems; and (3) a social group isan organization of individual selves. The problem is that the second level of coherencetends to get squeezed out, leading to an account of social unity in terms of simply (1) and(3). Bosanquet acknowledges thatin some examples…there seems little reason to distinguish the correlation ofdispositions within one person from the correlation of the same dispositions ifdispersed among different persons. If I am my own gardener, or my own critic,or my own doctor, does the relation of the answering dispositions within mybeing differ absolutely and altogether from what takes place when gardener andmaster, critic and author, patient and doctor, are different persons?… If weconsider my unity with myself at different times as the limiting case, we shallfind it very hard to establish a difference in principle between the unity of whatwe call one mind and that of all the ‘minds’ which enter into a single socialexperience.([14.14], 165–6)24Though Bosanquet insists that ‘there is no suggestion that selfhood is a trivial or unrealthing’ ([14.15], 298), one could well be excused for thinking he may be suggesting justthat. The difficulty, at least on the view I have been developing here, is that Bosanquet’stheory of the self puts such great weight on the principle of coherence, while relatively somuch less on self-consciousness. To the extent selfhood is to be accounted for simply interms of coherence, there is indeed a pressure for this middle level of coherence (the self)to evaporate as first level unities (the appercipient masses) form larger systems, be theywithin the same human or across a number of people.Green avoids these difficulties by always insisting on a person’s self-consciousness asthe fundamental unifying factor.25 Green too believes that ‘it is human society as a wholethat we must look upon as the organism in which the capacities of the human soul areunfolded’ ([14.1] 295). And, Green also believes that our excellences are complementaryand interlocking (pp. 420–1). However, as we have seen, Green puts great stress on eachindividual as a centre of self-consciousness. Hence, even while insisting that perfectionmust occur in an organic society, Green can immediately add that ‘Human society isindeed a society of self-determined persons. There can be no progress of society which isnot a development of capacities on the part of persons composing it, as ends inthemselves’ ([14.1], 295). The individual self is in no danger of evaporating in Green’saccount of the organic whole. This becomes even clearer when we examine his theory ofthe common good.
Green’s theory of the common goodGreen begins his section of the
Prolegomena on ‘reason as the source of the idea of acommon good’ by claiming that a ‘distinctive social interest on our part is a primaryfact’.Now the self of which a man thus forecasts the fulfillment, is not an abstract orempty self. It is a self already affected by manifold interests, among which areinterests in other persons. These are not merely interests dependent on otherpersons for the means to their gratification, but interests in the good of thosepersons, interests which cannot be satisfied without the consciousness that thoseother persons are satisfied. The man cannot contemplate himself as in a betterstate, or on the way to the best, without contemplating others, not merely as ameans to that better state, but as sharing it with him.([14.1], 210)It is, Green claims, ‘an ultimate fact of human history that out of sympathies of animalorigin, through their presence in a self-conscious soul, there arise interests as of a personin persons’ ([14.1], 212). Note the contrast to Bosanquet. Though both insist that reasonleads us from our own perfection narrowly conceived to a concern with perfection inothers, for Green this is crucially an interest in the perfection
of other persons, not simplyin the perfection of the capacities of human nature. It is not trivial that while Bosanquetclaims that ‘the development of human nature’ is ‘the ultimate standard of life’ ([14.14],164), Green insists that ‘our ultimate standard of worth is an ideal of
personalworth’ ([14.1], 193). For Bosanquet, society is an intermeshing of developed capacities orvalues; for Green it is an intermeshing development of persons.Those who uphold Green’s liberalism while insisting upon Bosanquet’s illiberalism areapt to stress just this point (e.g., Morrow, [14.43], 94). Two problems, however, confrontthis ‘liberal’ aspect of Green’s theory. Firstly, Green can certainly say, as he does, that‘[a]ll values are relative to value for, of, or in a person’ in the sense that ‘[t]o speak ofany progress or improvement or development of a nation or society or mankind, except asrelative to some greater worth of persons, is to use words without meaning’ ([14.1], 193).Yet this worth of persons cannot be ‘ultimate’. As Bosanquet was fond of stressing,‘some particular personality becomes important by what it embodies’ ([14.15], 22). Ourvalue as persons derives ultimately from our contribution to the overall system of value(and this opens up the rather unsettling possibility that some persons may be in‘surplusage’, i.e., those who make no unique contribution to the whole; Bosanquet[14.15], 116). The value must ultimately reside in the whole rather than the parts. To besure, in contrast to Bosanquet’s, in Green’s theory the development of
persons asopposed to capacities or values is essential for perfection of the whole, but this leads tothe second problem. In order to extend the principle of coherent, intermeshing, personaldevelopment to the social order, Green postulates a distinctive interest of people in eachother’s perfection: the perfection of personality becomes the crucial value in the overallscheme of things. To the extent that this interest really is claimed to be a ‘primary fact’, itinvites Sidgwick’s rejoinder that it is not ‘justified by anything we know about theessential sociality of ordinary human beings’ (Sidgwick [14.54], 57). In contrast,Bosanquet’s theory supposes no additional social impulse; just as reason leads to thesystematization of interests and values within a self, it leads to a social organic unity.According to Green, then, the common good includes the good of all: it is theharmonious realization of all our individual perfections.26 That which promotes thecommon good can be willed by all, and so the common good provides the substantiveelement that was lacking in Kantian ethics. Reason is realized in one’s idea of ‘selfperfection,by acting as a member of a social organization, in which each contributes tothe better well-being of all the rest’ ([14.5], 16). In addition, the theory of the commongood provides an account of the motivation to be moral; since our good includes the goodof others, the pursuit of our own good necessarily involves the common good, and so thegood of others. ‘The only reason why a man should not be used by other men as a meansto their ends is that he should use himself as a means to an end which is really his andtheirs at once’ ([14.5] 120).Upon reflection, however, the extent to which Green has provided substance to theKantian moral ideal may seem fairly modest; a standard criticism is that the idea of thecommon good is at best vague and at worst empty (see Nicholson [14.45], 71–80). Thecrux of Green’s reply is given in the previous paragraph: we achieve self-perfection by
‘acting as a member of a social organization’. The cultivation of one’s capacities is asocial activity not just because it involves the perfection of others but because it relies onthe ‘institutions of civil life’ which give ‘reality to these capacities, as enabling them tobe really exercised’ ([14.5], 16). This leads Green to endorse a theory of one’s station andits duties:The idea, unexpressed and inexpressible, of some absolute and all-embracingend is, no doubt, the source of…devotion, but it can only take effect in thefulfillment in which it finds but a restricted utterance. It is in fact only so far aswe are members of a society, of which we can conceive the common good asour own, that the idea has any practical hold on us at all, and this verymembership implies confinement in our individual realisation of the idea. Eachhas primarily to fulfill the duties of his station. His capacity for action beyondthe range of those duties is definitely bounded, and within it is definitelybounded also his sphere of personal interests, his character, his
realisedpossibility.([14.1], 192; see also 341–2)Green thus understands a social order as a harmonious—or at least largely harmonious—integration of social roles, such that each person’s roles allow one to organize one’scapacities while contributing to the satisfaction of others (Thomas [14.56], 302). Thisdoes not commit Green to a rigid conservatism; room remains for adjusting social roles torender them more coherent, which includes making them more inclusive (indeed, as wewill see, that is a crucial function of the State; [14.56], 292). But it certainly does meanthat one’s possibilities for self-perfection are very much sensitive to the social structureand roles available. Moreover, Green is quite clear that, while an actual system of stationsand duties is necessary for self-perfection, it also confines avenues for development.
Bosanquet’s theory of the general willBosanquet endorses both the doctrines of (1) the common good and (2) my station and itsduties. ‘The individual’, said Bosanquet, ‘has his nature communicated to him as he issummoned to fit himself for rendering a distinctive service to the commongood’ ([14.14], 290; see also [14.17], 113). Bosanquet acknowledges that he followsGreen very closely on such matters, but believed that his exploration of the psychologicalfoundations of the general will was one his important contributions ([14.14], viii).Green himself suggested the link between the common good and the general will in his
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, where he remarked that ‘the truth’latent in Rousseau’s doctrine of the general will is that ‘an interest in the common good isthe ground of political society’ ([14.5], 70). Following Rousseau, Bosanquetcharacterizes the general will as the will of the entire society so far as it aims at thecommon good ([14.14], 99). But just what sort of ‘will’ can a whole society share?Bosanquet believes that the key to the answer is in Plato’s political philosophy:The central idea is this: that every class of persons in the community—thestatesman, the soldier, the workman—has a certain distinctive type of mindwhich fits its members for their functions, and that the community essentiallyconsists in the working of these types of mind in their connection with oneanother, which connection constitutes their subordination to the common good.([14.14], 6)This brings us back to Bosanquet’s theory of social unity and appercipient masses. ‘Everyindividual mind, so far as it thinks and acts in definite schemes or contexts, is a structureof appercipient systems or organized dispositions’ ([14.14], 161). Now, Bosanquet goeson to argue, those participating in the same social institution or social group—those whoshare a common life—possess similar appercipient systems; their minds are similarlyorganized, and it is this which constitutes their common mind and will ([14.14], 161–2).Not only may the systems of appercipient masses be
compared to organizationsof persons; they actually constitute their common mind and will. To say thatcertain persons have common interests means in this or that respect their mindsare similarly organized, that they will react in the same or correlative ways upongiven presentations. It is this identity of mental organization which is thepsychological justification for the doctrine of the General Will.([14.10], 129; see Chapman [14.22], 129–30)So those who share common interests share similar mental organization, and it is thisshared mental organization that is articulated by the general will. Note that at this pointBosanquet depends not simply on coherence—on a fitting together of different minds intoa broader unity—but on similarity of organization. ‘All mutual intelligence’, Bosanquetclaims, ‘depends upon the fact that individuals cover each other in some degree’ ([14.15],116n.); social organization thus depends on the similarity or repetition of selves. It is notentirely clear how this principle of social life as based on similarity of organizationcoheres with that of organic unity,27 but it does at least allow Bosanquet to argue that ageneral will is necessarily limited to a community sharing a common life. ‘[T]he commonlife shared by the members of a community involves a common element in their ideas,not merely in their notions of things about them, though this is very important, but moreespecially in the dominant or organizing ideas which rule their minds’ ([14.16], 260).Consequently, those sharing no common life—such as mankind as a whole—cannotpossess a general will ([14.12], 271–301).The general will, Bosanquet claimed, is our ‘real will’, which can be contrasted to our‘actual will’. This distinction, which drives most liberals to distraction (e.g., Berlin[14.19], 133; Hobhouse [14.37], 44ff.)28 follows easily enough from Bosanquet’sanalyses of self, the common good and reality. The self, we saw, is a system of desires,interests and beliefs, which reason seeks to make harmonious. Of course, actual selvesare shot with contradictions ‘through and through’ ([14.14], 111). As we saw,appercipient systems tend to crowd each other out; that which is conscious displaces theothers, making it very difficult to render the entire system coherent.In order to obtain a full statement of what we will, what we want at any momentmust at least be corrected and amended by what we want at other moments; andthis cannot be done without also correcting and amending it so as to harmonizewith what others want, which involves the application of the same process tothem. But when any considerable degree of such correction had been gonethrough, our own will would return to us in a shape in which we should notknow it again, although every detail would be a necessary inference from thewhole and resolutions which we actually cherish…. Such a process ofharmonization and adjusting a mass of data to bring them into rational shape iswhat is meant by criticism.([14.14], 111)Thus Bosanquet’s first claim is that a fully coherent self and will, which took intoaccount our interest in the common good, would be very different from a self and willthat had not undergone this process of rational reconstruction. The second claim, that theformer is more real than the latter follows directly from the idealist claim that thecriterion of reality is coherence—that with greater coherence is more real.
THE STATEBosanquet: the general will and the stateMost readers share Hobhouse’s conviction that Bosanquet’s theory of the general willjustifies authoritarianism. If (1) the general will is our real will and if (2) the governmentinterprets the general will, then (3) when the government tells us what to do it is reallyonly informing us what we really want to do. And if (4) the government forces us to do asit instructs it is only forcing us to do what we really want to do. ‘Thus it is that we canspeak, without a contradiction, of being forced to be free’ ([14.14], 118–19).29 But this isto misrepresent Bosanquet’s theory; the problem lies in step (2), the idea that thegovernment interprets the general will (see Nicholson [14.45], 214–15).To be sure the
State does represent, at least partially, the real will ([14.14], 141). Butthe State is not the government. The State ‘includes the entire hierarchy of institutions bywhich life is determined, from the family to the trade, and from the trade to the Churchand the University’ (140). Such institutions are systems of similarly and correlativelyorganized minds; the State is a system of those systems; its aim is unified coherenceamong these institutions.It is plain that unless, on the whole, a working harmony were maintainedbetween the different groups which form society, life could not go on. And it isfor this reason that the State, as the widest grouping whose members areeffectively united by a common experience [and, so a general will], isnecessarily the one community which has absolute power to ensure, by force ifneed be, at least sufficient adjustment of the claims of all other groups to makelife possible. Assuming, indeed, that all the groupings are organs of a singlepervading life, we find it impossible that there should ultimately beirreconcilable opposition between them.([14.14] 158)But, as should be clear by now, no one individual, indeed no group of individuals, can beconscious of the system of intelligence that constitutes society. That would be for a partto fully know the whole, a claim that runs counter to almost every aspect of Bosanquet’sphilosophy. Consequently, Bosanquet is suspicious of claims by individuals that theyknow the general will. He is thus a harsh critic of Rousseau’s attempt to uncover thegeneral will through direct democracy; in the end, all Rousseau’s method reveals is the‘will of all’.[T]he very core of the common good represented by the life of the modernNation-State is its profound and complex organization, which makes it greaterthan the conscious momentary will of any individual. By reducing themachinery for the expression of the common good to the isolated and unassistedjudgments of the members of the whole body of citizens, Rousseau is ensuringthe exact reverse of what he professes to aim at. He is appealing from theorganized life, institutions, and selected capacity of a nation to that nationregarded as an aggregate of isolated individuals.([14.14], 109)Bosanquet is thus hesitant about endorsing state policies intended to articulate the generalwill: ‘our life is probably more rational than our opinions’ ([14.16], 218). This does notmean that Bosanquet opposes the reform of institutions,30 but it does imply that suchreform is best worked out by the participants who engage in the common life thatcomprises those institutions. Moreover, Bosanquet is very impressed by the way in whichinadequate knowledge of institutions and ways of life leads to reforms with deleteriousconsequences, such as poor relief that produces dependency ([14.7]: 3ff., 45ff.; [14.17],103–16). To be sure, Bosanquet does not embrace what he calls ‘administrative nihilism’,i.e., refusal ever to employ conscious policy to further the common good ([14.17], 301;[14.9], 358–83; [14.14], xxxvi). The ‘distinctive sphere’ of State agency ‘is rightlydescribed as the hindrance of hindrances of good life’ ([14.14], xxxii). However,Bosanquet was an adamant critic of economic socialism, precisely because it sought toimpose a conscious plan on society. In contrast to economic individual-ism, economicsocialism, he charged, seeks to substitute a mechanical, contrived, unity for the organicunity of society. ‘I confess that I believe modern Economic Socialism to rest
in part onthis ineradicable confusion. “We want a good life; let us make a law that there shall be ageneral good life”’ ([14.9], 316, 330).
Green’s new liberal tendenciesIn most respects Bosanquet is a faithful disciple of Green, and this applies to politicalphilosophy. But three thematic differences—differences in emphasis rather than sharpdivergences of principle—point their political theories in somewhat different directions.The stress on individual rightsThe first has been emphasized throughout this chapter: Green makes much more ofindividuals as self-conscious pursuers of their perfection, and puts somewhat less weighton institutions as weaving an only partially conscious unity. Let me stress once again thatis a matter of emphasis; Green too believes that the State is a ‘society of societies’, andthat its main task is to adjust the various claims of the societies to produce ‘harmonioussocial relations’ ([14.5], 110, 112). But Green’s account quickly focuses on the State as‘an institution in which all rights are harmoniously maintained’ ([14.5]:130). Because theself-conscious pursuit of individual perfection looms so large in Green’s work, he givesmore prominence to a theory of individual rights, reinforcing the view that he is a moredevoted liberal. But we need to be cautious here, for Green’s conception of individualrights is not particularly close to those prominent in contemporary political theory. Forhim ‘A right is a power claimed and recognized as contributory to a commongood’ ([14.5], 79).32 Today readers are apt to think of rights along the lines suggested byRonald Dworkin, as claims that protect individuals by trumping society’s collective goals([14.28], xi). Green seems to have precisely the opposite view: ‘a right against society, assuch, is impossible’ (no). The core supposition of the Dworkinian theory of rights—thatthe social and individual good regularly conflict—is precisely the view that Green (andBosanquet) reject. ‘The principle which it is here sought to maintain is that the perfectionof human character—a perfection of individuals which is also that of society, and ofsociety which is also that of individuals—is for man the only object of absolute orintrinsic value’ (Green [14.1], 266–7).The criticism of actual StatesA State that is to harmonize individual rights must ensure that the structure of rights issuch that all are able to contribute to the common good. Now, and here Bosanquetexplicitly disagrees ([14.14], ix, 269–70), Green believed that in the States of his time thelower classes were effectively precluded from participating in the common good. Theidea of civil society as ‘founded on the idea of there being a common good’ is, he insists,unrealized ‘in relation to the less favoured members of society’; indeed social life is a‘war’ ([14.1], 263). Consequently, those at the bottom of the economic order haveinadequate opportunity for self-development. Even more fundamentally, Green indicatesthat class differences themselves prevent common understanding in society ([14.2], 42).For Green, then, the actual States of his era do not adequately articulate the idea of theState as rationalizer (i.e., harmonizer) of rights; of the most defective instances, such asImperial Russia, he says that we count them as States ‘only by a sort of courtesy’ ([14.5],103). This drives Green to a more reformist position than we find in Bosanquet’s
politicalphilosophy.Consciousness of the common goodOur inability adequately to grasp the common good is not a dominant theme of Green,unlike Bosanquet, and this, of course, opens up more possibilities for State action. To besure, Green insists that the law cannot make a person moral:that the law cannot make men good—that its business is to set them free tomake themselves good—I quite agree. The question is, how these truisms are tobe applied. I am no advocate of beneficent despotism. No tendency, inconsistentwith the recognised principles of English legislation, lurks under my use of thephrases ‘constructive Liberals’ or ‘organic reforms’…. As instances of what Imean by ‘organic social reforms’ I should specify compulsory education,restraint on the power of settling real estate and on freedom of contract incertain respects, specially in respect of Game, between Landlord and Tenant,the inspection of dwelling houses, [and] the compulsory provision of them insome cases.([14.5], 345n.)33So Green’s ‘constructive’ programme was by no means radical; and he certainly was nosocialist ([14.5], 163–78, 313–17). As is well known, both Green and Bosanquet stressthat self-development requires private property rights.34 Still, Green can soundly claimthe title of ‘constructive Liberal’ as he allows that the State, and especially localgovernment, can have sufficient insight into the common good to justify political reforms(cf. Harris [14.35]). This is the aspect of Green’s political theory upon which Hobhousebuilds; Hobhouse insists that the State does have the capacity to regulate public life forthe better pursuit of the common good.35 Again, whereas Bosanquet is apt to stress theunconscious nature of the general will, Green consistently gives a greater role to theconscious apprehension of perfection.
CONCLUSIONBosanquet developed and systematized Green’s idealism (Nicholson [14.45], 4). Butdevelopment and systematization do not mean that he merely repeats what Green says atgreater length. Bosanquet carries the principle of coherence and unity further, explainingsocial unity without appeal to a primary social interest. Moreover, his theory ofappercipient mass provides a psychological interpretation of social unity and the generalwill far more sophisticated than anything we find in Green. Yet it was the theory ofappercipient mass and his relentless pursuit of the idealist theme of coherence thatyielded his thin account of selfhood. Green is not, as many have said, a Kantian, but hisAbsolute idealism is not as developed as Bosanquet’s; it is perhaps for this very reasonthat Green has a thicker account of selfhood. It is this difference, rather than ones in theirpolitical philosophies or actual political proposals, that grounds the intuition that Greenhas a stronger claim to a place in the liberal pantheon.
NOTESThis chapter was written during my tenure as a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophyand Policy Center at Bowling Green State University. My thanks to the Center for itsgenerous support. I would also like to express my gratitude to Sharon Hayes: I havegreatly benefited from her work on T.H.Green. My thanks also to Sterling Burnett andKen Cust for their research assistance.1 A second edition of Ethical Studies was published after Bradley’s death.2 See further Richter [14.51].3 For helpful accounts of Bosanquet’s relation to the ‘new liberals’, see Collini [14.24], Clarke[14.23], Freeden [14.29], Gaus [14.31], Vincent and Plant [14.58].4 For a useful overview of Bosanquet’s logic, see Passmore ([14.48], 86–7).5 If knowledge is justified true belief, it may be argued that a coherence theory of knowledgeimplies a coherence theory of truth. For a development of this suggestion, see Davidson[14.27]. If one finds this terminology confusing, one can substitute ‘coherence theory ofjustified belief’ for ‘coherence theory of knowledge’ in what follows.6 Richard Rorty ([14.53], 299) holds that this was the great mistake of idealism. Havingrejected a representational account of knowledge, the idealists still wanted to say that in somesense our understanding of nature was true to nature’s understanding of herself, that we werejustified in believing not only what coheres with our concepts but that this reveals what istrue, i.e. what nature is really like.7 See also Quinton [14.50]; Crossley [14.26], Thomas ([14.56], 141–5). Cf. Milne [14.40],chapter V.8 Cf. John Morrow’s claim [14.42] that whereas Green’s metaphysics is ‘immanentist’,Bosanquet’s is ‘transcendentist’. See also Geoffrey Thomas’s argument that Green’s theoryis a ‘personal’ idealism, to be contrasted to the social idealism of Bosanquet and Bradley([14.56], 142).9 Precisely in what sense the Absolute is ‘composed’ of finite minds, and whether we can besaid to be ‘members’ of it is problematic. See Bosanquet ([14.16], 98ff.). But note his remarkthat ‘the Absolute needs us and our conduct just as we need it’ (222).10 Admittedly, this judgement of plausibility depends on a certain religious disposition, atwhich we are apt to smile today. But those smiles fade a bit when we contemplate Rorty’sdiagnosis [14.53] of our epistemological theories about how we know nature as it really is.11 Consequently, if as Thomas argues (and I believe he is right), Green’s ethics does not require‘the full-blown metaphysics’ ([14.56, 150), it still may be the case that the ethics derivesjustification from the rest of the system.12 Bosanquet is referring here to both individuality and originality. I have elsewhere argued thatBosanquet’s contrast between his view and J.S.Mill’s is overdrawn. See Gaus ([14.31],15ff.).13 For an excellent account of Green’s criticism of Hume’s theory of the self, see Thomas([14.56], 173ff.).14 For one of the best accounts of Bosanquet’s theory of the appercipient mass, see Chapman([14.22], 128ff.).15 Bosanquet speaks here of ‘mind’.16 ‘The consciousness in a particular human self of the identity of its own experiences ismerely, as I understand the argument, a case of apprehension of the whole’ (Bosanquet[14.16], 155). Understood as a gloss on Bosanquet’s argument, this seems correct; what issomewhat surprising is that the ‘argument’ referred to here is Green’s, which Bosanquet isintending to explicate.17 This is an abbreviated account; see Gaus ([14.31], chapters 1 and 2).18 For this last, see Bosanquet ([14.14], x; [14.13], 219).19 See his discussion of the aphorism: ‘We are not hard enough on stupidity’ ([14.13], 213).20 These are essentially the same. As Bosanquet remarks, ‘Value is the power tosatisfy’ ([14.15], 297).21 David L.Norton ([14.47], 54–5) disputes this concerning Green. I criticize Norton’sinterpretation in Gaus [14.31], 20–2.22 Bosanquet, indeed, makes so much of the way in which the mind is a product of nature hesometimes gives the impression of being more a materialist than an idealist. See Passmore([14.48], 88–9).23 Though, oddly enough, their positions are reversed when analysing the state; Green insiststhat actual states are further from the ideal. See pp. 429–31 above.24 As Thomas points out ([14.56], 221), this view has certain similarities to Derek Parfit’s.25 H.A.Prichard ([14.49], 73) argued that Green too denied the distinction between persons. Fora criticism of Prichard, see Gaus ([14.31], 61–4), Nicholson ([14.45], 64ff.).26 For an excellent account of Green’s theory of the common good, see Nicholson ([14.45], 54–82.27 Cf. Bosanquet’s insistence that ‘Nevertheless, upon a scrutiny of the true operative nature ofsocial unity, we find that repetition and similarity are but superficial characteristics of it.What holds society together, we find, are correlative differences; the relation which expressesitself on a large scale in Aristotle’s axiom “No State can be composed of similars”’ ([14.16],249). See Bosanquet’s distinction between an association and an organization ([14.14],chapter VII; [14.16], 261).28 For an unusually thorough and judicious account of Bosanquet’s theory of the general will,and the place of his doctrine of the real will in it, see Nicholson ([14.45], 189–230).29 In this chapter I have not examined the theory of positive freedom. Compared to other
BIBLIOGRAPHYWorks by Green14.1
Prolegomena to Ethics, ed. A.C.Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press, (1890).14.2
Works of Thomas Hill Green, vol. III, ed. R.L.Nettleship, London: Longman’s,Green, 1891.14.3
Works of Thomas Hill Green, vol. II, ed. R.L.Nettleship, London: Longman’s,Green, 1893.14.4
Works of Thomas Hill Green, vol. I, ed. R.L.Nettleship, London: Longman’s, Green,1894.14.5
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings, ed. PaulHarris and John Morrow, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Works by Bosanquet14.6
Logic, or the Morphology of Knowledge, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888.14.7
Essays and Addresses, 2nd edn, London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1891.14.8 ‘Hegel’s Theory of the Political Organism’,
Mind, 7 (1898):1–1414.9
The Civilization of Christendom, London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1899.14.10
Psychology of the Moral Self, London: Macmillan, 1904.14.11
The Value and Destiny of the Individual, London: Macmillan, 1913.14.12
Social and International Ideals, Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1917.14.13
Some Suggestions in Ethics, London: Macmillan, 1918.14.14
The Philosophical Theory of the State, 4th edn, London: Macmillan, 1923.14.15
The Principle of Individuality and Value, London: Macmillan, 1927.14.16
Science and Philosophy and Other Essays, London: Allen & Unwin, 1927.14.17 ed.
Aspects of the Social Problem, London: Macmillan, 1895.aspects of British idealism, this has received extensive treatment. The best account ofGreen’s theory of freedom is Nicholson ([14.45], 116–31). See also Weinstein [14.59];Simhony [14.55], Norman ([14.46], 26–53), Milne ([14.41], 146ff.); Roberts [14.52].30 Again, care is called for here. Bosanquet considered himself a radical, and was prepared toaccept social legislation to alleviate evils. (Muirhead [14.44], 48, 134).31 Not that Bosanquet disagrees ([14.12], 274).32 On Green’s theory of rights, see Cacoullos [14.21], Nicholson ([14.45], 83–95).33 Letter to W.V.Harcourt, 1973, quoted in Harris and Morrow’s notes to Green’s ‘LiberalLegislation and Freedom of Contract’ [14.5]. See also Nicholson ([14.45], 159).34 See Green ([14.1], 201; [14.5], 163ff.), Bosanquet ([14.14], 281–2; [14.17], 308–18). Thishas led to Marxist-inspired criticisms of Green, such as Green-garten [14.34]. For adiscussion, see Morrow [14.42].35 For the importance of this theme in the development of the ‘new liberalism’, see Gaus([14.32], 21–3). Collini doubts whether Green’s idealism actually strongly supported newliberal collectivism ([14.24], 44–6).
Other works14.18 Bonjour, L.
The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1985.14.19 Berlin, I. ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in his
Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 120–72.14.20 Broad, C.D.
Five Types of Ethical Theory, London: Kegan Paul, Trench &Trubner, 1930.14.21 Cacoullos, A.R.
Thomas Hill Green: Philosopher of Rights, New York, Twayne,1974.14.22 Chapman, J.W.
Rousseau—Totalitarian or Liberal, New York: AMS Press, 1968.14.23 Clarke, P.
Liberals and Social Democrats, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1978.14.24 Collini, S. ‘Hobhouse, Bosanquet and the State’,
Past and Present, 72 (1976): 86–111.14.25——
Liberalism and Sociology: L.T.Hobhouse and Political Argument in England,1880–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.14.26 Crossley, D. ‘Self-conscious Agency and the Eternal Consciousness: UltimateReality in T.H.Green’,
Ultimate Meaning and Reality, 13 (1990):3–20.14.27 Davidson, D. ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge’, in AlanMalachowski, ed.,
Reading Rorty, London: Blackwell, 1990, 120–38.14.28 Dworkin, R.
Taking Rights Seriously, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1978.14.29 Freeden, M.
The New Liberalism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.14.30——
Liberalism Divided, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.14.31 Gaus, G.F.
The Modern Liberal Theory of Man, London: Croom Helm, 1983.14.32——‘Public and Private Interests in Liberal Political Economy, Old and New’, inS.I.Benn and G.F.Gaus, eds,
Public and Private in Social Life, London: Croom Helm,1983, 183–221.14.33 Gordon, P. and J.White.
Philosophers as Educational Reformers: the Influence ofBritish Idealism on British Educational Thought and Practice, London: Routledge,1979.14.34 Greengarten, I.M.
Thomas Hill Green and the Development of Liberal-DemocraticThought, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.14.35 Harris, P. ‘Moral Progress and Politics: The Theory of T.H.Green’,
Polity, 21(1989):538–62.14.36 Hobbes, T.
Leviathan, ed. M.Oakeshott, London: Blackwell, 1948.14.37 Hobhouse, L.T.
The Metaphysical Theory of the State, London: Allen & Unwin,1918.14.38——
The Rational Good, London: Watts, 1947.14.39——
Liberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964.14.40 Milne, A.J.M.
The Social Philosophy of English Idealism, London: Allen &Unwin, 1962.14.41——
Freedom and Rights: A Philosophical Synthesis, London: Allen & Unwin,1968.14.42 Morrow, J. ‘Property and Personal Development: An Interpretation of T.H. Green’sPolitical Philosophy’,
Politics, 18 (1983):84–92.14.43——‘Liberalism and British Idealist Political Philosophy: A Reassessment’,
History of Political Thought, 5 (1984):91–108.14.44 Muirhead, J.H., ed.,
Bernard Bosanquet and His Friends, London: Allen & Unwin,1935.14.45 Nicholson, P.P.
The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1990.14.46 Norman, R.
Free and Equal, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.14.47 Norton, D.L.
Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism, Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1976.14.48 Passmore, J.
A Hundred Years of Philosophy, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.14.49 Prichard, H.A.
Moral Obligation and Duty and Interest, Oxford: Clarendon Press,1968.14.50 Quinton, A. ‘Absolute Idealism’,
Proceedings of the British Academy, 57(1971):303–29.14.51 Richter, M.
The Politics of Conscience: T.H.Green and his Age, London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964.14.52 Roberts, J. ‘T.H.Green’, in Z.Pelczynski and J.Gray, eds,
Conceptions of Liberty inPolitical Philosophy, New York: St Martin’s, 1984, 243–62.14.53 Rorty, R.
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1979.14.54 Sidgwick, H.
Lectures on the Ethics of T.H.Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer andJ.Martineau, London: Macmillan, 1902.14.55 Simhony, A. ‘Beyond Negative and Positive Freedom: T.H.Green’s View ofFreedom’,
Political Theory, 21 (1993):28–54.14.56 Thomas, G.
The Moral Philosophy of T.H.Green, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.14.57 Vincent, A., ed.,
The Philosophy of T.H.Green, Aldershot: Gower, 1986.14.58 Vincent, A. and R.Plant.
Philosophy, Politics and Citizenship: The Life andThought of the British Idealists, Oxford: Blackwell, 1984.14.59 Weinstein, W.L. ‘The Concept of Liberty in Nineteenth Century Thought’,
Political Studies, 13 (1965):145–62.A good bibliography of works relating to Green’s moral theory can be found in Thomas[14.56] and concerning Green’s political theory in [14.5]; see also the bibliography inVincent [14.57]. Nicholson [14.45] and Vincent and Plant [14.58] contain usefulbibliographies of works relating to British idealism, including both Green and Bosanquet.