Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and James Martineau. Henry Sidgwick

This chapter analyzes the overlapping ideas about international society to be found in the political thought of three leading late Victorian liberal thinkers: T. H. Green (1836–82), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), and Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900). In so doing it focuses on what Stefan Collini has labeled the world of the “public moralists”—the world, that is, of influential and well-connected British intellectuals who flourished in the universities, in Parliament, and in the press. Despite their manifold political and philosophical differences, Green, Spencer, and Sidgwick shared and articulated complementary visions of the past, present, and future of international society. This was not simply a happy coincidence of views—it was an understanding of international politics generated from within their distinctive intellectual systems. They simultaneously reflected and contributed to late Victorian liberal thinking about international affairs.

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The Hobbesian Hypothesis in Nineteenth-Century Political Theory

10.3366/edinburgh/9780748678662.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Karl Widerquist ◽

Grant S. McCall

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Karl Marx ◽

Private Property ◽

Henry David Thoreau ◽

Supporting Evidence ◽

Herbert Spencer ◽

Property System ◽

Henry Sidgwick ◽

Friedrich Engels ◽

Eighteen Century

This chapter shows how “the Hobbesian hypothesis” (the claim that everyone is better off in a state society with a private property system than they could reasonably expect to be in any society without either of those institutions) appeared in Nineteen-Century Political Theory. As in the Eighteen Century, disagreement about the truth of the hypothesis produced virtually no debate. G. W. F. Hegel, Frédéric Bastiat, and others asserted it with very little supporting evidence. Henry David Thoreau, Herbert Spencer, Henry George, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, John Robert Seeley, Henry Sidgwick, Henry Sumner Maine, and Peter Kropotkin all voiced various levels of scepticism, and some, especially Kropotkin, produced considerable evidence. Yet supporters went on asserting the hypothesis as if it were an unchallengeable and obvious truth.

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Reordering the World

10.23943/princeton/9780691138787.001.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Duncan Bell

Keyword(s):

Political Thought ◽

Significant Contribution ◽

Settler Colonialism ◽

Intellectual Life ◽

Anglo Saxon ◽

Ancient History ◽

Herbert Spencer ◽

Henry Sidgwick ◽

History Of ◽

Imperial Ideology

This book is a penetrating account of the complexity and contradictions found in liberal visions of empire. Focusing mainly on nineteenth-century Britain—at the time the largest empire in history and a key incubator of liberal political thought—the book sheds new light on some of the most important themes in modern imperial ideology. The book ranges widely across Victorian intellectual life and beyond. The opening chapters explore the nature of liberalism, varieties of imperial ideology, the uses and abuses of ancient history, the imaginative functions of the monarchy, and fantasies of Anglo-Saxon global domination. They are followed by illuminating studies of prominent thinkers, including J. A. Hobson, L. T. Hobhouse, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, Herbert Spencer, and J. R. Seeley. While insisting that liberal attitudes to empire were multiple and varied, the book emphasizes the liberal fascination with settler colonialism. It was in the settler empire that many liberal imperialists found the place of their political dreams. This book is a significant contribution to the history of modern political thought and political theory.

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INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY IN VICTORIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT: T. H. GREEN, HERBERT SPENCER, AND HENRY SIDGWICK

Modern Intellectual History ◽

10.1017/s1479244306000837 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 207-238 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

DUNCAN BELL ◽

CASPER SYLVEST

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

International Society ◽

Political Thought ◽

Liberal Internationalism ◽

Intellectual Elite ◽

Herbert Spencer ◽

Henry Sidgwick ◽

Liberal Ideology ◽

Fundamental Distinction

In the second half of the nineteenth century, British liberal ideology contained an open-ended vision of international order. The vision usually included a notion of an incipient or immanent international society composed of civilized nations. The fundamental distinction between civilized and barbarian nations meant that while this perceived society was international, in no sense was it global. In this essay we outline some of the broader characteristics of the internationalist outlook that many liberals shared and specifically discuss the claims about international society that they articulated. Liberal internationalism was a broad church and many (but not all) of its fundamental assumptions about the nature and direction of international progress and the importance of civilization were shared by large swathes of the intellectual elite. These assumptions are analysed by exploring the conceptions of international society found in three of the most influential thinkers of the time, T. H. Green, Herbert Spencer and Henry Sidgwick. Finally, the essay turns to the limitations of this vision of international society, especially in the context of the role of empire.

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