Metaphysics of Self-realisation and Freedom , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Colin Tyler

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

177 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

This first part of Colin Tyler's new critical assessment of the social and political thought of T.H. Green (1836-1882) explores the grounding that Green gives to liberal socialism. Tyler shows how, for Green, ultimately, personal self-realisation and freedom stem from the innate human drive to construct a bedrock of fundamental values and commitments that can define and give direction to the individual's most valuable potentials and talents. This book is not only a significant contribution to British idealist scholarship. It highlights also the enduring philosophical and ethical resources of a social democratic tradition that remains one of the world's most important social and political movements, and not least across Britain, Europe, North America, India and Australia. Dr Colin Tyler is Reader in Politics at the University of Hull and joint convenor of the Centre for British Idealism.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	22 mars 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781845405687
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1124€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Metaphysics of Self-realisation and Freedom
Part 1 of The Liberal Socialism of Thomas Hill Green
Colin Tyler
imprint-academic.com

2017 digital version converted and published by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © Colin Tyler, 2010, 2017
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.
Imprint Academic, PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK
imprint-academic.com/idealists

‘Apropos of someone feeling an acute morbid sense of being wicked. Poor fellow, said Green, the sense of Sin is very much an illusion. People are not as bad as they fancy themselves.’
John Addington Symonds to Charlotte Byron Green, 7 October 1882
‘the feeling of oppression, which always goes along with the consciousness of unfulfilled possibilities, will always give meaning to the representation of the effort after any kind of self-improvement as a demand for “freedom.”’
T.H. Green, ‘On the Different Senses of “Freedom” as Applied to Will and to the Moral Progress of Man’, §18
‘social life is to personality what language is to thought.’
T.H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, §183
‘we only find unity in the world because we have an idea that it is there, an idea which we direct our powers to realise’
T.H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, §149

Preface
I was introduced to Green’s political thought by Peter Nicholson, while a Master’s student at the University of York between 1991 and 1992. I had been looking for a philosophical theory that combined coherently John Stuart Mill’s liberalism with Hegel’s conception of the state as an ethical community. I found in Green an approach that achieved this, although I now see as do many others, it is more helpfully conceived as combining Aristotle’s eudaimonism with Fichtean form of Kantian ethics. The greater complexities of Green’s intellectual debts are explored below (§§2.II–III). There was very little mainstream academic interest in Thomas Hill Green when I began my Master’s dissertation. In part, this was due to his poor reputation in the philosophical mainstream, usually among people who had read little if anything of his actual writings. This low estimate was also due in part to the systematic nature of Green’s philosophy, something that means that one can only really begin to make sense of any particular aspect of his philosophy once one understands something of that complex, internally-differentiated system. In this sense, the systematic nature of his philosophy makes it more difficult to consider particular discrete issues and problems. Unfortunately, problem-solving is the preferred subject-matter of most contemporary philosophers, at least in the Anglo-American world. Another serious hindrance to a wider acceptance of Green’s philosophy is the need to begin with a careful, time-consuming, scholarly interpretation of his texts, a requirement viewed apparently with suspicion by many Anglo-American philosophers. [1] Finally and also very importantly, Green’s arguments are inherently difficult, something that is compounded by his frequently prolix philosophical writing style.
Against all these odds, Green’s standing among philosophers has improved slowly since the late 1990s, due not least to the inauguration in 2003 of the Imprint Academic series on Green of which the present book is a part. Unfortunately, the revival of interest in Green’s philosophy was only just beginning when I completed my doctorate (supervised by Peter Nicholson) at the end of 1995, and it was gaining momentum only slowly when my thesis was published in a largely unaltered form towards the end of 1997. [2] I have continued to work on the British idealists since that time, and in spite of what I am very pleased to say were uniformly positive reviews, I have always had a nagging awareness that the book was unfinished business. I am, therefore, very grateful to Keith Sutherland and Imprint Academic not only for agreeing to publish this very extensively revised version of the work, but also for agreeing to divide what has become a very long manuscript into two discrete books, as parts of a critical analysis of what I see now as Green’s liberal socialism.
The present book, The Metaphysics of Self-realisation and Freedom , is based on the introduction and first two chapters of the original thesis/book. Yet, I have treated the original purely as a draft, and have not felt bound to retain any of it. Simply in terms of quantity however, it is now more than three times the length (in terms of words) of the original. The new material that has been introduced is of three broad types. First, I have attempted to deepen my critical analysis, and to correct errors of interpretation, logic, grammar and style. Second, I have attempted to consider all of the major scholarship that has appeared since 1997. Third, I have made use of the previously unpublished manuscripts that several of us have made available in the past thirteen years. As a result of these great many additions, much of the text is completely new, including almost all of the first two chapters, as well as chapters seven, eight and nine. Chapters three and four have also been largely rewritten and restructured, while chapters five and six have been heavily revised and greatly extended. In fact, the resulting book differs so significantly in length, argument and depth from the material in the original version that it constitutes a new work. [3]
I have incurred a great many intellectual debts during the preparation of this book. As well as supervising my doctorate from 1992 to 1995, Peter Nicholson has continued to provide his usual invaluable expertise, insight and support, both as editor of this Imprint Academic series, and through his own writings on Green and the idealists. The same is true of Bill Mander and Maria Dimova-Cookson. Indeed, Bill and Peter offered many comments on earlier drafts of this book, as have Owen Fellows and Sean Magee, two of my doctoral students. I am particularly grateful to each of these scholars for this time-consuming input. While Bill, Maria, Peter and I disagree on many issues regarding Green, some of them fundamental, it is one of the great strengths of the community of scholars working on the British idealists and New Liberals at the present time that we can debate our differences fully and frankly, while still listening carefully to each other. My criticisms of the existing scholarship in this book are offered in that spirit. I am also grateful to Jim Connelly and Noël O’Sullivan, my colleagues in the Centre for the Study of British Idealism at the University of Hull. My sincere thanks go also to others at Hull and beyond, some of whom have commented on earlier drafts of this material and especially James Allard, David Boucher, Thom Brooks, Glenn Burgess, Alberto de Sanctis, Claire Hairsine, Denys Leighton, Justin Morris, Avital Simhony, Pip Tyler, Will Tyler, Andrew Vincent, Dave Weinstein and Richard Woodward. I also wish to reaffirm my gratitude to the following people, whom I thanked in the original thesis: Diane Adams, Richard Bellamy, Steve Benson, Jenny Bradford, Dave Brittan, Frank Brogan, Alex Callinicos, Matt Carter, Steve Cinderby, Richard Cookson, John Horton, Natalie Humphreys, Linda Lofthouse, Andy McLellan, Sue Mendus, Andrea Micocci, Caroline Moore, Jeremy Nolan, Massimo Paradiso, Gill Pulpher, Rod Rhodes, Giuseppe Tassone, Andrew Tesseyman, and Angie Wilson.
I have carried out a significant amount of archival work for this new book, and in this regard I am pleased to thank the Master and Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford for their permission to consult and quote from their holdings of Green’s papers. I also wish to thank the Principal and Fellows of St. John’s College, Oxford, for their hospitality during my time as a Visiting Scholar with them in the summer of 2007.
As always however, by far my greatest and yet least tangible debts are owed to Pip, my wife, and of course to Lucy, our cat, for their continuing love, support and patience. This book is dedicated to my mother Edna and my brother Will, as well as to the memory of my father, Bill.
Of course, I alone am responsible for the use made of this assistance.
Colin Tyler
University of Hull
9 March 2010

1 See David Weinstein’s very apposite remarks on this subject in his Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 1–4.

2 Colin Tyler, Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882) and the Philosophical Foundations of Politics: An internal critique (Lampeter and Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1997).

3 Hopefully, it will differ from the original in one other crucial respect: the book distributor’s warehouse burnt down the day after it received the first printing of the original book!

Abbreviations
References within this book are given in the following format: §[chapter].[section]
Items referenced by section number are listed below followed by an asterisk. All other references are to page numbers. The following abbreviations are also used below:
‘Harris’ = Paul Harris and John Morrow, eds., T H Green: Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1986).
‘ Works ’ = R.L. Nettleship and Peter P. Nicholson, eds., Works of Thomas Hill Green , 5 vols. (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1997)
Writings of Thomas Hill Green
‘Aristotle’: ‘Philosophy of Aristotle’, Works III, pp. 46–91.
‘Christian Dogma’: ‘Essay on Christian Dogma’, Works III, pp. 161–85.
‘Conversion of Paul’: ‘Conversion of Paul (Extract from lectures on the