This book offers a new phenomenological, interpretation of T.H. Green's (1836-1882) philosophy and political theory. By analysing in turn his theory of human practice, the moral idea, the common good, freedom and human rights, the book demonstrates that Green falls into the same tradition as Kantian and Husserlian transcendentalism. The book offers a reconstruction of Green's idealism and demonstrates its potential to address contemporary debates on the nature of moral agency, positive and negative freedom and on justifying human rights.

Publisher Description

This volume collects a range of the most important published critical essays on T.H. Green's political philosophy. These essays consider Green's ethical and political philosophy, his accounts of freedom, rights, political obligation and property and the location of his political theory in the discourses of Victorian liberalism. It concludes with a selection of essays that provide comparative discussions of aspects of Green's political philosophy with positions advanced by Sidgwick, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, and with both conservative and liberal responses to his ideas that emerged in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japan.

Examining Thomas Hill Green's moral philosophy, Thomas defends a radically new perception of Green as an independent thinker rather than a devoted partisan of Kant or Hegel. Green's moral philosophy, argues Thomas, includes a widely misunderstood defense of free will, an innovative model of deliberation that rejects both Kantian and Humean conceptions of practical reason, a barely recognized theory of character, and an account of moral objectivity that involves no dependence on religion--all of which yield a coherent body of moral philosophy that raises important problems neglected in contemporary ethics.

Ethical Politics and Modern Society introduces and critically examines British idealist philosopher, Thomas Hill Green, his practical philosophy, and its reception in China between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. As a response to the modernity issue in Great Britain, Green's philosophy, in particular his ethical politics, anticipated a practical solution to the individual alienation issue in modern society. Witnessing the resemblance between Green’s ethical politics and classical Chinese ethical and political thought, some Chinese scholars became inclined to take Green’s thought as an intellectual approach to assimilate Western modernity. While Green and the Chinese scholars both intended to articulate an ethical conception of modern politics in response to the issue of modernity, their results were very different. In this book, James Jia-Hau Liu analyses why modern Chinese scholars introduced Green’s philosophy to China and why the studies of Green’s philosophy in China have since faded away. Modern Chinese scholars, such as Gao Yi-Han, Chin Yueh-Lin, Tang Jun-Yi, Chang Fo-Chuan, and Yin Hai-Guang, are explored in greater detail. The contradictory standings towards modernity between Green and Chinese scholars illustrate how to understand the difference forms of modernity that can be embodied therein. Ethical Politics and Modern Society is a valuable resource to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, history of social and political thought, British idealism, and the work of Thomas Hill Green.

This volume collects a range of the most important published critical essays on T.H. Green's political philosophy. These essays consider Green's ethical and political philosophy, his accounts of freedom, rights, political obligation and property and the location of his political theory in the discourses of Victorian liberalism. It concludes with a selection of essays that provide comparative discussions of aspects of Green's political philosophy with positions advanced by Sidgwick, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, and with both conservative and liberal responses to his ideas that emerged in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japan.