4 - Excursus: Green, Hobhouse and contemporary moral philosophy

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Hobhouse once said approvingly that in Green “we get most of the cream of Idealism and least of its sour milk.” What follows next examines additional aspects of this philosophical, new liberal cream as Green reconstituted it and as Hobhouse further modified it. As we have already begun to see, Green and Hobhouse married communitarianism, consequentialism and liberalism. I shall now endeavor to assess more carefully whether this marriage of what we have come to consider philosophic rivals succeeded or was just a misconceived exercise in overly enthusiastic eclecticism. And I hope to do this by helping myself generously to components of their respective moral psychologies.

Regardless of how successfully Green and Hobhouse marry competing philosophies, their efforts nevertheless look ahead to more recent attempts to rescue philosophical liberalism from the rivalry between liberalism and communitarianism that has artificially straitjacketed much contemporary political theorizing. Some will therefore recognize Joseph Raz's anti-individualist liberalism of human flourishing in Green and Hobhouse's new liberalism. Some may also recognize mirrored in their moral and political theories Jack Crittenden's liberal “self beyond individualism, a self constituted by autonomy and relationships.” But few, I doubt, will also recognize as they should Harry Frankfurt's perfectionist liberalism as well.

But more importantly, and perhaps more controversially, I would like to insist that Thomas Hurka's consequentialist perfectionism restates and reinvents salient aspects of Green and Hobhouse's new liberalism, albeit with greater sophistication and nuance.