T.H. Green

John Morrow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351148221
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

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.

Part I
Ethics and Politics

[1]
Green: Political Obligation

H.A. Prichard

I

GREEN’s lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation are in the main an attempt to answer two related questions. The first of these is the question: Why is it the duty of a subject to obey his ruler or sovereign or government? This question of course takes for granted, as in ordinary circumstances we all do, that there is such a duty, i.e. that the mere fact of a sovereign’s ordering us to do some action gives rise to a duty on our part to carry it out. And the question arises naturally out of this idea, for after all the mere receipt of an order backed up by a threat seems, if anything, to give rise to the duty of resisting rather than of obeying, and so we naturally ask, why is this otherwise in the special case where the order comes from a ruler?

The question, it should be noted, is similar to questions about acts of other kinds which we ordinarily think duties, such as, why ought we to speak truthfully or to consider the feelings of others? Hence an answer is really only part of a theory of Moral Obligation in general, viz. that part which concerns one special obligation, and unless we recognize this we are apt to go astray in looking for the answer.

Green puts this question in the form: What is the true ground or justification of obedience to law? At the same time his answer, as will appear later, has a peculiarity. This is that by its very nature it is at the same time a theory of Moral Obligation in general, i.e. an answer to the question, why ought we to do any of the actions which are duties? And indeed his lectures will be better understood if they are regarded as a theory of Moral Obligation generally rather than a theory of Political Obligation in particular, though they are both.

The second question is one the answer to which in Green’s mind is bound up with the answer to the first. It is the question put by a ruler: What is the principle which should guide me in making laws, i.e. in ordering and enforcing various actions?

Green’s treatment of these questions exerts a peculiar fascination. It gives the impression of propounding a profound truth, the ignoring of which has led his predecessors astray, and the discovery of which at last renders it possible to give the right answer.

At the same time the lectures are undeniably very obscure. And the impression of their obscurity is apt to grow rather than to diminish with further acquaintance. Indeed we more and more find ourselves asking not so much: Is the doctrine true? but: What is the doctrine?

Once the reader has realized the obscurity, what he would like to see offered in the first instance is a clear statement, kept clear of all commentary, of what the doctrine is. And he would prefer any comments to be reserved till afterwards.

Now I flatter myself that I could offer such an outline. But if I did, you would only call it a caricature. For it would differ so widely from Green’s own statements that it would strike you as mere misrepresentation, and you would object that I have simply misunderstood him. To avoid this objection, it would be necessary simply to construct an outline by piecing together in as connected a way as is possible the statements to which Green seems to attach most importance. But you would find the result just as obscure as the lectures. It would, in fact, only present the obscurity in a tabloid form, and it would be no help towards discovering what the doctrine really is.

The chief reason of this lies in a fact which only becomes clear as the result of considering very closely what Green says. Underlying the lectures is a peculiar theory of Moral Obligation which is totally inconsistent with our ordinary moral ideas and therefore also with ordinary language, which is after all only the expression of our ordinary ideas. Unfortunately, however, Green does not realize this; and in consequence, when stating what he considers to be the truth, he retains ordinary language, thereby speaking as though our ordinary ideas were true, although it is really his object to make out that they are not. Thereby he conceals both from himself and from his readers the real nature of his view, and in fact fundamentally misrepresents it. And in consequence, to represent his doctrine accurately, radical restatement becomes necessary. Incidentally, it may be added, Green by expressing his view in ordinary language gives it a plausibility which it does not deserve, by making it seem consistent with our ordinary ideas although in fact it is not.

This being so, the only useful plan is to take the statements to which Green would seem to attach most importance, and ascertain what he is really implying in making them, and then to formulate his doctrine in accordance with these implications, regardless of whether or no the formulation agrees with his ordinary method of expressing himself.

And this is the procedure which I propose to adopt. It unfortunately, of course, involves a good deal of discussion of matters of interpretation. But this has to be regarded as inevitable.

At the same time, to do this with success some preparation is necessary. As any consideration of Green will show, he is on certain matters confused, and on these things we must first get ourselves clear.

1. It is important to bear in mind that to have a Legal Obligation and to have a Moral Obligation to do some act are facts of quite different sorts. The former consists in the fact that we have been ordered to do it and are subject to coercion if we do not, while the latter consists in our having the duty of doing the action.

2. Consider the meaning of the phrase ‘a moral right’. As instances will show, we use ‘having a moral right’ in two senses according as that to which we are said to have a right is (a) our doing something, e.g. taking a holiday or killing someone in self-defence, or (b) another’s doing something, e.g. our son’s maintaining us in old age, or our government’s protecting us from violence. In the former case we mean simply that our act would not be wrong, i.e. that we are not under a disobligation to do it. In the latter case, we are referring to the other’s obligation to do the action, his obligation being from our point of view our right.

3. Consider a favourite phrase of Green’s, viz.: ‘a system of rights and obligations enforced by law’. Here the rights and obligations meant must be moral rights and obligations. For since our having a legal right or obligation is something which includes an enforcing, it cannot be enforced, since it is impossible to enforce an enforcing. Further, strictly speaking, what is implied to be enforced is not the rights and obligations but the acts to the doing of which there is a right or an obligation. In addition, when we speak of the ruler as enforcing a right of mine, we really mean his enforcing on another the doing of an act to his doing of which I have a right and he has an obligation, e.g. the ruler’s enforcing on another the refraining from interfering with my body, to which refraining I have a right. Correspondingly, when we speak of the ruler as enforcing an obligation of mine, we mean his enforcing on me an act to the doing of which I have an obligation and someone else has a right. Hence the phrase ‘rights and obligations enforced by law’ is really the equivalent of the obligations of others to a man and his obligations to them enforced by law, i.e. the system of mutual obligations enforced by law—so that the thing meant can be referred to in terms only of obligation.

4. Green always speaks of a right as being a power to do some action, i.e. really a power to do it in consequence of someone else’s action. This cannot be true of a right in either the legal or the moral sense. At best such a power can only be something to which we have a right in either sense. And the only truth underlying Green’s way of speaking is that where we have a legal right to do some action, i.e. where the government orders and enforces on others actions which will give us the power to do it, we shall to some extent have the power in consequence of the government’s coercion. Where, however, we have a moral right to a power due to the nature of the action in question, we need not have the power.

We can now turn to Green. It is, of course, a prominent feature of the lectures that they are largely taken up with a criticism of previous theories of Political Obligation, and notably of the Social Contract theory, and in effect he regards this theory as enemy number one, and indeed as a theory to be demolished before it is possible to attain the true theory. And the ground of his objection to this theory lies in his denial of the existence of any such thing as a system of natural rights and obligations, as the phrase ‘natural rights and obligations’ is usually understood.

The first thing to do for any one who is trying to elucidate Green’s theory is to ascertain what precisely he is maintaining in making this denial. For this denial is an essential part of the negative side of his doctrine, and the positive part has to be consistent with it. Whatever his positive doctrine is, it has to be one which is consistent with this denial.

The first question, therefore, to be answered is: What does Green mean when he denies the existence of natural rights and obligations, as the phrase is usually understood?

This denial first appears in § 9. He says:

There has been much objection to the admission of natural rights and obligations. At any rate the phrase is liable to misinterpretation. It may be taken to imply that rights and obligations can exist in a ‘state of nature’—a state in which every individual is free to do as he likes; that legal rights and obligations derive their authority from a voluntary act by which individuals contracted themselves out of this state, and that the individual retains from the state of nature certain rights with which no legal obligations ought to conflict. Such a doctrine (he adds—and obviously with approval) is generally admitted to be untenable.

And he endorses the truth of this admission by implying that no such system ever did or could exist independently of force exercised by society over individuals. Then later, in § 20, he says: ‘a law is not good [i.e. really is not one which the legislator ought to make] because it enforces “naturalrights”, but because it contributes to the realisation of a certain end’. And, as the context shows, he implies that the reason why a law cannot be good because it enforces natural rights is that there are no such things as natural rights.

Here, of course, he is referring to the social contract theory. And in § 22 he, in effect, represents this theory thus: Men originally existed in a state of nature, i.e. in a community not united by subjection to a government. In this state men had various rights against and obligations to one another. Then at some time with a view to the general interest men agreed to, and did, set up a government, i.e. a body which would order and enforce various actions which individuals were under an obligation to do, and also others the doing of which generally would be in the general interest. This done, if the question was raised ‘Why is an individual bound to obey his government?’, the answer in some instances would be ‘Because there is an obligation to do the action, natural in the sense of being independent of the government’s order’, and in others, ‘Because, though there is no natural obligation to do the action, yet there is a natural obligation to carry out the original promise or agreement to obey the government’, so that in every case the duty to obey rests on a natural obligation.

The implication is that here by ‘a system of natural rights and obligations’ is meant a system of rights and obligations which existed before there was a government, and which therefore, being independent of any order, still exists after there has come to be a government.

Therefore what Green is denying is the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I ETHICS AND POLITICS
• PART II LIBERTY IN POLITICAL SOCIETY
• PART III RIGHTS AND POLITICAL OBLIGATION
• PART IV THE ‘RIGHTS OF THE STATE’
• PART V GREEN AND VICTORIAN LIBERALISM
• PART VI GREEN IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
• Name Index