The Neo-Idealist Political Theory: Its Continuity With the British Tradition 9780231895750

Table of contents :
FOREWORD
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE. THE BACKGROUND
CHAPTER TWO. THE PROBLEM OF SELF-DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER THREE. THE INFLUENCE OF UTILITARIANISM
CHAPTER FOUR. THE CAPTURE OF EVOLUTION
CHAPTER FIVE. CONCLUSION
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

THE

NEO-IDEALIST

POLITICAL THEORY

THE NEO-IDEALIST POLITICAL THEORY Its Continuity with the British Tradition FREDERICK P H I L I P

HARRIS

New York : Morningside Heights

KING'S CROWN 1

9 44

PRESS

COPYRIGHT 1944 BY FREDERICK PHILIP

HARRIS

Printed in the United States of America

King's Crown Press is a division of Columbia University Press organized for the purpose of making certain scholarly material available at minimum cost. Toward that end, the publishers have adopted every reasonable economy except such as would interfere with a legible format. The wor\ is presented substantially as submitted by the author, without the usual editorial attention of Columbia University Press.

To My Mother and Father

FOREWORD THE DEMANDS of soldier life have made it impossible for the author to supervise publication of this book as originally planned; error might have been less if the project had been completed at a more fortunate time. But there may be an excuse for publication now. War is always a challenge to organize our collective life in a less costly and more effective way. T h e present crisis focuses attention on the extreme poles of social life—the individual and the international—and highlights the crucial need for cooperation. The following pages were written partly with the hope that any reader who has felt the pressures of our predicament might find in the constructive thought of the British Neo-idealists suggestive approaches toward a solution of the problem of developing an efficient political and economic system in which free individuals, freely discussing and investigating, may freely develop their interests and their capacities. For the British Neo-idealists were concerned primarily with the continued functioning of the free individual in a tightening social structure, and we may well note that they found the conditions of human freedom in a union of two methods, neither of which alone has solved our social crises and both of which are integral to the best in our Western tradition —the union of empirical science and Christian morality. I wish to thank Professor John Herman Randall, Jr., whose friendly help brought this study to its conclusion. I appreciate the suggestions given me by Professor Harold J. Laski and Professor Brand Blanshard, and wish especially to thank Professor Robert M. Maclver for permission to publish extracts of letters received by him from Bernard Bosanquet and Bosanquet's friend, R. F . A. Hoernle. I am happy to acknowledge, also, the helpful criticism of Professor Herbert W . Schneider and the several members of the Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University, who read all or part of the manuscript. T h e final word, of course, is my own; and for whatever is stated I take the complete responsibility. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, George G. Harrap & Co., Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., Henry Holt & Co., Longmans Green & Co., The Macmillan Company, Macmillan & Co. Ltd., John Murray, the Odyssey Press, Oxford University Press, Charles

viii

FOREWORD

Scribner's Sons, and Yale University Press have kindly granted permission to quote extracts from books or periodicals published by them. I feel a special indebtedness to Mrs. W . Burton Swart of Columbia University Press for her able work in editing the manuscript; and it is with utmost gratitude that I thank Miss Sarah Ives, who graciously managed the preparation of the manuscript for publication when it became impossible for me to do so. Lastly, words cannot express my thanks to D r . Henry Natsch Furnald, whose generosity has made possible publication at this time. F. P. H . Fort Lawton, Washington August I, 1943

CONTENTS I. The Background II. The Problem of Self-Development

i 6

Francis Herbert Bradley: the Theory of Community Thomas Hill Green: the Ethics of Self-Realization

6 ig

Bernard Bosanquet: Individualism and Self-Government Cognate Thinkers

25

III. The Influence of Utilitarianism

47

IV.

74

V.

The Capture of Evolution Conclusion

101

Notes

105

Bibliography

121

Index

131

CHAPTER

ONE

THE BACKGROUND HE GROUP

of British philosophers known collectively as the Neo-idealists

or Neo-Hegelians became important in British thought about 1870, and enjoyed great influence for about a half century. By the end of this period the movement had not only sent its ramifications into the major universities of the British Isles, but had made itself felt throughout the Empire. In Canada, South Africa, India, and Australia, as well as in the mother country, a transplanted German philosophy had been grafted onto the British empirical tradition, and had contributed its enthusiasm and optimism to the burgeoning faith of imperialism. Of the numerous important figures in this group, this essay treats only those who were professedly political philosophers: Thomas Hill Green and Bernard Bosanquet; some lesser known figures such as J. S. MacKenzie, Sir Henry Jones, and D . G . Ritchie, all of whom set out deliberately to elaborate a political philosophy as an integral part of their respective systems; and F . H . Bradley, whose great contribution to social and political thought has been overshadowed by his emphasis on logic and metaphysics. This essay will attempt to make clear that the social philosophy of British Neo-idealism exhibits a fundamental continuity with British liberal thought from the time of Locke. T h e problem running as a single thread throughout this tradition is that of the status of the individual in the great society, of what his opportunities, rights, and duties are to be. In the seventeenth century, the battle of Parliament and king having been brought to a decisive issue, the attempt was made to determine the political powers of the British citizen; and in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the extent of his economic rights. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the idealists emphasized men as social beings and the problem of their "perfection." In each case an ethical theory was elaborated to make a place for socialized individuality; and in each, changes in practice, in associations, and in institutions were insisted upon that would make "individualism" something more than mere theory. It is the general thesis of this essay that the political and social theories

2

THE

BACKGROUND

of the British Neo-idealists are important primarily as contributions to the solution of this problem of the social conditions of developing individual character, that the idealists were reinterpreting an indigenous empirical theory and bringing to a more complete development the British concept of individuality. That the Neo-idealist movement had a connection with the earlier British tradition has been the theme notably of John H . Muirhead; 1 but his concern was merely to show the continuity of idealism in England and America as a philosophical tendency, and he was not interested in revealing the debt of idealism to the British empirical tradition. Since he considered all the branches of philosophy, and especially logic, metaphysics, and theology, political theory assumed a minor role. On the other hand, so far as he went, Muirhead has succeeded fairly well in showing the essential continuity of British thought. Rudolph Metz has disputed Muirhead's theory, maintaining that the Neo-idealist movement represented a complete break with the British tradition. 2 Metz seems to have missed the point of Muirhead's thesis when he says that the historical facts show no direct or indirect connection between the idealist systems of earlier centuries and the Neo-idealist movement. He slighted the distinctive characteristics of British culture, the influence of ingrained habits of thought and behavior that in England have always modified foreign importations of thought. 3 Muirhead states his thesis thus: Even in the case of the more pronounced Germanizers, the stress that was laid on personality both in man and God, on freedom and selfdetermination both in individuals and communities, linked them more closely with the older British writers than with anything they found explicitly stated in Schelling and Hegel. That they themselves were largely unconscious of this affinity, and that allusions to the work of Cudworth and Norris, Berkeley, Coleridge, and his disciple, Joseph Henry Green, are conspicuous by their absence, only makes the coincidence the more noteworthy as an illustration of the national bent that has all along given a special character to Anglo-Saxon idealism. 4 Neither Muirhead nor Metz is concerned with the contributions of British empiricism to the idealist movement, and neither has pointed out the continuity of the two movements in their political and social thought. This has been suggested by A. D. Lindsay, Master of Balliol, who has declared that so far as their political and social theories are concerned, the idealists "are all of them, for all their Platonism and Hegelianism, in

THE BACKGROUND

3

5

the succession of the utilitarians." I propose, in part, to illustrate the justification for this statement. The only book-length survey of British Neo-idealist political theory is that of Klaus Dockhorn, Die Staatsphilosophie des Englischen Idealismus, ihre Lehre und Wirkung. Dockhorn follows Metz in the view that British Neo-idealism represents a departure from the tradition of British thought. He finds it confronting the individualistic tradition with a new organic theory that exalts the supremacy of the national state. Formerly, the British were "Bürgerlich-unheroisch, individualistischliberal, bindungslos-säkularistische, moralistisch-humanitär, zivilisatorischpositivistisch, aufklärerisch-abstrakt."6 Neo-idealism, he alleges, substituted for all this a new Staatsethos, a Gemeinschaftsmetaphysi\, that enables the individual to lose himself in a mystic union with the superior unity of the state. War and strife are conditions of progress; and the individual need not concern himself with loss of life, for he finds a higher realization in the glory of the state and in devotion to its leader.7 Whatever may be claimed for or against the British idealists, it cannot be maintained that they preferred Continental dictatorship to British parliamentarianism. Dockhorn exhibits much thorough scholarship, but his study is vitiated by his attempt to justify a contemporary autocratic regime. Thus one of his major theses is that Neo-idealism became the rationale of British imperialism; and he cites in evidence J. A. Cramb, that "very eloquent nationalist professor" taken by Carlton J. H. Hayes as a radical British example of nationalist intolerance.8 Dockhorn quotes at length Cramb's rabid nationalism, his lauding of the Teutonic race and the heroes of the German myths, and declares that "Die idealistischen Motive sind bei Cramb ausserordentlich deutlich."9 There is some evidence that Neo-idealism became an adjunct to the ascendant British nationalism, especially during the First World War; and many writers—the contributors to The Round Table, published by Oxford University, are a case in point—could find material in idealist writings for war propaganda purposes.10 But to choose this for emphasis hardly makes for a balanced treatment even of those historians such as Cramb who are nowhere considered representative members of the British idealist tradition except in Dockhorn's book. The present study oilers a quite different, and it is hoped more accurate, viewpoint than that of Dockhorn. Orientation of our study demands comment on one other issue. It has

4

THE

BACKGROUND

often been pointed out that the Neo-idealist philosophy was originally imported to combat one implication of the native tradition—its theological unorthodoxy. The fact is indisputable. In Mid-Victorian England theological controversy provided the battleground for major intellectual warfare, and the idealists were in the vanguard of all the battles. Not that the idealists were High Church apologists; they were for the most part advocates of a religious liberalism concerned with loosening up the current religious orthodoxy. Some, like Green, were seriously desirous of justifying Christianity; yet he was attacked as an underminer of the faith. 1 1 Others, like Bradley and McTaggart, became outspoken critics of the religious tradition. Nevertheless, it remains true that at the time of its introduction into England philosophical idealism was considered by such writers as Hutchinson Stirling, for instance, as a useful servant to theology. The agnostic implications of the new evolutionary science as illustrated by Huxley and Spencer, the naturalism of the utilitarian ethics, the materialistic implications of the associationist psychology and such studies as Buckle's History of Civilization, were all attacked by the idealists. However, I have taken for granted the incompatibility of the idealists' theism and the empiricists' agnosticism and have preferred to emphasize their compatibilities of thought on social ethics and the practical issues of politics. It is this latter aspect that has not been sufficiently realized. It gives a one-sided picture of the whole of the British idealist movement to accept the theological controversy as the sole or even the paramount issue. Neo-idealist contributions to political and social theory have been in the long run, perhaps, more significant. Be that as it may, an account of the indebtedness of the Neo-idealists to the national tradition in developing their political theories helps in the formation of a more balanced estimate of the significance of Neo-idealism in nineteenth-century British affairs. It is not maintained that the interpretation here presented will of itself give a complete picture of British idealism; it is intended rather to supplement the earlier accounts and to emphasize factors in the Neo-idealist movement that most commentators have disregarded. A generation or two ago, when idealism was almost completely in control of the British universities, it was natural that it should provoke a good deal of internal and external criticism, and that the individual should feel the need of taking a definite stand for or against it. Many of the issues then fought over are no longer central in the philosophic enterprise, and idealism is

THE BACKGROUND

5

no longer thought a source of great danger either to science on the one hand, or to theology on the other. A juster perception of the movement is now possible, and a new, positive appreciation of its achievements may now be obtained. However, I deal here not so much with philosophers meditating upon identity and difference as with practical men concerned to carry on the political liberalism of an earlier day. T o repeat, then, the aim of this study is to present the evidences for the continuity of nineteenth-century liberal thought and to indicate the similarity between the earlier views of the place of the individual in the social scheme and the idealists' later views. Such an account may utilize two devices. Continuity of the two trends may be indicated by showing that the idealists were, as Lindsay has remarked, "individualists and democrats," and by showing, secondly, that this idealist liberalism was a continuation of what was essential and lasting in the earlier liberalism. Involved in this is the problem of what the idealists meant by "self-realization." Therefore, two themes, the problem of continuity and the problem of individuality, become fused in one. In the following pages I shall attempt to develop three aspects of this problem: ( 1 ) the question of what it means to develop the individual, the answer to which bears the dominant impress of Kant and Hegel, but in which the influence of the Greeks and the romantic poets will also be emphasized; (2) the influence of utilitarianism upon the answer to this problem, in which will be stressed the continuance of British idealistic thought with the national philosophic tradition; (3) the effect of evolutionist doctrines, some parts of which were incorporated in the final answer of the idealists. Devoting a chapter to each of these, I shall then attempt to draw some conclusions.

CHAPTER

TWO

THE PROBLEM OF SELF-DEVELOPMENT I . FRANCIS HERBERT BRADLEY: THE THEORY OF COMMUNITY

book-length presentation to Englishmen of German ethical theory, and the brilliant source of many subsequent idealist viewpoints, was the Ethical Studies (1876) of Francis Herbert Bradley (18461924) This book marked a new departure in British thought; but it was, none the less, a protest in a continuity of protests that Englishmen had not yet elaborated an adequate theory of the individual and had not yet recognized the conditions for his self-development. It became subsequently the fountainhead of a new, liberal, social philosophy. The reputation it acquired in some quarters, however, was of a different kind. In the war of words Bradley's subtle logic and elusive metaphysics were severe on the empiricist and hedonist. About the middle of the nineteenth century their positions had become the very symbols of liberalism and individualism, and Bradley's opposing views consequently came to be identified with a reactionary, or at least a conservative, tendency. His Ethical Studies have ever since been generally considered a justification of the status quo and of the British class system. It has been taken for granted that the title of his well-known fifth essay, "My Station and Its Duties," was sufficient evidence of the general tendency of Bradley's political views to warrant the lack of any great curiosity concerning them on the part of liberal thinkers. The assumption is not entirely unfounded; it has been the outgrowth, for the most part, of four circumstances. In the first place, the conditions surrounding Bradley's life lent themselves readily to an interpretation of his political philosophy as conservative in substance. No one reflects in his ideas more subjective bent and sway of circumstance than does the philosopher, and no philosopher more so than Bradley. Secure in his own confined world of Merton College, Oxford, where for over half a century ill health persuaded him to lead the secluded life of a Fellow without teaching duties, that world secure in the comparative rigidity of a prosHE FIRST

P R O B L E M OF S E L F - D E V E L O P M E N T

7

pcrous Victorian England, Bradley enjoyed what seemed to many a complacent existence. "My station and its duties," generalized, became the essence of an adequate social viewpoint. Thus, at least, have men read into Bradley's theory the assumed effects of his social background. R. Metz, for instance, has observed: "Bradley's thought . . . embodies the idea of the British gentleman, which tolerates no break with social and national barriers." 2 Here is the substance of the English tradition and of the class structure that simplifies the procedure of existence and establishes the "rules of the game." In the second place, Bradley's style and language are deceiving. Irony, sarcasm, paradox, confrontation of fancy with fact, are characteristic and are reminiscent of Plato's dialectic.3 To take any one side of Bradley literally would be to misunderstand him. The rigid conservatism critics have imputed to him is foreign to what Bradley himself called his "attitude of active questioning." 4 In the third place, Bradley's metaphysics has been deceptive. If the State is to political theory what the Absolute is to metaphysics, the individual seems swallowed up in a totalitarian scheme of things. Or, if society is regarded as a present whole with its parts each in their proper places, conservatism is a logical outgrowth of an absolutistic metaphysics. But this is a mere allegation; and it really deserves for an answer no better than a counter allegation that it is a sheer misinterpretation of a misunderstood metaphysics. In the fourth place, Bradley develops inconsistencies. He elaborates rules he does not follow, as will appear shortly in regard to his views of the functions of ethics. All these four circumstances have thus led to false conclusions, and their cumulative result is typically illustrated in Santayana's appraisal of Bradley's Ethical Studies. Bradley was satisfied to appeal to the moral consciousness of his day, without seeking to transform it. The most intentionally eloquent passage in his book describes war-fever unifying and carrying away a whole people: that was the summit of moral consciousness and mystic virtue. His aim, even in ethics, was avowedly to describe that which exists, to describe moral experience, without proposing a different form for it. A man must be a man of his own time, or nothing; to set up to be better than the world was the beginning of immorality; and virtue lay in accepting one's station and its duties. The moralist should fill his

8

P R O B L E M OF S E L F - D E V E L O P M E N T mind with a concrete picture of the task and standards of his age and nation, and should graft his ideals upon that tree.5

In contrast witness the hedonists, whom Bradley criticized: They were concerned not with analysis of the moral consciousness but with the conduct of affairs and the reform of institutions. The spectacle of human wretchedness profoundly moved them; their minds were bent on transforming society so that a man's station and its duties might cease to be what a decayed feudal organization and an inhuman industrialism had made them. They revolted against the miserable conditions of the masses of mankind, and against the miserable consolations which official religion, or a philosophy like Bradley's offered them in their misery. 6 Polemic has at this point made Santayana more eloquent than accurate; he does not tell the whole story. Bradley says, "There is nothing better than my station and its duties, nor anything higher or more truly beautiful." 7 But when he says so, he is arguing against the theory that attempted to account for the individual apart from his social relations. He also says, "You cannot confine a man to his station and its duties," 8 and he points out that virtue goes beyond them. 9 Moreover, "to wish to be better than the world," and so to find oneself "to be already on the threshold of immorality," 10 is sufficiently acceptable if "world" and "immorality" are understood in the figurative sense of Bradley's context. For "the world" means the best that there is in the world, which Bradley suspects is better than are most people. What Bradley is really arguing against is not the man who would improve upon the status quo but the conceited individual or "the licentious young man" who proposes arbitrarily to set up his own principle as better than the bitter-won experience of men. 11 Bradley's argument does not have the force critics give to it; they place a wrong emphasis on his language. The crux of the matter is seen in the following: "It is not wrong, it is a duty, standing on the basis of the existing, and in harmony with its general spirit, to try and make not only oneself but also the world better, or rather, and in preference, one's own world better." 12 Bradley suggests neither confinement to one's place in any totalitarian sense nor acquiescence in things as they are. He suggests specific improvement of a specific situation. Regarding Bradley's view of the function of ethics, which Santayana says is concerned only with "analysis of the moral consciousness," we find

P R O B L E M OF S E L F - D E V E L O P M E N T

9

two theories, a speculative and a descriptive one. In Bradley's critical study of Sidgwick we discover that ethics is "a purely speculative science" that "has nothing whatever to do with practice," 1 3 and in his Ethical Studies we discover the descriptive definition that "ethics has not to make the world moral, but to reduce to theory the morality current in the world." 1 4 Yet so far as speculation is concerned, it has been observed that "nothing is so practical as pure theory," as Bradley himself suggests in his apology for metaphysics; 15 and theoretical conclusions about practice often have practical consequences. So far as a descriptive ethics is concerned, to discover what it is we have is one of the best methods of our determining to change it. At any rate, Bradley is not true to either of his criteria, for he soon proceeds in his ethics, with help from Aristotle's theory of the wise and prudent man, to show how, in practical situations, one is to know "what is right." 1 6 In disparagement of asceticism, furthermore, he shows how his ethics takes account of the fact that "morality is practice"; and throughout he is concerned with "making myself better." 1 7 Bosanquet defended Bradley's "my station and its duties" against McTaggart's criticism that it affords, for example, no criterion for the schoolmaster to deal rightly with a particular boy on a particular occasion. Bosanquet admits that "an idea of perfection in the abstract" is useless; by the same token "questions asked in the abstract, out of all context," can be given no answer. He sees no practical difficulty in working out an answer in respect to the particulars of situations and individuals. This he holds to be in conformity to the teaching of Green as well as of Bradley. 18 It is evident, then, that there is room for questioning the prevailing judgment concerning Bradley's social theory; and it will be worth while to attempt a reappraisal of the main arguments of the Ethical Studies in so far as they have a bearing on that theory and in so far as they relate to the problem of the individual. What does Bradley mean by "selfrealization"? What of the individual that is to be realized, and what is his "station"? These are some of the questions that demand to be answered. One immediate purpose of Bradley's discussion was a rebuttal of what he found false in the current utilitarian philosophy. One side of utilitarian thought regarded the individual as a mere isolated unit; "society" was thought of as a mere collection of unrelated, self-seeking individuals. 19 A major consequence of Bradley's Essays was to redirect men's attention to the social nature of the individual and his dependence upon others as

10

PROBLEM

OF

SELF-DEVELOPMENT

one m e m b e r of a group. T h e circumstances surrounding the resulting shift in social theory will be taken up in the next chapter. It is sufficient for the m o m e n t to point out that Bradley was a m o n g those instrumental in reintroducing to British consideration the ancient G r e e k observation that "the individual apart f r o m the community is an abstraction." Bradley as for Aristotle m a n is 0EOS

% d-qplov, no m a n at all:

V