06 February, 2002

ENCOUNTER WITH THOMAS HILL GREEN

INTRODUCTION

Just like a large plant will often grow by chance and in an unlikely place from a tiny wind-blown seed, so it frequently happens to me that a chance encounter of a reference or citation in a book that I am reading will capture my interest which will lead me to pursue a new project that will grow to substantial size and take up much of my time. My first encounter with Thomas Hill Green was in such incidental manner. While engaged in research on the history of religion, I was reading Origin and Evolution of Religion, by E. Washburn Hopkins, PH.D., LL.D (1923) where I found a remark that "Professor Green gives today as the foundation of rights and of right the capacity of the individual to conceive a good as the same for himself and others; rights are determined by that conception. Ethics thus becomes altogether divorced from religion." The reference cited was T.H. Green's Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. My interest was sparked immediately by Green's belief that a good is the same for an individual as for others - in other words, a universal good. This sounded like 'pure' Aristotle, and like Aristotle's noted exponent in the 20th century, Mortimer J. Adler. Was it possible that another Aristotelian thinker had preceded Adler in the 19th century? 

Forthwith, I obtained a copy of the book cited by Hopkins. This particular edition is a reprint from Green's Philosophical Works, Vol. II, reprinted in 1941 with an introduction by Lord Lindsay of Birker, former Master of Balliol College, Oxford. Lindsay's introduction states that Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation were delivered by T.H. Green in 1879 and published after his death in 1882. Green was Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford. Lindsay identifies Green with the school of thought known as the Oxford Idealists. Subsequently, by searching internet sources on Green, I discovered that today he is largely consigned to obscurity, and almost always characterized tersely only as an 'idealist' without any further elaboration. Lindsay says in his introduction that "Green and his fellow-idealists represent the renewed liberalism of the last quarter of the nineteenth century." This characterization had a special appeal to me, because I like to think of myself as having a philosophical and political affinity with the liberals of that era. Their idealism had a benign effect on society, in contrast to the corrosive Marxist and Socialist ideologies which were already eating away at the social fabric even while classical liberalism was at its most popular. 

Although I read all of the Lectures, I realized at the start of the very first one that I will not find Green's full dissertation on the nature of the Aristotelian 'good' in this book, because Green states in the second paragraph of the first lecture that he has explained in previous lectures what he understands " . . moral goodness to be, and how it is possible that there should be such a thing; in other words, what are the conditions on the part of reason and will which are implied in our being able to conceive moral goodness as an object to be aimed at, and to give some partial reality to the conception." To me, this sentence was replete with evidence of the abstract intellectual tools of Aristotle's thought and provided for me the conclusive proof that Green was an Aristotelian philosopher worth knowing. I realized that I must search for other sources that would contain material from Green's 'previous lectures.'

Without too much effort, thanks to the internet, I soon identified the book I had to have: Green's Prolegomena to Ethics, first published in 1883; I obtained a Oxford University Press 1924 issue of it. The Prolegomena is a very thorough work; frequently, it is also rather difficult to read. Green not only develops his own beliefs and theories about man and his morality, but he also states and refutes many of the objections raised against them by other competing philosophies.

The basic organization of Prolegomena is by small (usually one to two pages long) consecutively numbered sections. The Introduction takes up the first eight sections. The body of the work is divided by Book and Chapter in the following manner:

In this essay I will discuss the contents of the first three books and compare some of Green's ideas with my own and with Aristotle's. I will use only the consecutively numbered sections when making reference to, or quoting from, Green's work. The table of contents of Prolegomena has been reproduced in detail so that the reader can easily determine the general topic to which a referenced section belongs.

DISCUSSION

TRANSCENDENTAL BELIEFS

One of the main reasons why I find Green's thoughts fascinating is because of what he posits on faith alone. His ideas about the soul are in several ways the same as my own and those of Aristotle. Green's numerous references to the soul, in various contexts, leads one to conclude that he believes the soul to be an immaterial presence in man, which is a belief held by many, including myself. Yet, he also has his own unique concept that there is what he calls interchangeably an 'eternal consciousness' and 'divine consciousness' which reproduces itself in the soul of man and acts through man.

Green, like I, believes in the moral development of the soul and in its survival, in some spiritual form, after biological death. Green believes that there must be eternally a subject which is all that the self-conscious, as developed in time, has the possibility of becoming; in which the idea of the human spirit, or all that it has in itself to become, is completely realized. This consideration may suggest the true notion of the spiritual relation in which we stand to God; that He is not merely a Being who has made us, in the sense that we exist as an object of the divine consciousness in the same way in which we must suppose the system of nature to exist, but that He is a Being in whom we exist; with whom we are in principle one; with whom the spirit is identical, in the sense that He is all which the human spirit is capable of becoming.(#187); and that the end of man must be a state of being which is not a series in time and which is comprehended in the eternal mind and is itself intrinsically eternal. A capacity consisting in a self-conscious personality cannot be supposed to pass away like the capacities of myriads of lower animals pass away every hour.(#189)

To express in my own words my understanding of how Green sees the relationship between the soul and what (to my understanding) is a characterization of God in various terms by Green, I describe it as a process of gradual infusion and permeation of our self-consciousness by an eternal, all-pervasive spirit. In other words, our soul is the receptacle and conduit for the ethereal, transcendental emanations from an eternal source. My own theory on the soul, which can be found in several of my essays posted at this site (How it all comes together: God, Life, Soul; The Dark Side of Human Nature; A Statement of My Faith), posits that God exnihilates a proto-soul to every life form, with a potential for conscious free-willed action which is commensurate with the complexity of its biological host and its assigned mission in life. This soul  learns as it matures along with its biological host and fulfills its mission in life by entirely autonomous actions. My theory on the soul agrees well with Aristotle's, and it avoids the embarrassing question immediately raised by Green's theory of the soul, which is: If our souls are simply conduits for divine action, which, by definition, can be nothing less than perfect, how is it that so many men have acted imperfectly, even most horridly, throughout history? 

Green tries to get around this problem, but, in my opinion, not very convincingly. He explains that when he speaks of the human self, or the man, reacting upon circumstances, giving shape to them, taking a motive from them, he means by it a certain reproduction of itself on the part of the eternal self-conscious subject of the world – a reproduction of itself to which it makes the processes of animal life organic, and which is qualified and limited by the nature of those processes, but which is so far essentially a reproduction of the one supreme subject, implied in the existence of the world, that the product carries with it under all its limitations and qualifications the characteristic of being an object to itself. It is the particular human self or person, he holds, thus constituted, that in every moral action, virtuous or vicious, presents to itself some possible state or achievement of its own as for the time the greatest good, and acts for the sake of that good.(#99) 

He also admits that the self, as he conceives it, is in a certain sense ‘mysterious.’ It is in a sense mysterious that there should be such a thing as a world at all. The old question, why God made the world, has never been answered, nor will be. We know not why the world should be; we only know that there it is. In like manner we know not why the eternal subject of that world should reproduce itself, through certain processes of the world, as the spirit of mankind, or as the particular self of this or that man in whom the spirit of mankind operates.(#100)

Green concedes that proof of his doctrine, in the ordinary sense of the word, from the nature of the case there cannot be. It is not a truth deductible from other established or conceded truths. It is not a statement for an event or matter of fact that can be the object of experiment or observation. It represents a conception to which no perceivable or imaginable object can possibly correspond, but one that affords the only means by which, reflecting on our moral and intellectual experience conjointly, taking the world and ourselves into account, we can put the whole thing together and understand how (not why, but how) we are and do what we consciously are and do. Given this conception, and not without it, we can at any rate express that which it cannot be denied demands expression, the nature of man’s reason and man’s will, of human progress and human short-coming, of the effort after good and the failure to gain it, of virtue and vice, in their connection and in their distinction, in their essential opposition and in their no less essential unity.(#174)

If I understand him correctly, Green ascribes the imperfections in man's soul to a struggle between his intelligence, his free will, and his animal wants when he says:

The reason and will of man have their common ground in that characteristic of being an object to himself which, as we have said, belongs to him in so far as the eternal mind, through the medium of an animal organism and under limitations arising from the employment of such a medium, reproduces itself in him. It is in virtue of this self-objectifying principle that he is determined, not simply by natural wants according to natural laws, but by the thought of himself as existing under certain conditions, and as having ends that may be attained and capabilities that may be realized under those conditions. It is thus that he not merely desires but seeks to satisfy himself in gaining the objects of his desire; presents to himself a certain possible state of himself, which in the gratification of the desire he seeks to reach; in short, wills. It is thus, again, that he has the impulse to make himself what he has the possibility of becoming but actually is not, and hence not merely, like the plant or animal, undergoes a process of development, but seeks to, and does develop himself. The conditions of the animal soul are such that the self-determining spirit cannot be conscious of them as conditions to which it is subject – and it is so subject and so conscious of its subjection in the human person – without seeking some satisfaction of itself, some realization of its capabilities, that shall be independent of those conditions.(#175)

Green concludes by stating his belief in a law of 'divine origin' which man at times contravenes. He describes this law as applying equally to the universe and to human society. Green and I appear to concur on this theory of a divine law; my ideas are stated in the essay on God, His Laws, and Mankind.  Green's 'absolutely desirable' echoes the 'real good' of Adler and Aristotle. Green states that due to the presence of the animal nature in man there arises the impulse which becomes the source, according to the direction it takes, both of vice and of virtue. It is the source of vicious self-seeking and self-assertion, so far as the spirit which is in man seeks to satisfy itself or to realize its capabilities in modes in which, according to the law which its divine origin imposes on it and which is equally the law of the universe and of human society, its self-satisfaction or self-realization is not to be found. The difference between the virtuous life, which proceeds from the same self-objectifying principle as the vicious life, is that it is governed by the consciousness of there being some perfection which has to be attained, some vocation which has to be fulfilled, some law which has to be obeyed, something absolutely desirable, whatever the individual may for the time desire; that it is in ministering to such an end that the agent seeks to satisfy himself.(#176)

Green begins the Prolegomena by first of all proving that there is indeed something unique about man: his consciousness, which is not a product or component of the natural world. He poses the question: Can the knowledge of nature be itself a part or product of nature? and concludes that however fully we may admit that the nature which we know or may know is knowable only under strict physical laws, we are none the less in effect asserting the existence of something which, as the source of a connected experience, renders both the nature that we know and our knowledge of it possible, but is not itself physically conditioned.(#9) Phenomena are presented to a subject by its consciousness and become part of a connected system of the world of experience which becomes knowledge.(#10) Consciousness itself cannot be a part of that world because a consciousness of certain events cannot be anything that succeeds them. It must be equally present to all the events of which it is the consciousness. For this reason an intelligent experience, or experience as the source of knowledge, can neither be constituted by events of which it is the experience, nor be a product of them.(#16) What is real and objective is determined by the consciousness which presents its experiences to itself as relations. The consciousness modifies these relations as required by new experiences and combines them into a single and unalterable order of relations which we conceive to be the order of nature.(#13) The world for us is a single and eternal system of related elements. Our consciousness yields for us the understanding of the objective world; it is the principle of objectivity.(#14) Our knowledge of an order of nature is realized by our consciousness which combines events that we experience into a related series. Again, consciousness itself cannot be part of this series of events. It is not developed by a natural process out of other forms of natural existence.(#18) Therefore, our consciousness is not of natural origin. Through it we conceive of an order of nature, an objective world of fact from which illusion may be distinguished; it is our understanding of nature; it 'makes nature for us,' in that it enables us to conceive that there is such a thing.(#19)

The first reference by Green to an 'eternal intelligence' is in connection with how we acquire knowledge. I assume that by using the pronouns 'our' and 'us' he is referring to our self-conscious soul as the instrument through which the eternal intelligence acts when he says that the growth of knowledge on our part is regarded not as a process in which facts or objects, in themselves unrelated to thought, by some incredible means gradually produce intelligible counterparts of themselves in thought. The true account of it is held to be that the concrete whole, which may be described indifferently as an eternal intelligence realized in the related facts of the world, or as a system of related facts rendered possible by such an intelligence, partially and gradually reproduces itself in us, communicating piece-meal, but in inseparable correlation, understanding and the facts understood, experience and the experienced world.(#36) The full individuality of man encompasses 1) being conscious of his feelings as manifold sensations, 2) being able to present these feelings to himself, 3) distinguishing himself from these feelings as a single self-conscious soul. Only as self-conscious are we aware of being in the presence of facts and thus capable of knowledge. In this sense our self-consciousness is our understanding.(#120)

Green concludes his argument about the distinctiveness of man from the rest of nature by stating that nature implies that there is something other than itself, that something other being our self-distinguishing (i.e. feeling itself to be a separate entity from nature) consciousness. This consciousness determines the relations of phenomena, but it cannot itself be one of the objects so related. Similarly, this self-distinguishing consciousness is only capable of relating events to each other in time because it itself is timeless.(#52) Nature in its reality implies a principle which is not natural; it is not natural because it is neither included among the phenomena which through its presence form nature, nor is it part of a series of the phenomena, nor is itself formed by any of the relations between these phenomena. This principle is Green's spiritual self-distinguishing consciousness.(#54)

There are also some similarities between Green's beliefs and mine. Green states that we begin life as an animal organism which gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness as it experiences and learns to understand the world.(#67) The system of related facts, which forms the objective world, reproduces itself in the soul. Our knowledge of any part of the system implies a union of the manifold in relation. The attainment of knowledge, then, is a reproduction of itself in the human soul, using the sentient life of the soul as its organ, by the consciousness for which the cosmos of related facts exists.(#71) Due to the constant succession of phenomena in the sentient life, which the eternal consciousness has perpetually to gather anew into the timeless unity of knowledge, the process of reproduction is without an end. There is, however, that element of identity between the first stage of intelligent experience, that is, between the simplest beginning of knowledge, and the eternal consciousness reproducing itself in it, which consists in the presentation of a many in one, in the apprehension of facts as related in a single system, in the conception of there being an order of things.(#72)

The above statements convey a sense about the on-going filling up of the soul with knowledge which is comparable to my belief that the proto-soul learns as it matures. Aristotle believed that all living things have a soul and that man's soul has an intellectual component which is not present in the lower life forms; I believe that the level of consciousness of souls is also commensurate with the biological complexity of the different species of life forms. These beliefs are comparable to Green's, who states that the distinction between what they are in themselves and what they are in relation to other things does not apply to inorganic things but only to living organisms. The life of a living body is not, like the motion of a moving body, simply the joint result of its relations to other things. It modifies these relations, and modifies them through a nature not reducible to them, not constituted by their combination. Their bearing on it is different from what it would be if it did not live; the organism is something in itself other than what its relations make it. While it is related to other things according to mechanical and chemical laws, it has itself a nature which is not mechanical or chemical. But a living organism as such does not present its nature to itself in consciousness and does not distinguish itself from its relations. Man, however, does so distinguish himself.(#80) Man is self-distinguishing and as such he exerts a free activity which is not time-dependent. Human action is only explicable by the action of an eternal consciousness, which uses all the processes of brain and nerve and tissue, all the functions of life and sense, as its organs and reproduces itself through them.(#82)

I was glad to discover that Green also thought that animals have a soul, but he questioned whether they possess self-consciousness, although he concedes that there are indications of its presence in 'beasts friendly to man.' He states: The question of the distinction between animals and plants, the question whether all ‘animals’ feel, whether any ‘plants’ do, is one of classification with which we are not here concerned. However such a question may be answered, it does not affect the importance of noticing the distinctive nature of the individuality which feeling constitutes. It is only indeed from experience of ourselves, not from observation of the animals, that we know what this individuality is; but according to all indications we are justified in ascribing it at any rate to all vertebrate animals. To say that they feel as men do, or that they are individual in the same sense as men, is misleading, because it is to ignore the distinctive character given to human feeling and human individuality by a self-consciousness which we have no reason to ascribe to the animals. But the assertion that they feel no less, and are no less individual, than ourselves seems to be within the mark.(#119) We cannot deny, at any rate of the beasts friendly to man, that in a certain sense they learn by experience; that the processes by which the trained or practiced animal seeks to obtain the pleasure or avoid the pain, of which the imagination excites its impulse, imply the association with the imagined pleasure or pain of the images of many sensations which have been found to be connected with that pleasure or pain. It is readily assumed that such habitual sequence of images amounts to an experience of facts like our own; to an apprehension of an objective world, of which the necessary correlative is consciousness of self.(#123)

Rightly enough, Green points out the essential difference between the human and animal soul which becomes large indeed in the moral life of civilized and educated men. The conflicts of the moral life can be formidable forces which ‘right reason’ has to subdue or render contributory to some ‘true good’ of man; they are passions for which reason is in a certain sense itself the parent. The animal soul does not know such passions, because they are excited by the conditions of distinctively human society. They relate to objects which only the intercourse of self-conscious agents can bring into experience.(#126)

DESIRE, WILL, MORALITY 

Green's study of morality and ethics is comparable to that of Aristotle's in The Nicomachean Ethics. Here I will attempt only to summarize Green's main conclusions and declarations on the subject:

By an instinctive action we mean one not determined by a conception, on the part of the agent, of any good to be gained or evil to be avoided by the action. By a moral action, an action morally imputable or that can be called good or bad, we mean one that is so determined as the instinctive action is not.(#92) 

The motives of moral actions have a distinctive character; we examine them through self-reflection by constant reference to the customary expressions of moral consciousness in use among men and to the institutions in which men have embodied their ideas or ideals of permanent good. Man initiates every imputable moral action for the sake of some personal good that is absolutely different from animal want. The moral quality of the act - its virtue or vice - depends on the character of the agent. This character has a history of development through the operation of an eternal self-distinguishing consciousness upon the basic wants of animal origin.(#95)

Unless there is an object which a man seeks or avoids in doing an act, there is no act of will. A man's self exercises an act of will by identifying itself with one of many co-existing desires or aversions as that of which the satisfaction forms for the time its object.(#103)

A strong will means a strong man. It means that he sets clearly before him certain objects in which he seeks self-satisfaction and does not deviate from seeking them. His objects may be morally bad as well as good. A weak man who takes his objects from any desire that lures him at a given moment cannot be a good man. Therefore, concentration of will does not necessarily mean goodness, but it is a necessary condition of goodness.(#105)

Moral action, then, is the expression of a man's character, as it reacts upon and responds to given circumstances.(#107) Just so far as an action is determined by character, it is determined by an object which the agent has consciously made his own. He is conscious of being the author of the act; he imputes it to himself.(#108)

Free will is the essential factor in character. The ascription of an action to character as, in respect to circumstances, its cause, is just that which effectively distinguishes it as free or moral from any compulsory or merely natural action.(#109)

The character of a man, and his consequent action, as it at any time appears, is the result of what his character has previously been, as modified through the varying response of the character to varying circumstances, and the registration in the character of residua from these responses. The operative instrument in shaping the character throughout is a self-distinguishing and self-seeking consciousness. This self-consciousness is not derived from nature; it has no origin; it is timeless.(#114)

In all conduct to which moral predicates are applicable a man is an object to himself; such conduct, whether virtuous or vicious, expresses a motive consisting in an idea of personal good, which the man seeks to realize by action. This characteristic of man is not attributable to evolutionary development; rather, it is due to an eternal consciousness reproducing itself in man.(#115)

There is only one subject or spirit in man, which desires in all of his experiences of desire, understands in all operations of his intelligence, wills in all his acts of willing. The essential character of a man's desires depends on their all being desires of one and the same subject which also understands, the essential character of a man's intelligence on its being an activity of one and the same subject which also desires, the essential character of a man's acts of will on their proceeding from one and the same subject which also desires and understands.(#117)

The self-conscious soul of man contains the two basic attributes of desiring and understanding. Because they have a common source in the same self-consciousness, the man carries with him into his desires the same single self-consciousness which makes his acts of understanding what they are, and into his acts of understanding the single self-consciousness which makes his desires what they are. Every desire forming a part of our moral experience is what it is because it is a desire of a subject which also understands; every act of our intelligence is what it is because it is the act of a subject which also desires.(#130)

The consciousness in the soul is equally involved in the exercise of desire for objects and in the employment of understanding about facts. We may call our inner life as determined by desires for objects practical thought and the activity of understanding speculative thought.(#133)

Neither of the two modes of our soul's action, desire and intellect, or practical thought and speculative thought, can be exerted without calling the other into play.(#135)

There is really a single subject or agent, which desires in all the desires of man, and thinks in all his thoughts; both speculative thought and practical thought is involved in all the subject's desires and desiring is involved in all his thoughts. Thus thought and desire are not separate powers but rather different ways in which the consciousness of self, which is also necessarily consciousness of a manifold world other than self, expresses itself.(#136)

In the sense in which thought and desire enter into an act of will, each is the whole act; and we can only distinguish them by describing one and the same act of the inner man, which thought and desire equally constitute: with respect to desire, the direction of a self-conscious subject to the realization of an idea, with respect to thought, the action of an idea in such a subject impelling to its realization.(#152)

Will is equally and indistinguishably desire and thought. The will is simply the man. Any act of will is an expression of the man as he at that time is. In willing he carries with him his whole self to the realization of the given idea.(#153)

[Definition] An act of will is one in which a self-conscious individual directs himself to the realization of some idea, as to an object in which for the time he seeks self-satisfaction.(#154)

The distinction between the good and bad will lies at the basis of any system of Ethics; the distinction itself depends on the nature of the objects willed. For the Utilitarian the moral quality of an intentional act of will depends only on its effect in producing pleasure or pain. The proposition is understood in a precisely opposite sense by a Kantian. For him the motive of the intentional act of will is paramount; the good will is good not because of its extrinsic effects but in virtue of what it is in itself, not as a means but as an absolute end.(#155)

Pleasure is not the object of a desire when a man seeks self-satisfaction in the realization of an idea whose object is not the enjoyment of pleasure. A man will calmly face a life of suffering in the fulfillment of what he conceives to be his mission because he could not bear to do otherwise. So to live is his good.(#159)

In every-day life, most men are neither voluptuaries nor saints. The ordinary motives of a man are neither strictly quests for self-satisfaction in the enjoyment of pleasure, nor in the fulfillment of a universal practical law. The motives are grounded in the attainment of objects which, if he attains them, would provide a certain pleasure, but not because pleasures, as such, are the objects desired.(#160)

The man who being competently acquainted with both the life of moral and intellectual effort and that of healthy animal enjoyment often prefers the former because the life of moral and intellectual effort brings him more pleasure.(#164)

GOOD and MORAL GOOD

Whereas for the Hedonistic philosophers 'the good' generically is the pleasant, for us the common characteristic of 'the good' is that it satisfies some desire; in satisfaction of desire there is always pleasure, and thus pleasantness in an object is necessary incident of its being good. For us, pleasure presupposes desire and results from its satisfaction, while according to the hedonist, desire presupposes an imagination of pleasure. This distinction has an important bearing on the question of the distinguishing nature of the moral good, or on a variant of the same question which asks how the true good differs from the merely apparent good. We naturally distinguish the moral good as that which satisfies the desire of a moral agent, or that in which a moral agent can find the satisfaction of himself which he necessarily seeks. The true good we understand in the same way. It is an end in which the effort of a moral agent can really find rest.(#171)

The following passages echo very closely Aristotle's ideas on real and apparent goods, and  happiness:

We cannot conceive of a life of completed development, of activity with the end attained, of what the state of the ultimate moral good would be, but we are convinced that there is such a state. The conviction that there must be such a state of being, merely negative as is our theoretical apprehension of it, may have supreme influence over conduct, in moving us to that effort after the Better which, at least as a conscious effort, implies the conviction of there being a Best.(#172)

A man's reference to his own happiness is a reference to an ideal state of well-being, a state in which he shall be satisfied. The idea of such a state is not fully realizable by us. The objects of which we contemplate the attainment as necessary to the fulfillment of this state are not contemplated as ever completely fulfilling it. We regard these objects as truly good, but the expectation of an indefinable Better is always present for us. We can express our idea of true happiness only indirectly by stating that it lies in the realization of the objects of our greatest interest and not at all in the enjoyment of pleasure we experience in realizing them.(#228)

A man's will improves as he seeks satisfaction, his good, in objects conceived as contributing to the best state or perfection. The self-realization of the divine principle in man requires that his ability to will right develops along with his practical reason. In vicious action, a man's will conflicts with a 'better' reason which is informed by those true judgments in regard to human good which come from the eternal spirit, while the reason that justifies his vice takes its objects and content from desires the satisfaction of which do not lead to a real bettering of man.(#179)

Selections from the next four sections below give the gist of Green's views on man's relationship with the divine and the vital role that society, and the moral laws of society, play in his moral development. Undeniably, his view is quite idealistic, whence he acquired the 'idealist' label. Most of us have a much more skeptical opinion of man and his aspirations.

Through certain media, and under certain consequent limitations, but with the constant characteristic of self-consciousness and self-objectification, the one divine mind gradually reproduces itself in the human soul. This endows man with definite capabilities. Only by the realization of these capabilities, which form his true good, can man satisfy himself. They are not realized, however, in any life that can be observed, in any life that has been, or is, or (as it would seem) that can be lived by man as we know him; and for this reason we cannot say with any adequacy what these capabilities are. Yet, because the essence of man's spiritual endowment is the consciousness of having this divine mind in him, the idea of his having such capabilities, and of a possible better state of himself consisting in their further realization, is a moving influence in him. It has been the parent of the institutions and usages, of the social judgments and aspirations, through which human life has been so far bettered; through which man has so far realized his capabilities and marked out the path that he must follow in their further realization. As his true good is or would be their complete realization (we say that his true good is this complete realization when we think of the realization as already attained in the eternal mind; we say that it would be such a realization when we think of the realization as for ever problematic to man in the state of which we have experience), so his goodness is proportionate to his habitual responsiveness to the idea of there being such a true good, in the various forms of recognized duty and beneficent work in which that idea has so far taken shape among men. In other words, it consists in the direction of the will to objects determined for it by this idea as operative in the person willing; which direction of the will we may call its determination by reason.(#180)

The divine idea of man can only be fulfilled through society. Society is founded on the recognition by persons of each other and their interest in each other as beings who are ends in themselves. Each person presents his own self-satisfaction to himself as an object and is aware that the other person does likewise, and finds satisfaction for himself in aiding and witnessing the self-satisfaction of the other. Society is founded on such mutual interest.(#190) The human spirit can only develop as a personality through society.(#191)

We believe that a moralizing agent is operative in man which yields our moral standards. This agent keeps before man an absolutely desirable object of unconditional value. Man can never give a complete account of this object because it consists of the realization of his capabilities for the fulfillment of all that he has it in him to be, which can be fully known only at their ultimate realization. This moralizing agent gives meaning to a desire to do something merely for the sake of it being done; without such a desire there would be no morality; it is an action by which no other desire is gratified except for the desire excited by the act itself, because it is the best that man can do. For its sake men impose on themselves rules requiring that something be done irrespectively of any inclination to do it.(#193)

REASON and the EVOLUTION of a COMMON (ABSOLUTE) GOOD

Green declares that the idea of an absolute common good underlies the conception of moral duty and of legal law. It enables a man to recognize actions that ought to be done for his own sake, for the sake of his neighbor, and for God;(#202) and that the good citizen obeys social requirements and laws willingly because he recognizes them as serving a social good which is also his own highest good.(#202)

The moral philosopher finds that this willing obedience is grounded in Reason. We ascribe to Reason a function of union in life; through Reason we are conscious of ourselves and of others; through Reason we seek to make the best of ourselves and of others with ourselves. In this sense Reason is the basis of society; it is the source of the establishment of equal practical rules in a common interest, and of a self-imposed obedience to those rules. Reason fulfills the same function now as in the most primitive associations of men and has led to the development of the institutions of family, commune, state and nation.(#204)  Morality is founded in the reason or self-objectifying consciousness of man directed to a common good through the institutions of society. Without the idea of a common good moral development would be impossible. With it, there is the idealized vision of a perfect morality in a society in which every rational man will consider the well-being and perfection of every other man as a necessary condition for his own perfection.(#205)

To summarize: In the conscientious citizen of modern Christendom, reason without and reason within, reason as objective and reason as subjective, reason as the better spirit of the social order in which he lives, and reason as his loyal recognition and interpretation of that spirit are but different aspects of one and the same reality. That reality is due to the operation of the divine mind in man. The different aspects combine to produce in us both the judgment, and obedience to the judgment that: (a) every person has an absolute value; (b) every person is to be treated as an end in itself, not merely as a means; (c) in the estimate of that well-being which forms the true good every one is to count for one and no one for more than one; and (d) every one has a 'suum' (individual identity) which every one else is bound to recognize as such.(#217)

Morality has developed from the primary recognition of an absolute and common good - a good common to a group of persons interested in each other, and absolute in that the goodness is conceived to be independent of the likes and dislikes of individuals who recognize equivalent duties to each other in order to insure that no one tries to gain by another's loss.(#218)

The idea of the true good is primarily an inward demand for an object that will yield abiding self-satisfaction. The earliest form of this idea was that of family well-being.(#230) Already in the earliest stages of human consciousness the idea of true or permanent good was a social good, not private to the man himself, but good for him as a member of a community. The idea of a true good is in principle a satisfaction for a self which can only contemplate its own self-satisfaction and well-being as permanent by identifying them with an equal satisfaction and well-being of others in a community,(#232) and the happiness which, under the influence of the idea of permanent good, a man seeks for others is of the same kind as the happiness which, under the influence of the same idea, he seeks for himself.(#236)

A man's interest in true happiness for himself and his interest in it for others is the same interest, of which the object is not a succession of pleasures but a bettering of and realization of the capabilities of the human soul. That interest is a true good which leads us to reject attractive pleasures as pleasures which should not be enjoyed, and to endure repellent pains as pains which should be undergone. That interest in the true good for others begins with the desire to satisfy the basic animal wants and the well-being of the family and it grows to include the advancement of knowledge, improvement of the public well-being and even the striving after a 'personal holiness.' The over-all object of this interest, in all its forms, is the simultaneous bettering of the individual's life and that of the society in which he lives.(#239)

The bettering of oneself and of society is conceived as an absolutely desirable end. The interests of ordinary good citizens lie in various elements of social well-being, starting with efforts to provide for the future wants of the family. All these interests have a common incentive, i.e. a demand for abiding self-satisfaction which arises from the action of an eternal self-conscious principle in and upon our animal nature.(#240)

Morality has developed from an interest to make the members of a family or tribe better persons, by inculcating in them habits that will help them achieve not anything ulterior but what man has it in him to achieve. This has led to the recognition of the value of the good things of the soul, distinct and independent of the good things of the body. Men have learnt to recognize and value the spiritual qualities to which material things serve as instruments and means of expression, and have formed the abstract concept of a universe of values which may be exhaustively classified. Already in early times in human development there arose the conception and appreciation of impalpable virtues of character unrelated to animal wants.(#243) [Note: F. A. Hayek similarly stresses the importance of the evolutionary development of rules and morals in human societies; see Epilogue in Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3]

Whenever and wherever the interest in a social good has come to carry with it a distinct idea of social merit - of qualities that make the good member of a family, or a good tribesman, or a good citizen - we have the beginning of that education of the conscience of which the end is the conviction that the only true good is to be good. This process is complimentary to the conviction that the true good is good for all men, and good for them in virtue of the same nature and capacity. The processes are complimentary because the only good in the pursuit of which there can be no competition of interests, the only good which is really common to all, is that which consists in the universal will to be good - in the settled disposition on each man's part to make the best of humanity in his own person and in the persons of others.(#244)

TRIBUTE to the GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

What gave me the greatest gratification while reading the Prolegomena to Ethics was Green's tribute to the ancient Greek philosophers. Green conducts a detailed and thorough investigation of the same virtues which were discussed by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. I will not comment on this part of the Prolegomena, but I do encourage the reader to compare Green's and Aristotle's works for himself. My main objective in this essay was to bask in a sense of pleasure which came with the revelation that a man of acknowledged intellectual stature - Thomas Hill Green - confirms what I had suspected was only the fruit of my own amateurish musings, i.e. that our Western civilization owes its exemplary success to the standards of morals and ethics conceived by the Greek philosophers rather than Christian theologians. As is clearly evident in the selected passages quoted below, Green credits Christianity with being the vehicle which has enabled the morals of the Greek philosophers to become the backbone of Western civilization. His reason for thinking this is based on the assumption that Christianity has fostered the development of our secular political ideas and values of equality, egalitarianism, and  the rights of the individual person. In my own opinion, expressed in the essays Rejuvenating Moral Duties and What Could Have Been, Christianity is not deserving of such credit. If anything, it has been a detriment to the development of the pure non-religious Greek ethics. Furthermore, our political sense of individual rights and equality would have matured through the centuries just as well, and perhaps faster, in the absence of religious dogmas of any kind.

Be that as it may, here is Green's testimonial to the Greek philosophers, in his own words, slightly edited in places:

Along with the conviction of the unity of virtue, which finds so clear and strong an expression in the Greek philosophers, they also attempted both to reform the prevailing estimation of the several practices and dispositions counted virtuous, and to introduce a systematic order of living for individuals and communities, corresponding to the idea of the unity of the end.(#249)

The habit of derogation from the uses of ‘mere philosophy,’ common alike to Christian advocates and the professors of natural science, has led us too much to ignore the immense practical service which Socrates and his followers rendered to mankind. From them in effect comes the connected scheme of virtues and duties within which the educated conscience of Christendom still moves, when it is impartially reflecting on what ought to be done. Religious teachers have no doubt affected the hopes and fears which actuate us in the pursuit of virtue or rouse us from its neglect. Religious societies have both strengthened men in the performance of recognized duties, and taught them to recognize relations of duty towards those whom they might otherwise have been content to treat as beyond the pale of such duties; but the articulated scheme of what the virtues and duties are, in their difference and in their unity, remains for us now in its main outlines what the Greek philosophers left it.(#249)

In their Ethical teaching the greatest of the Greek philosophers – those to whom Christendom owes, not indeed its highest moral inspiration, but its moral categories, its forms of practical judgment – never professed to be inventors. They did not claim to be prophets of new truth, but exponents of principles on which the good citizen, if he thought the matter out, would find that he had already been acting. They were seeking a clearer view of the end or good towards which the citizen-life was actually directed. And this conception of their vocation was not less true than, in its superiority to personal self-assertion, it was noble. They were really organs through which reason, as operative in men, became more clearly aware of the work it had been doing in the creation and maintenance of free social life, and in the activities of which that life is at once the source and the result. In thus becoming aware of its work the same reason through them gave a further reality to itself in human life. The demand for an abiding satisfaction, for a true or permanent good, in action upon the wants and fears and social impulses of men, had yielded the institutions of the family and the state. These again had brought into play certain spiritual dispositions and energies, recognized as beneficent and stimulated by the effect of that recognition on the social man, but not yet guided by any clear consciousness of the end which gave them their value. In arriving at that consciousness of itself, as it did specifically through the Greek philosophers, the spiritual demand which had given rise to the old virtue yielded a virtue which was in a certain important sense new; a character which would not be satisfied without understanding the law which it obeyed, without knowing what the true good was, for which the demand had hitherto been more blindly at work.(#250)

The change consisted not merely in a new theory about virtue, but in a higher order of virtue itself. Socrates and his followers are, rightly so, not regarded as the originators of an interesting moral speculation, or as the evolutionists of its hereditary development. They represent - though it might be too much to say that they introduced - a new demand, or at least a fuller expression of an old demand, of the moral nature. Now, though our actual moral attainment may always be far below what our conscience requires of us, it does tend to rise in response to a heightened requirement of conscience, and will not rise without it. Such a requirement is implied in the conception of the unity of virtue, as determined by one idea of practical good which was to be the conscious spring of the perfectly virtuous life – an idea of it as consisting in some intrinsic excellence, some full realization of the capabilities, of the thinking and willing soul. Here we have – not indeed in its source, but in that first clear expression through which it manifests its life – the conviction that every form of real goodness must rest on a will to be good, which has no object but its own fulfillment. When the same conviction came before the world, not in the form of a philosophy but in the language of religious aspiration and when there seemed to be a personal human life which could be contemplated as one in which it had been realized, it appealed to a much wider range of persons than it had done in the schools of Greece, and moved the heart with a new power. But if those affected by it came to ask themselves what it meant for them – in what the morality resting on purity of heart consisted – it was mainly in forms derived, knowingly or unknowingly, from the Greek philosophers that the answer had to be given.(#251)

The purity of the heart can only consist in the nature of its motives or governing interests. This distinction of true from seeming virtue, as dependent on the motive of each, was brought out by Plato and Aristotle with a clearness which was in fact final. They taught with all the consistency and directness which a Christian teacher could desire, that a conscious direction to this good – a ‘purity of heart’ in this sense – was the condition for all virtue and constituted the essential unity between one form of virtue and another. Indeed, their teaching stands in strong contrast with the appeal to semi-sensual motives that has been common, and perhaps necessary for popular practical effect, in the Christian Church. ‘Desire for what is beautiful or noble; this is the common characteristic of all the virtues’ [Arist. Eth. Nic. IV. ii. 7], is the formula in which Aristotle sums up the teaching of himself and his master as to the basis of goodness. It conveyed the great principle that a direction of a man’s will to the highest possible realization of his faculties is the common ground of every form of true virtue. This direction of the will, according to both Aristotle and Plato, was to be founded on habit; but the habit even in its earliest and least reflective stage was to be under the direction of reason, as embodied in law.(#252)

This view of the essential principle of all virtue at once distinguishes the doctrine of Plato and Aristotle from any form of Hedonism, or of Utilitarianism so far as Hedonistic. The condition of virtuous action according to them did not lie in its production of a certain effect, but in its relation to a certain object, as rationally desired by the agent; and this object was not an imagined pleasure.(#253)

The Greek philosophers represent the greatness – in a certain sense the completeness and finality – of the advance in spiritual development. Once for all they conceived and expressed the conception of a free or pure morality, as resting on what we may venture to call a disinterested interest in the good; of the several virtues as so many applications of that interest to the main relations of social life; of the good itself not as anything external to the capacities virtuously exercised in its pursuit, but as their full realization. This idea was one which was to govern the growth of all the true and vital moral conviction which has descended to us.(#253)

Aristotle, as we know, with all the wisdom of Plato before him, which he was well able to appropriate, could find no better definition of the true good for man than the full exercise or realization of the soul’s faculties in accordance with its proper excellence, which was an excellence of thought, speculative and practical. The pure morality then, which we credit him with having so well conceived, must have meant morality determined by interest in such a good. The definition of the good as Aristotle gives us was more than explanatory of the meaning of a name. It was rather the indication of a spiritual problem, of which some progress had been made in the solution. The realization of the soul’s faculties had not to wait to begin; the desire for, the interest in, such a good had not still to be initiated. The philosopher had not to bring before men an absolutely new object of pursuit, but to bring them to consider what gave its value to an object already pursued.(#254)

In the development of that reflective morality which our own consciences inherit, both the fundamental principle and the mode of its articulation have retained the form which they first took in the minds of the Greek philosophers. We do not get rid of the conviction that to be good in one of the many forms of goodness is for the individual the good; that, inexhaustibly various as those forms may be, each of them must be founded on a will, of which the good in one or other of these forms is the object; and that the good for man, in that universal sense in which it is beyond the reach of the individual’s realization, must yet be a kind which is related to all forms of individual goodness.(#256)

Aristotle’s ideal of fortitude which is the willingness to endure even unto complete self-renunciation, even to the point of forsaking all possibility of pleasure, in the service of the highest public cause which the agent can conceive – whether it be the cause of the state or the cause of the kingdom of Christ – is free from debasement by any notion of a compensation which the brave man is to find in the pleasures of another world for present endurance. Christian preachers have not been ashamed to dwell upon such compensation as a motive for self-renunciation; however, this ought not to be taken to imply that the heroism of charity exhibited in the Christian Church has really been vitiated by pleasure-seeking motives.(#260)

In our times human society has realized its capacities in ways that the Greek philosophers could not imagine. Hence has resulted a change in the ideal of what its full realization would be, and consequently a change in the conception of what is required from the individual as a contribution to that realization. In particular the idea has been formed of the possible inclusion of all men in one society of equals, and much has been actually done towards its realization. For those citizens of Christendom on whom the idea of Christendom has taken hold, such a society does actually exist. For them – according to their conscientious conviction, if not according to their practice – mankind is a society of which the members owe reciprocal services to each other, simply as man to man. And the idea of this social unity has been so far realized that the modern state, unlike the ancient, secures equality before the law to all persons living within the territory over which its jurisdiction extends, and in theory at least treats aliens as no less possessed of rights. Thus when we come to interpret that formal definition of the good, as a realization of powers of the human soul or the perfecting of man, which is true for us as for Aristotle, into that detail in which alone it can afford guidance for the actions of individuals, the particular injunctions which we derive from it are in many ways different from any that Aristotle could have thought of. For us as for him the good for the individual is to be good, and to be good is to contribute in some way disinterestedly, or for the sake of doing it, to the perfecting of man. But when we ask ourselves how we should thus contribute, or what are the particular forms of virtuous life to which we should aspire, our answer is determined by the consciousness of claims upon us on the part of other men which, as we now see, must be satisfied in order to any perfecting of the human soul, but which were not, and in the then state of society could not be, recognized by the Greek philosophers. It is the consciousness of such claims that makes the real difference between what our consciences require of us, or our standards of virtue, and the requirements or standards which Greek Ethics represent.(#280)

It must be borne in mind, however, that the social development, which has given the idea of human brotherhood a hold on our consciences such as it could not have for the Greeks, would itself have been impossible but for the action of that idea of the good and of goodness which first found formal expression in the Greek philosophers. It implies interest in an object which is common to all men in the proper sense – in the sense, namely, that there can be no competition for its attainment between man and man; and the only interest that satisfies this condition is the interest, under some form or other, in the perfecting of man or the realization of the powers of the human soul. It is not to be pretended, indeed, that this in its purity, or apart from other interests, has been the only influence at work in maintaining and extending social union. It is obvious, for instance, that trade has played an important part in bringing and keeping men together; and trade is the offspring of other interests than that just described. The force of conquest, again, such as that which led to the establishment for some centuries of the ‘Pax Romana’ round the basin of the Mediterranean, has done much to break down estranging demarcations between different groups of men; and conquest has generally originated in selfish passions. But neither trade nor conquest by themselves would have helped to widen the comprehension of political union, to extend the range within which reciprocal claims are recognized of man on man, and ultimately to familiarize men with the idea of human brotherhood. For this there must have been another interest at work, applying the immediate results of trade and conquest to other ends than those which the trader and conqueror had in view; the interest in being good and doing good. Apart from this, other interests might tend to combine certain men for certain purposes and for a time, but because directed to objects which were desires for himself alone and not for another – objects which cannot really be attained in common – they divide in spirit, even when they combine temporarily in outward effect; and, sooner or later, the spiritual division must make its outward sign.(#281)

It would not be to the purpose here to enter on the complicated and probably unanswerable question of the share which different personal influences may have had in gaining acceptance for the idea of human brotherhood, and in giving it some practical effect in the organization of society. We have no disposition to hold a brief for the Greek philosophers against the founders of the Christian Church, or for the latter against the former. All that it is sought to maintain is this; that the society of which we are consciously members – a society founded on the self-subordination of each individual to the rational claims of others, and potentially all-inclusive – could not have come into existence except (1) through the action in men of a desire of which (unlike the desire for pleasure) the object is in its own nature common to all; and (2) through the formation in men’s minds of a conception of what this object is, sufficiently full and clear to prevent its being regarded as an object for any set of men to the exclusion of another. It was among the followers of Socrates, so far as we know, that such a conception was for the first time formed and expressed – for the first time, at any rate, in the history of the traceable antecedents of modern Christendom. Inevitable prejudice, arising from the condition of society about them, prevented them from apprehending the social corollaries of their own conception. But the conception of the perfecting of man as the good for all, of a habit of will directed to that work in some of its forms as the good for each, had been definitely formed in certain minds, and only needed opportunity to bear its natural fruit. When through the establishment of the ‘Pax Romana’ round the basin of the Mediterranean, or otherwise, the external conditions had been fulfilled for the initiation of a society aiming at universality; when a person had appeared charging himself with the work of establishing a kingdom of God among men, announcing purity of heart as the sole condition of membership of that kingdom, and able to inspire his followers with a belief in the perpetuity of his spiritual presence and work among them; then the time came for the value of the philosopher’s work to appear.(#285)

The Greek philosophers had provided men with a definite and, in principle, true conception of what it is to be good – a conception involving no conditions but such as it belongs to man as man, without distinction of race or caste or intellectual gifts, to fulfill. When the old barriers of nations and caste were being broken down; when a new society, all-embracing in idea and aspiration, was forming itself on the basis of the common vocation ‘Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect,’ there was need of conceptions, at once definite and free from national or ceremonial limitations, as to the modes of virtuous living in which that vocation was to be fulfilled. Without them the universal society must have remained an idea and an aspiration, for there would have been no intellectual medium through which its members could communicate and co-operate with each other in furtherance of the universal object. It was in consequence of Greek philosophy, or rather of that general reflection upon morality which Greek philosophy represented, that such conceptions were forthcoming. By their means men could arrive at a common understanding of the goodness which, as citizens of the kingdom of God, it was to be their common object to promote in themselves and others. The reciprocal claim of all upon all to be helped in the effort after a perfect life could thus be rendered into a language intelligible to all who had assimilated the moral culture of the Greco-Roman world. For them conscious membership of a society founded on the acknowledgement of this claim became a definite possibility. And as the possibility was realized, as conscious membership of such a society became an accomplished spiritual fact, men became aware of manifold relations, unthought of by the philosophers, in which the virtues of courage, temperance and justice were to be exercised, and from the recognition of which it resulted that, while the principle of those virtues remained as the philosophers had conceived it, the range of action understood to be implied in being thus virtuous became (as we have seen) so much wider.(#285)

I think that Green's tribute to the achievement of the ancient Greek philosophers is a fitting conclusion to this essay, which is itself in a way my tribute to Thomas Hill Green. The Prolegomena to Ethics is so bountiful a work that I feel that I have barely started to dig into it. I know that I will be revisiting it many more times in the future. I heartily recommend it to every one who loves Aristotelian ethics.

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