Political Thought

The Idealist Revision of Liberalism. This revision of liberal theory was accomplished in the two decades following 1880 by the Oxford idealists of whom Thomas Hill Green was the most important representative, at least in political philosophy. In the United States there was an analogous and related movement in philosophy of which Josiah Royce was … Read more

Herbert Spencer. For the purpose of gauging the state of liberal theory in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, it is both interesting and instructive to compare the philosophy of Mill with that of Herbert Spencer. The two men were generally recognized as the most important exponent, of the philosophy of political liberalism and … Read more

The Principles of Social Study. Mill’s theory of political and ethical liberalism, developed chiefly in his Utilitarianism, the essay On Liberty, and the Representative Government, remained for the most part within the circle of subjects and of ideas native to his English tradition. The very important changes which he made were considered by him, mistakenly, … Read more

John Stuart Mill Liberty. The general outlook of John Stuart Mill’s social philosophy, and especially his ethics, was determined perhaps as much by personal experience as by intellectual considerations. From birth he was destined by his father to carry on the crusade of the Philosophical Radicals, and certainly the elder Mill never envisaged the possibility … Read more

Modernized Liberalism. The greatest legislative success of Philosophical Radicalism was coeval with the beginning of its recession. The high water mark of its influence was reached in 1846 with the repeal of the Corn Laws and the establishment of free trade as British national policy. But even before that date the social effects of unregulated … Read more

Liberalism and Philosophical Radicalism. The reaction against the philosophy of natural rights which began With Rousseau and Burke and received its first systematic statement, from Hegel by no means superseded the tradition of individualism which formed the main strand of political thinking throughout the Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the contrary this philosophy produced its … Read more

The Later Significance of Hegelianism. Despite the technicalities in which Hegel cloaked his thoughts and the apparent abstraction of his conclusions, few political theories had a more intimate relationship to political realities. It reflected in a very real way the state of affairs in Germany at the close of the Napoleonic Wars, her bitter national … Read more

Hegel’s theory of the state, as was said above, depended upon the peculiar nature of the relationship existing, as he supposed, between the state and civil society. The relation is at once one of contrast and mutual dependence. The state as Hegel conceived it is no utilitarian institution, engaged in the commonplace business of providing … Read more

Hegel Freedom and Authority. Hegel’s critique of individualism was directed against two different conceptions. In the first place he identified individualism with the provincialism and particular-ism which had prevented Germany from achieving modern national statehood. This national trait he attributed largely to the influence of Luther, who had made Christian liberty a mystical independence of … Read more

Individualism and the Theory of the State. The importance of the Philosophy of Right did not depend upon the formal structure of its argument but upon its reference to political realities, a reference which the formalism sometimes made almost surreptitious. It dealt with two subjects of fundamental importance, the relationship between the human individual and … Read more