Suchergebnisse

Between 1880 and 1914 no other thinker exerted a greater influence upon British thought and public policy than did T. H. Green. Bryce and Asquith have testified that Green's Liberal version of Idealism superseded Utilitarianism as the most prominent philosophical school in Great Britain. And what was more startling, he and his followers proceeded to bring to life the heavy abstractions of the Principles of Political Obligation. For Green converted Idealism, which in Germany had so often served as a rationale of conservatism, into a practical program for the left wing of the Liberal Party. From aristocratic Oxford which Matthew Arnold could still describe as "whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age," there came a stream of serious young men dedicated to reform in politics, social work, and the civil service, men who would spend their lives in improving the school system, establishing settlement houses, reorganizing charity and the Poor Law, and originating adult education. Green's teaching had an extraordinary effect upon some of the best young men of this generation. A rich literature of memoir and autobiography attests to the great mark he left on the minds and lives of his generation.