Abstract
The standard view is that the ideal of citizenship in the 1880s was that of ‘social gospel’: an active, public-spirited member of society practicing civic duties.1 The standard interpretation of Green’s conception of citizenship fits nicely into this framework.2 Green is said to defend a social service conception of citizenship and a civic republican at that.3 Moreover, the social service conception of citizenship is criticized for assimilating self-realization into social service and subordinating self-realization to the altruist duties of citizenship. Two questions arise: first, does the social service conception of citizenship adequately capture Green’s conception of citizenship? Second, must citizenship as a moral obligation to alleviate human misery override the moral demand of self-realization? Students and critics of Green and British Idealism tend to give a positive answer to both questions. I disagree.
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Notes
Brad Beaven and John Griffiths, ‘Creating the Exemplary Citizen: The Changing Notion of Citizenship in Britain 1870–1939’, Contemporary British History, 22/2 Qune 2008), 203–225
E. Low, ‘The Concept of Citizenship in Twentieth Century Britain: Analysing Contexts of Development’. In Reforming the Constitution, edited by P. Catterall, W. Kaiser, and U. Walton Jordan. London: Frank Cass, 2000.
For an extensive discussion of Green’s idea of citizenship, see M. Richter, Politics of Conscience. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964
Andrew Vincent and Raymond Plant, Philosophy Politics and Citizenship. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984
Andrew Vincent, ‘T. H. Green and the Religion of Citizenship’. In The Philosophy of T. H. Green, edited by Andrew Vincent. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1986, 48–61.
See, for example, Colin Tyler, ‘Contesting the Common Good: T. H. Green and Contemporary Republicanism’. In T. H. Green. Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy, edited by Maria Dimova-Cookson and W. J. Mander. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006, 262–291
E. F. Biagini, ‘Neo-Roman Liberalism: Republican Values and British Liberalism, Ca. 1860–1875’, History of European Ideas, 29/1 (2003), 55–72.
Michael Walzer, ‘Citizenship’. In Ball, T, Far J. and Hanson, K.L. (eds) Political Innovation and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 216.
IE Green, ‘The Witness of God’. In Works of Thomas Hill Green, vol. iii, edited by R. L. Nettleship. London: Longmans, 1888, 251.
Raymond Plant, ‘Idealism’. In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, edited by David Miller et al., New York: Blackwell, 1987, 230
T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings, edited by. Paul Harris and John Morrow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986
T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, edited by. A. C. Bradley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1883
L. T. Hobhouse, The Elements of Social Justice. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1965 [1922], 108.
L.T. Hobhouse, The Rational Good. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1921, 90.
Andrew Vincent. ‘The New Liberalism and Citizenship’. In The New Liberalism. Reconciling Liberty and Community, A. Simhony and D. Weinstein (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001, 206
Michael Freeden, Rights. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991
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© 2014 Avital Simhony
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Simhony, A. (2014). Beyond Dualistic Constructions of Citizenship: T.H. Green’s Idea of Ethical Citizenship as Mutual Membership. In: Brooks, T. (eds) Ethical Citizenship. Palgrave Studies in Ethics and Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137329967_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137329967_3
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