T. H. Green

Thomas Hill Green (1836 to 1882) is widely regarded as the founding and most influential figure of British idealism, the tradition that flourished at Oxford, Glasgow and Edinburgh in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born in Birkin, Yorkshire, he studied at Balliol College, Oxford, was appointed a lecturer in ancient and modern history there in 1860, and was elected Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1877, a post he held until his death. His idealism was systematic: reflecting the influence of Kant, he criticized the empiricism of Locke and Hume and argued for an absolute idealism in which reality depends on a single consciousness. In ethics he held a perfectionism that identifies the human good with self-realization within a community pursuing a common good, and from it he drew the foundations of a progressive liberalism in which the state has positive duties to its citizens.