Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse

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The English sociologist and philosopher Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864-1929), one of the major theoreticians of liberalism in England before World War I, advocated a modified form of state socialism tempered by traditional liberal principles.

Born Sept. 8, 1864, at St. Ives, Cornwall, L.T. Hobhouse was the son of a prominent Anglican family. He entered Oxford in 1883 and later taught at Corpus Christi and Merton colleges until 1897. His many works in a variety of disciplines are unified by a commitment to the idea of social reform according to the criteria of morality and reason.

Hobhouse's first important work, The Labour Movement (1893), outlined his program to unite the forces of trade unionism with those of reform liberalism. The core of his program was the demand for collective control of industry and agriculture in order to secure efficiency and the equitable distribution of life's necessities. His next work, The Theory of Knowledge (1896), was a technical philosophical treatise opposing the philosophical idealism dominant at Oxford. He especially insisted upon the validity of rational knowledge, believing that to deny it meant denying the possibility of social reform.

In 1897 Hobhouse joined the staff of the Manchester Guardian, where he remained for the next 4 years, during which time he published Mind in Evolution (1901), recognized as one of the early classics of comparative psychology. Here he addressed himself to the claims of social Darwinists that social reform, by eliminating the struggle for existence, encouraged the survival of the unfit and thereby hindered the evolutionary advance of mankind. Hobhouse attempted to prove that, with man's discovery of science, random biological evolution had been replaced by directed, self-conscious development. Rational organization could now replace struggle as the means of preserving the species.

In 1902 Hobhouse moved to London, where he became actively involved in politics, serving as secretary of the Free Trade Union (1902-1905). In Democracy and Reaction (1904) he attacked the imperialist policies of the British government. In his most famous work, Liberalism (1911), he outlined his program for what he now called liberal socialism. This program attempted to harmonize the idea of collective control with that of individual liberty.

During this period Hobhouse began to devote himself primarily to sociology. He played an important role in establishing the Sociological Society and for a time served as editor of the Sociological Review. In Morals in Evolution (1906), perhaps his most impressive work, he attempted to classify the forms of human achievement, such as religion, morality, knowledge, and political institutions. He concluded that a general advance, though erratic and unequal, could be discerned in the forms of human creativity, and that mankind now possessed the ability to organize all of human life according to a rational system which would harmonize the claims and needs of individuals with those of society. Hobhouse became the first professor of sociology at the University of London, in 1907.

Hobhouse first opposed British involvement in World War I but eventually became a supporter of the war effort. In The World in Conflict (1915) and Questions of War and Peace (1916) he characterized the war as a civilizational struggle between the West, representing reason and morality, and Germany, representing violence and irrationality. In The Metaphysical Theory of the State (1918) he attacked Hegelianism, which he considered responsible for the German intellectual spirit. Nevertheless, throughout the war he argued for a negotiated rather than an imposed settlement with Germany and suggested a league of nations which might be transformed into a world state.

After the war Hobhouse served on a number of boards of trade and wrote The Rational Good (1921), Elements of Social Justice (1923), and Social Development, Its Nature and Conditions (1924). His work had some influence in the United States during the 1930s but remains largely unread today. His political views underwent a change after the war, and his disenchantment with large-scale government institutions led him to advocate a modified form of guild socialism. In the last years of his life, illness, his wife's death, and disillusionment with liberal bureaucracy resulted in his retirement from political activity, although he retained his professorship at the University of London until his death, at Alençon, France, on June 21, 1929.

Further Reading

The best secondary source on Hobhouse is J. A. Hobson and Morris Ginsberg, L. T. Hobhouse: His Life and Work (1931). Ginsberg also wrote a good, brief appraisal of Hobhouse's work in his introduction to Hobhouse's Sociology and Philosophy (1966). Hobhouse's sociological work is treated in Hugh Carter, The Social Theories of L. T. Hobhouse (1927), and in an essay in Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., An Introduction to the History of Sociology (1948).

Additional Sources

L. T. Hobhouse: his life and work, London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1993.

(1864-1929) Political philosopher, journalist, sociologist, and political activist in the field of labour relations and social policy. Hobhouse was a crucial figure in the emergence of ‘social liberalism’, which justified increased state intervention as necessary for the achievement of both social and individual goods.

Hobhouse argued, and defended through a series of physiological, anthropological, and historical studies, that the human mind was the central force in human development. The culmination of this unfolding teleological process, he maintained, lay in the deliberate construction of certain social and political forms (such as common property) representing the ethical principles of cooperation and rational humanitarianism. The relationship between the individual and society was a symbiotic one, and their ends were harmonized by the regulative activity of the state.

Like nineteenth-century liberals, Hobhouse asserted the moral primacy of individual autonomy, but maintained that it was an impoverished liberalism that failed to appreciate the social bases of the formation and flourishing of human personality. Consequently, and contra Locke and other liberal predecessors, the individual and his claims to rights and property cannot be said to be prior to society and its claims on the individual in the name of its members. While arguing that, properly understood, individual liberty and the social good were complementary, Hobhouse suspected any group that defended sectional interests at the expense of other members of the social body. The state in Hobhouse's work is therefore conceived as an intelligent director of social interaction, sustaining the conditions for individual development while simultaneously preserving the priority of common over particularistic goods (and entitled to coerce individuals to this end).

— Stewart Wood

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Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse.

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (September 8, 1864 - June 21, 1929) was a British liberal politician, one of the theorists of social liberalism. He worked as an academic and a journalist: he was the first professor of sociology appointed in a British university. He was born in St Ive, near Liskeard in Cornwall.^[1] His sister Emily Hobhouse was a noted welfare campaigner.

Contents 1 Economic policy 2 Civil liberty 3 Foreign policy 4 Works 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Economic policy

Hobhouse was important in underpinning the turn-of-the-century 'New Liberal' movement of the Liberal party under leaders like Asquith and Lloyd George. He distinguished between property held 'for use' and property held 'for power'. He also theorized that property was acquired not only by individual effort but by societal organization (meaning, those who had property owed some of their success and thus had some obligation to society), providing theoretical justification for a level of redistribution provided by the new state pensions. It is important to note, however, that Hobhouse disliked Marxist socialism, describing his own position as "liberal socialism". Hobhouse occupies a particularly important place in the intellectual history of the Liberal Democrats because of this.

Civil liberty

His work also presents a positive vision of liberalism in which the purpose of liberty is to enable individuals to develop, not solely that freedom is good in itself. Hobhouse, by contrast, said that coercion should be avoided not because we have no regard for other peoples' well-being, but because coercion is ineffective at improving their lot.

Hobhouse rejected classical liberalism, noting the work of other liberals who had pointed out the various forms of coercion already existing in society apart from government. Therefore, he proposed that to promote liberty the government must control those factors already existing which worked against it.

Hobhouse held out hope that Liberals and what would now be called the social democrat tendency in the nascent Labour party could form a grand progressive coalition.

Foreign policy

Hobhouse was often disappointed that fellow collectivists in Britain at the time also tended to be Imperialists. Hobhouse opposed the Boer war and had reservations about the First World War. He was an Internationalist and disliked the pursuit of British national interests as practised by the governments of the day.

Works

• Labour Movement (1893)
• Theory of Knowledge: a contribution to some problems of logic and metaphysics (1896)
• Mind in Evolution (1901)
• Democracy and Reaction (1905)
• Morals in Evolution: a study in comparative ethics (1906)
• Liberalism (1911)
• Social Evolution and Political Theory (1911)
• Development and Purpose (1913)
• The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples (1915)
• The Metaphysical Theory of the State: a criticism (1918)
• The Rational Good: a study in the logic of practice (1921)
• The Elements of Social Justice (1922)
• Social Development: its nature and conditions (1924)
• Sociology and Philosophy: a centenary collection of essays and articles (1966)

See also

• Liberalism
• Contributions to liberal theory

References

1. ^ Freeden, Michael ‘Hobhouse, Leonard Trelawny (1864–1929)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 accessed 15 Oct 2007

External links

• Works by Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse at Project Gutenberg

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse

• Short biography by David Howarth MP
• That Englishwoman (1989) at the Internet Movie Database A film directed by Dirk DeVilliers

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