Thomas Hill Green

First published Fri Feb 28, 2003; substantive revision Tue Jun 7, 2011

Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882), political philosopher and radical, temperance reformer, and the
leading member of the British Idealist movement. His principal writings are: ‘Essay on Christian
Dogma’ (CD), ‘The Conversion of Paul’ (CP), ‘Different Senses of “Freedom” as Applied to
Will and the Moral Progress of Man’ (DSF), ‘Faith’ (F), ‘Lecture on Liberal Legislation and
Freedom of Contract’ (LF), ‘Incarnation’ (I), ‘Immortality’ (IM), ‘Justification by Faith’ (JF),
‘Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation’ (LPPO), ‘Metaphysic of Ethics, Moral
Psychology, Sociology or the Science of Sittlichkeit’ (ME), Prolegomena to Ethics (PE),
‘Witness of God’ (WG), and ‘Word is Nigh Thee’ (WNT).

4. The Theory of the Will

This section examines the ways in which the eternal consciousness develops through the minds
of individuals and the institutions of society. It begins by examining Green's conceptions of
freedom, the will and reason. It then sketches his theory of man's essential reliance on society,
and the latter's possibilities for interpreting social forms at a higher level. The interlinking of
social norms and laws, individual freedom, and morality is a recurring theme of this discussion.

what is it exactly that we mean by [the] self or man? … We mean by it a certain reproduction of
itself on the part of the subject of the world. (PE 99)

To understand Green's position on morality, one must first understand his analysis of the human
will, for in many ways the most fundamental question is “what makes the will free?” This
question can restated by asking, “what is the difference between the good and bad will?”,
because Green sees the truly free will as being by definition the truly good will (PE 154).

Green argues that desires are emotional impulses felt by the individual and recognised by him as
forming an indispensable part of his being. In desiring, one is necessarily acknowledging one's
own existence as a person, as one is necessarily self-conscious. Usually, individuals will desire
many objects at the same time. Often, holding them simultaneously is impossible, and so one is
forced to decide which object to actively attempt to possess; that is, one will have to choose
which object to will to possess. In this way, choice represents the adoption of a motive by the self
as the determination of action — that is, as the will (PE 103). For example, I may desire to own a
book and a statue. However, as I can afford one but not both (and buying them is the only way to
gain either), I must choose between them. In choosing, say, the statue, it then becomes my will to
possess the statue — it is no longer merely a desire. My motivation is one on its own — whereas
my desire can be one of many. In willing, firstly one must desire (and by desiring acknowledge
one's existence). Secondly, one must make the object part of oneself because, in the act of
willing, one necessarily makes the chosen object impossible to understand without reference to
one's act of choice. In Green's terminology, the nature of the object is in part created by the
individual's will to possess it. As he writes, such objects are “objects which only the intercourse
of self-conscious agents can bring into existence” (PE 126). For this reason, my relationship to
(and hence the nature of) the object is transformed by my choice of it; it is transformed by my act
of willing, because obtaining the willed object is then the source of my self-satisfaction (PE
154).

To understand what Green means here, one must bear in mind that he is talking not in
metaphysical, but in epistemic terms. This argument echoes his claim that nature's ‘creation’ is
an epistemic process, not a metaphysical one. Green uses terms such as ‘creation’, ‘nature’ and
‘reality’ in very different ways to their common usages. Hence, ‘the world’ and ‘nature’ are the
‘creation’ of the human mind. They exist only in the consciousness of the individual perceiver.
This contention becomes relatively uncontroversial when the way in which Green uses his terms
is understood. In this instance he is arguing that one cannot know what the chosen object is
without recognising that possession of it is willed by a person.

Green argues that a man's will must always be free in at least one sense: “since in all willing a
man is his own object to himself, the object by which the act is determined, the will is always
free … [that is] willing constitutes freedom” (DSF 1). Self-satisfaction is always free and is
always the object of the will. There are several things to notice here. Firstly, in willing
something, the individual must deliberate. When willing, the individual is “seeking to realise an
idea of his own good which he is conscious of presenting to himself” (PE 106). Action which
occurs without deliberation — unthinking action — is not an act of will and hence is not free.
Secondly, Green argues that the “motive” for the determination of the will is part of the will
itself. For this reason, it is wrong to ask whether a man is “being himself” when he is willing a
particular course of action; for example, taking drugs for the first time. Thus, “in being
determined by a strongest motive, in the only sense in which he is really so determined, the man
… is determined by himself — by an object of his own making” (DSF 11).

This argument can be extended. For Green, desires are not something external to and acting on
the individual — they are part of his very essence. For example, Green warns against talking “of
Desire moving us to act in such or such a way, misleading us, or overcoming us, conflicting with
Reason, &c. — then ‘Desire’ is a logical abstraction which we are mistaking for reality” (PE
129). By “Desire” (as opposed to “desires”) here, Green means “the man's self, as conscious of
itself and consciously seeking in the satisfaction of desires the satisfaction of itself” (PE 129).
Desire is then unified in the self by its relation to intellect which ensures that no object of
understanding would be what it is without the presence of Desire, and vice versa (PE: 130). In
that these elements of the self are unified, the will is always in a sense free.

Yet, Green also claims that, “[t]he question as to the freedom of the will we take to be a question
as to the origin of [one's] … strongest motive” (PE 97). Bearing in mind that Green has already
said that “willing constitutes freedom”, this statement seems prblematic. He appears to be
arguing that to will is to be free at the same time as arguing that the will is not always free. In
other words, Green seems to be arguing simultaneously that the will must be and may not be
free. However, the important point to grasp here is that up until this point Green's statements had
been concerned only with one sense of the term “freedom”. That the will originates in the
strongest motive (self-satisfaction), and that this in turn originates in the person's “circumstances
and character” has radical implications (PE 98). Examining the inability of one's character to
determine the individual's will sufficiently for an action to be ‘truly’ free helps to explain why
“circumstances” (as Green uses the term) are so important to the exercise of a completely free
will. Circumstances and character determine acts of will by giving the individual his specific
motivations and by giving his motivations their relative strengths.

By “circumstances”, Green does not mean merely the immediate situation in which the
individual makes his particular decision, together with its antecedent causes. He means in
addition “the state of [the individual's] health, the outward manner of his life (including his
family arrangements and the mode in which he maintains himself and his family), and the
standard of social expectations on the part of those whom he recognises as his equals” (PE 98).
The individual's self-satisfaction is determined by his circumstances. Thus, circumstances are
necessarily formative of his particular free will. At the same time, human reason shapes these
circumstances so as to foster the increasingly explicit embodiment of the external consciousness
in the world. It may seem strange that Green is arguing that the individual's will (which is, by
definition, free) is determined at least in part by things which appear to be external to him.
However, the influence of circumstances is an essential part of man. Without influences such as
his family structure and social expectations (and hence customs and society's values), the
individual would have to create his own character from pure thought, which he cannot do. This
claim needs to be examined in greater depth.

By “character”, Green means the eternal consciousness' at least partial “reproduction of itself”
(PE 99) within a particular person. (The complex question of deciding in more detail what the
eternal consciousness is is discussed later.) By virtue of this reproduction, the individual is, and
recognises himself as being, a moral agent — as an agent who is able to act deliberately in ways
that are either praiseworthy or blameworthy. Willing involves choice, and so Green argues
reason is central to freedom, for it is by employing one's rationality that an agent makes choices.
Green holds that “by reason, in the practical sense, [is meant] the capacity on the part of [the
individual] to conceive of a better state of [himself] as an end to be attained by action” (PE 177).
Reason and will are then connected in such a way as to allow the individual to seek to attain an
“ideal”, understood as a state of affairs which the individual prefers to his present situation. For
example, reason allows me to conceive of my present state as being improved by developing my
painting talents. More than this however, Green holds that man's reason is in an underdeveloped
state to the extent that it fails to recognise man's absolute goal as the attainment of that set of
circumstances and character which accords with the ultimate harmony of the world; that which
obtains when the eternal consciousness is fully explicit in the world. Moreover, the individual's
will is only truly free when reason draws man to chose that state which is absolutely preferable
in this way. This means that when the eternal consciousness is not fully explicit in the world,
reason and will do not necessarily recognise the same end as good. In other words, when the
eternal consciousness is merely becoming, “[this] self-realising principle, … in the form which it
takes as will[,] at best only tends to reconciliation with itself in the form which it takes as
reason” (DSF 21). What does this rather obscure proposition actually mean?

The unimpeded action of the eternal consciousness via the individual's free exercise of reason is
a prerequisite for the action of his absolutely free will. The degree to which the eternal
consciousness is merely implicit in the individual's actions determines the degree to which the
individual is capable of exercising free will. In other words, a human's will is not free if the
objects willed are counter to “the law of his being” (DSF 1). He is free to the extent that he wills
his embodiment of the eternal consciousness.

In more specific terms, that which is ultimately (and hence truly) sought by the moral agent is the
full realisation of his “moral capabilities” (PE 172). This is his “permanent good” (DSF 5).
Unfortunately, as these moral capabilities are at present only partially realised, man cannot fully
understand what they are. They can only be known “in negative” even at the civilised
individual's current stage of development (PE 172). By this, Green means that even though one
cannot know which state is absolutely the best for man, in practice, one will usually be able to
recognise which of two options is better.

Yet, while reason remains underdeveloped, human judgement remains imperfect. One result of
this is that the eternal consciousness itself can be the source of both virtue and vice (PE 176). It
is the source of vice when it pushes the individual to be self-seeking in a counter-productive
way, such as when he wills the attainment of “pleasure-in-itself” as their ultimate end.
Importantly, Green argues that as reason develops, the individual will come to recognise that
there is an associated growth of “institutions and habits which tend to make the welfare of all the
welfare of each” (PE 172). In this way, the development of reason in the world makes the role
and importance of “circumstances” in the determination of the individual's will more obvious.
The individual's capacities need to be given content so that they can be realised, thereby making
him truly satisfied and complete as a person.

This process of self-realisation occurs only for and within individuals. Yet, it is not driven
consciously by individuals. In other words initially at least it is not the result of their own
conscious choice. The individual develops by sublimating desires and instincts that initially he
merely feels as emanations from his unconscious (Tyler 2010, chapter 5).

It is helpful to summarise the argument to this point. The distinguishing characteristic of the truly
free will is found in the object towards which it is directed (PE 155). That object which is “best”
will be “the end in which the effort of a moral agent can really find rest” (PE 171). It is in
attaining this object (strictly, “state”) that the individual gains the greatest self-satisfaction. In
this sense the attainment of this object is what the individual truly wills (PE 172). For this
reason, self-satisfaction should not be confused with satisfying one's strongest desire. Indeed,
once the individual has reached a certain stage of development, the strongest desire cannot be
followed if it is counter to a man's character — “his strength of character overcomes the strength
of desire” (PE 105). The motive (which determines the will) is not a desire in this case; the
former is the habitual determination for that which the individual regards as his permanent good.
The latter, when destructive, “is incompatible with [the individual's] steady direction of himself
towards certain objects in which he habitually seeks satisfaction” (PE 105). Consequently, it is
incompatible with his true freedom, even though at one level it may be part of the individual's
will.

5. Social Theory and Conscientious Agency

Green holds that the individual's application of moral rules is itself a form of moral education. In
many ways, therefore, each new experience tends to push men forward, which entails in turn an
at least partial development of social institutions. This development shapes the ways in which the
individual experiences the world. Thus, in the case of law the individual should find himself
faced by an external expression of his true will. By following such a law, one is following one's
own will, for the abstract nature of law reflects, firstly, the abstract idea of man as a “self-
conscious and self-realising subject” whose wayward tendencies (desires which do not push him
to realise his telos) must be restrained to enable the will's “attainment of its own perfection”
(DSF 21). When following the law then, the individual acknowledges his ability to become that
which he is not at present. Secondly, law helps to form the individual in the sense of reinforcing
his values, views and the actions of the eternal consciousness as it exists in his world at the time.
In this way, the individual is increasingly brought into line with “the law of his being” (DSF 22).

This is the ideal. In reality, the currently existing laws (and the underlying social institutions,
values and so on) are imperfect in that their presuppositions contradict the logical structure of the
eternal consciousness. Recognition of these imperfections awakens an innate drive in the
individual to correct them. In fact actualising the idea of perfection found in reason increasingly
becomes the source of self-satisfaction contained in the individual's will (DSF 23).

However, Green argues that without recognition of a common good underlying your relations
with your fellow citizens, there could not be “intelligent co-operating subjects of law and
custom” (PE 203). Only where such a common good is present will a society hold together
without the use of coercion (PE 202). There are two connected elements here. Firstly, the
individual's reason allows him to conceive of a good towards which he should work as a person.
Secondly, Green holds that a stable society can only rest on institutions which are based on a
conception of a common good. As Aristotle writes that “it is a characteristic of man that he alone
has any sense of good or evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings
who have this sense makes a family and a state” (Politics, 1253a15–18). In fact the development
of a person's practical morality requires him to recognise through his exercise of reason that he
should pursue certain ends because they serve the common good of his society. The individual
comes to realise that no purely private object he wills and attains can ever make him truly happy.
It becomes more obvious to him as he lives and wills that only attaining what is good for all will
bring him complete satisfaction. This very significant contention needs to be explained.

Green argues that it is important to recognise that the individual's ultimate good is only fully
actualised following the movement of his society through the “lesser” ends embedded in
different earlier imperfect societies. These various ends serve to determine the goals of the
individual members of the various societies. However, the ultimate goal of individuals as human
beings is to become totally rational, that is to perfectly embody the eternal consciousness.
Crucially, this realisation requires the individual to possess a sense of self-worth, and recognise
and understand what is of ultimate value within their society. In this way, the individual should
come to possess “an idea of an absolute good, common to him with [all other members of
society] — an idea indefinable indeed in imagination, but gradually defining itself in act” (PE
202). This good exists in a sense independently of any particular impulse and is founded on the
absolute nature of man. As Kant expresses part of the idea Green now reiterates, individuals
come to recognise a “much more worthy purpose of existence [than private pleasure] … to which
… as a supreme condition the private purposes of man must for the most part be subordinated”
(G 64). For Green, this object will be sought because “its desirableness … is a fulfilment of the
capacities of which a man is conscious in being conscious of himself” (PE 193). Thus, the good
act will be performed because it brings the individual to a greater awareness of himself and his
nature, and hence to a greater awareness of what it is that best serves his most permanent
interests as an embodiment of the eternal consciousness. That object is truly good, therefore,
which is internal to the individual, and which the individual seeks as a fully self-conscious
person. Green contends that this good is pursued because it affirms man to himself as a rational,
self-satisfiable human being (PE 279).

What is the nature of such a “good for all”? Unfortunately, no one can truly answer this question
until the good life has been fully actualised. Until then, the life aimed at the perfection of one's
personality must be sought. Hence, Nicholson argues that “Green … centres his moral
philosophy not on a system of all-encompassing substantive principles from which one can
deduce the acts which ought to be done, but on a type of character in moral agents” (Nicholson,
1990, p.78). This type of character is based on conscience in its truest sense that is, conscientious
judgement which has not been perverted by short-sighted self-interest (PE 293). It is in this move
that the individual's liberty becomes an essential element of moral progress.

The type of character that Green wishes to promote is based on the individual's rational but
personal evaluation of moral situations, social norms and laws. The agent must question his
motives — self-reflection is essential for a pure conscience. Such a conscience requires the
moral agent to pursue that course of action which he truly believes will most fully promote the
embodiment of the eternal consciousness in human life. Such self-examination should be rooted
in a real desire to act virtuously, not in self-seeking self-deception (PE 297).

Conscience operates by studying existing social conventions, and abstracting that which is
permanent in them from that which is contingent and transient. But how does one recognise what
is permanent and what is not? Green argues that usually this can be done accurately by the
individual to the extent that he embodies the eternal consciousness. The eternal consciousness
shows men what are necessary parts of the moral ideal (PE 279). The degree to which the eternal
consciousness is already explicit in the mind of the conscientious citizen determines the degree
to which he is able to recognise the true permanency or transitoriness of specific customs and
institutions. Moreover it determines the extent to which the ideal can be approached from its
present basis given a limited life span. (By this logic, therefore, the closer one is to the ideal the
faster one moves towards it.)

But is man's understanding of the eternal consciousness so vague that Green's theory is useless as
a practical guide to individuals? Nicholson notes commentators' frequent accusations of
vagueness, but argues such accusations are often based on misunderstandings of Green's thought
(Nicholson, 1990, pp.71–80). This is something I wish to examine now.

The true reformer seeks to actualise that state of affairs which he honestly feels to be an
improvement on the current state of the world. He acts from a personal motive, which is a
natural outgrowth of his possession of the eternal consciousness. As Green writes “he feels a
personal responsibility for realising … [that which] is part and parcel of the practical idea itself,
of the form of consciousness which we so describe” (PE 299). Thus, in most cases the truly
contentious man knows instinctively which rules and practices to follow in society and which to
seek to change, because of the partially developed eternal consciousness within himself (PE
308). Just as the initial progress of man requires the spark of the eternal consciousness, so the
good man's actions grow out of the self-realising principle embodied in his nature (his character)
and his social background (his circumstances).

The accusation may be made that this merely gives each individual license to act as they happen
to prefer at the time. Yet, Green need not be drawn to this conclusion. As has been said, the
eternal consciousness is alive in everyone as a voice of guidance (although muffled to varying
degrees depending on the individual). Also, it is present although imperfectly in the social
institutions which make up society. The fact that the individual may resist the conclusions of his
moral sense, and so may follow his short-sighted “self-serving” egoism is an important point, but
it is not an objection to Green's theory unless it is also an objection to nearly every other ethical
theory as well. Indeed, Green argues that as humanity progresses individuals will naturally come
to truly follow their consciences more easily (PE 328).

Nevertheless, the criticism of vagueness may persist. The argument that the eternal
consciousness is imperfect in everyone, but more developed in some, has important
consequences for such criticisms. Firstly, there will be some people who are able to “in a certain
sense … [transcend] ‘the law of opinion’ of social expectation, … [but they] only [do] so by
interpreting it according to its higher spirit” (PE 301). It is in this way that new duties come to be
recognised in the world and man progresses (PE 301). These individuals are saints and
reformers. Yet, depending on the past effects of the eternal consciousness on the mind of the
individual, different interpretations of this higher spirit will be made by each particular reformer:
“It speaks with different voices” (PE 301). However, every interpretation when made by a
contentious individual tends to uncover aspects of the underlying rationality of these “social
opinions”. Here Green echoes Mill's contention that, “[i]n proportion to the development of his
individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being
more valuable to others” (Mill, 1972 131).

Secondly, when living “their” good life most people will merely follow the accepted social
norms, feeling unable to find fault with or improve upon them. The reformer and the saint are the
exceptions in society. Hence, Green writes that “[i]n fulfilling the duties which would be
recognised as belonging to his station in life by any one who considered the matter
dispassionately … we can seldom go wrong and when we have done this fully, there will seldom
be much more that we can do” (PE 313). On the rare occasions that the individual suffers a
“perplexity of conscience”, the difficulties can be traced either to differing conceptions of the
man's telos, or differing ideas of the best means of actualising the individual's socially endorsed
telos (PE 314).

Yet, it is still the case that people frequently expect too much. To reiterate, “Moral philosophy as
[Green] conceives it can take one only so far: it cannot resolve every moral issue and practical
dilemma” (Nicholson, 1990, p.79). As the eternal consciousness is variously manifested in
people, philosophy can provide no general rules for guidance except that one should examine
one's motives carefully in each particular instance. The ultimate goal must be the actualisation of
one's conception of the moral end of man (PE 316). The individual's rules of conduct are then in
a sense present within himself.
It is in this way that for Green, “[t]here is no such thing as a conflict of duties” (PE 324). Given
more than one possible course of action, the problem is in deciding which course of action it is
truly one's duty to follow, and this problem is often one of choosing between inconsistent
“injunctions given by external authorities” (PE 324). In a sense, the philosopher's task is to allow
the individual to decide which “authority” is false and therefore external, and which is good and
therefore internal, in that it best serves the unfolding of the eternal consciousness (PE 325). The
philosopher performs this function by making the individual aware of the ends served by the
norms, customs, institutions and laws of his society (PE 326), and by helping him recognise that,
“[r]ules are made for man, not man for rules” (PE 316). Nevertheless, the philosopher must not
merely attempt to knock down existing institutions and replace them with “an improvised [purely
personal] conscience” which sets up the individual as the only practical source of law (PE 326).
We should not forget that the individual must have a society if he is to have a conscience at all
(PE 327). “No individual can make a conscience for himself. He always needs a society to make
it for him” (PE 321). Thus, in many ways, the philosopher's task is to promote understanding and
rational harmony in society by allowing individuals to come to their own recognition of the
rationality which is inherent in themselves and their society (PE 327/8). They should encourage
personal liberty, rather than personal license.

6. The Principles of State Action

Yet there remains a fundamental tension between individual freedom and the necessity for
political structures which must be faced by any philosophical doctrine. It is to Green's statement
of this problem and his proposed solution to it that we should turn now.

Green holds that the state should foster and protect the social, political and economic
environments in which individuals will have the best chance of acting according to their
consciences. Notice that in principle Green is not concerned to allow all actions, no matter what
their origin. He himself was a temperance reform for example, and stated time and again that the
state could legitimately curtail the individual's freedom to accept the slavery of alcoholism
(LFC). Yet, the state must be careful when deciding which liberties to curtail and in which ways
to curtail them. Over-enthusiastic or clumsy state intervention could easily close down
opportunities for conscientious action thereby stiffling the moral development of the individual.
The state should intervene only where there was a clear, proven and strong tendency of a liberty
to enslave the individual. Even when such a hazard had been identified, Green tended to favour
action by the affected community itself rather than national state action itself — local councils
and municipal authorities tended to produce measures that were more imaginative and better
suited to the daily reality of a social problem. Hence he favoured the ‘local option’ where local
people decided on the issuing of liquor licences in their area, through their town councils (see
Nicholson, 1985).

Green stressed the need for specific solutions to be tailored to fit specific problems. This is not to
say that all problems would be dealt with most effectively at the local or municipal levels. The
national state was the only political institution powerful enough to wage war internationally for
example. Moreover it was the institution most likely to be able to resist vested interests such as
those found in the manufacturing sector, meaning that it was the national government that should
pass regulations on terms and conditions at work say, or on the sale and control of land. Yet,
Green stressed that there are no eternal solutions, no timeless division of responsibilities. The
distribution of responsibilities should be guided by the imperative to enable as many individuals
as possible to exercise their conscientious wills in particular contingent circumstances, as only in
this way was it possible to foster individual self-realisation in the long-run. Hence deciding on
the distribution of responsibilities was more a matter for practical politics than for ethical or
political philosophy. Experience may show that the local and municipal levels are unable to
control the harmful influences of, say, the brewery industry. When it did show this, the national
state should take responsibility for this area of public policy.

Green held that the ultimate power to decide on the allocation of such tasks should rest with the
national state (in Britain, embodied in Parliament). The national state itself is legitimate for
Green to the extent that it upholds a system of rights and obligations that is most likely to foster
individual self-realisation. Yet, the most appropriate structure of this system is determined
neither by purely political calculation nor by philosophical speculation. As we shall see, it is
more accurate to say that it arose from the underlying conceptual and normative structure of
one's particular society.

7. Theory of Rights

If the individual is to follow his conscience, then he must be free from external interference. He
needs “fences” to protect his freedom of thought, action, and so on. In Western societies these
fences are rights, and one of the most important parts of Green's political philosophy is his theory
of rights. The sense of “rights” with which Green is fundamentally concerned in his Lectures on
the Principles of Political Obligation can be understood as Kant understood “ein Recht”; that is,
“[to have] a title … to coerce others through [one's] mere will to do or omit something that is
otherwise indifferent to freedom” (Kant, quoted in Mulholland, 1990, 5). More specifically,
Green argues that,

A right is a power of which the exercise by the individual or by some body of men is recognised
by a society either as itself directly essential to a common good or as conferred by an authority of
which the maintenance is recognised as so essential (LPPO 103).

Green is primarily concerned with what I shall call for the moment “moral rights”: that is, those
rights which are justified and recognised on ethical and not purely legal grounds. Moral rights
exist prior to the law. We shall see that even though moral rights are conceptually distinct
from legal rights, they should still find expression in law in order to make them effective
regulators of human action. Therefore, the role of the state is to uphold the rights which originate
in society as part of the unfolding of the eternal consciousness.

Green attacks the view that there are moral rights which people possess merely as individuals:
that is, moral rights which they possess without reference to their existence as members of a
society founded on a common purpose. In this sense, moral rights are necessarily social. The idea
that men could possess (“natural”) rights in a “state of nature” is ridiculous for Green (LPPO 9).
Particular rights are only “natural” in the sense that they are “necessary to the end which it is the
vocation of human society to realise” (LPPO 9). Hence, “A law is not good because it enforces
‘natural rights’, but because it contributes to the realisation of a certain end. We only discover
what rights are natural by considering what powers must be secured to a man in order to the
attainment of this end” (LPPO 20). Yet, rights only truly exist when they are the basis of “the
control of the conduct of men according to certain regular principles by a society recognising
common interests” (LPPO 103). Before the slave comes to see his life as part of a goal-
determined, rationally-ordered co-operative scheme, he has no true rights then. His rights are “in
suspense” (LPPO 103). Having said this, there does remain a sense in which certain rights have
always existed where there was any society, even though it may take many generations for these
rights to be recognised by and granted to anyone — “just as one may hold reason to be eternal,
and yet hold that it takes time for this or that being to become rational” (LPPO 103). What does
this mean?

A shared conception of a collective end — a common good — is the basis of society's existence,
and is also the basis of the individual's existence as a moral agent (LPPO 114). Hence, achieving
the moral end of man is dependant on the recognition of one's self as a purposeful agent who can
only progress within a society of other purposeful moral agents. This echoes the Kantian idea
that a fundamental element of rights is adherence to the categorical imperative. A violation of my
rights is “an infringement upon my freedom that can co-exist with the freedom of everyone in
accordance with a universal law” (Kant, 1991, p.5). Rights represent means of bringing about the
correct regulation of human interaction by giving formal expression to this fundamental human
equality. Thus, rights only extend as far as individuals recognise the rights of others. The
possession of a right hence marks an individual out as a person who is worthy of respect
(because he is a developing entity), and who also respects the “personhood” of his fellows
(LPPO 140). Green extends this argument to claim that, by virtue of his possession of rights
within a particular society, the individual has the right to non-interference from all members of
all societies (to the extent that he recognises their rights to non-interference). He extends it in this
manner because he holds that all individuals should respect the moral agency of anyone who is
recognised as a moral agent by anyone else. Such actual recognition implies and requires the
possibility of recognition by everyone. As Green writes, “[m]embership of any community is so
far in principle membership of all communities as to constitute a right to be treated as a freeman
by all other men, to be exempt from subjection to force except for prevention of force” (LPPO
140).

From this, Green adopts the Hegelian line that a slave has a right to his freedom in that he is
engaged in social relations founded on the movement to attain a common good. The slave's
partial recognition of equality within society comes from the influence of the “signs and effects
of this system [of social interrelations] all about him” (LPPO 114) which acquaint him with
certain abstract concepts, and which place him in certain relationships to other members of that
society. He goes some way to conceiving of the abstract possibility of an agent's life based on the
pursuit of a common good in society. He then comes to recognise himself and his fellow slaves
(and possibly his masters) as potentially or actually sharing a common purpose in their lives.
This necessarily creates the slave's right to equal freedom with all other persons. The slave's
rights become real when they are embodied in social institutions; that is, when they are
actualised in formalised social relations (LPPO 114). The slave-owner's right to the free use of
his possession — that is, the slave — is, thus, nullified as it rests on the non-recognition of the
slave's right to freedom (LPPO 146).
Moral rights should be used to criticize legal rights. For a start, “[n]o one would seriously
maintain that the system of rights and obligations, as it is enforced by law, … is all that it ought
to be” (LPPO 9). For this reason “actual states at best fulfil but partially their ideal function”
(LPPO 143). In fact Green argues that the individual has a duty to resist the law when his
conscience tells him that the law fails to foster the development of his fellow citizens. Green
enters one qualification to this. The state may, on balance, serve the eternal consciousness more
than it hinders it. It should only be resisted where the effect on the state would not be so severe
as to seriously undermine the social development which it generally supports (LPPO 104).

Green argues that where there are severe conflicts between groups which were subject to the
same political sovereign — such as in the former Yugoslavia — no true rights exist. That is, in
times of total social disharmony there are no true rights for there is no true control of society. In
these cases, one should decide which of the possible courses of action is better or worse by
referring to attaining the ideal of developing the eternal consciousness (LPPO 104).

One may question Green's consistency here. He appears to be arguing, firstly, that societies are
defined by the possession of a common end; and, secondly, that conflicts between social groups
can lead to the break-up of society. However, he has defined these social groups as collections of
individuals united by a common purpose — at worst, their particular — but, in Green's eyes,
temporary — self-advancement. Thus, they are, from Green's perspective, still societies. In a
sense, what has happened is that the original society has been destroyed and the former members
have formed into other smaller societies which are then in conflict. As they are still in societies,
their members possess rights which no one should violate. All that Green can consistently argue
is that the political unit — such as the nation-state — has broken down without being replaced
by another political unit (but by social groupings). However, rights are dependant not on the
existence of any political unit, but on the existence of social units.

So far, Green has only been concerned with rights as they existed in Europe in the late nineteenth
century (LPPO 5). However, the gradual unfolding of the eternal consciousness is evidenced in
the historical movement from family-, to tribe-, and then to state-centred ethics. Green does not
make it clear how significant this movement (in its “rights-aspect”) actually is (PE 206-217).
That is what I want to do now.

Families and tribes begin to interact with one another giving rise to more complex forms of
social interconnections (PE 207). Social instability increases as social realities increasingly come
into conflict with established moral values. Eventually, rights arise which are not based on the
primacy of these earlier, less developed social institutions, but on the idea of persons as discrete
and potentially rational individuals. Green believes that in this way the world tends to become
more rational and more harmonious. This rational harmony must be based on the correct
treatment of all humans as equals, which in turn is founded on the correct understanding of the
individual as a self-determining agent (PE 208).

There are several elements to such an understanding. First, each moral agent should be
recognised as an end in himself (PE 199). Kant articulates this fundamental idea as follows, “Act
in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of
any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end” (Kant, 1964, p.96
Prussian Academy), Kant's italics). In willing his own good then, the individual should recognise
himself as a human being and therefore an end-in-himself. Yet on grounds of consistency he
should also recognise all other humans as ends-in-themselves (PE 195). In this way it should be
recognised that all of humanity is owed duties by virtue of its inherent rationality, irrespective of
its members' particular gender, “race, religion or status” (PE 207). The understanding of who is
one's “neighbour” gradually comes to be widened, and gradually “the exclusive dependence of
moral claims on relations of family, status or citizenship disappears” (PE 208). Also, the
widening of the practical conception of a “neighbour” gives an extra spur to the explicit
development of the eternal consciousness in that it leads to the extension to everyone of the same
right to freedom. Thus, “[f]aculties which social repression and separation prevent from
development, take new life from the enlarged co-operation which recognition of equal claims in
all men brings with it” (PE 208). Thus, the process is self-promoting. The inherent logic of
treating people as equals is the increasing recognition of the moral centrality of the species as a
whole, rather than one of its sub-groups.

This last move gives some content to the end which should be promoted, even if only by
excluding some options for moral action. Thus, the interests which must be fulfilled are not, for
example, the maximisation of pleasure, because this would mean that some end other than the
inherent nature of man is being served (PE 194). Also, real interests and self-satisfaction cannot
be found in “animal impulses” as such, because these impulses are not founded of necessity on
respect for the person as an end in itself (PE 200). It is only by helping individuals to actualise
their telos that one truly shows them respect, and thus, truly treats them as ends-in-themselves.
Consequently, as individuals come to be recognised as ends-in-themselves, larger groups such as
the family and tribes tend to be seen as less worthy of respect in themselves. Ultimately, “it is
human society as a whole that we must look upon as the organism in which the capacities of the
human soul are unfolded” (PE 273).

Now, this process of history is evidenced in the widening of the moral community which must
necessarily accompany the growing recognition that it is ultimately the spark of humanity which
requires respect — not national or class allegiance. As Kant puts it, the “perfect political
constitution” is perfect precisely because its existence is essential to the realisation of “all [of
the] natural capacities of mankind” (Kant, 1991a, p.50). For this reason, the individual comes to
recognise more people as his moral equals by virtue of their sharing his (implicit and ultimate)
conception of the common good. Green does not make totally clear how radical this line of
argument actually is; indeed, he may not have recognised it himself.

The form of the modern state and its laws is dependant on the stage of development reached by
the society from which it springs. The state makes explicit in legal terms then, the moral views
and relations which are already present within society. (The laws may lag behind the social
mores, but they are still ultimately brought closer to the full embodiment of the eternal
consciousness by these values.) As history progresses, rights and all other expressions of the
current stage of social development tend to become universalised — that is, extended to more
and more groups. Hence, slavery is abolished and women come to gain the same rights as men.
This also extends to members of other nation-states. A nation is defined by its members'
possession of the perception of a common telos, and the basis of attaining rights becomes the
perceived potential for attaining this common telos. Hence, rights tend to be universalised
(importantly, across nations) as the telos of each nation converges. Nations merge and
nationhood declines as a motivating force of human action.

The thrust of Green's argument is that it is historically inevitable that the nation-state will
disappear as a form of political organisation, as the eternal consciousness becomes more explicit
in the world. The ultimate reference is “universal Christian citizenship” (PE 206). This is a
human's truly rational community, whose common goal is to live in full accord with the eternal
consciousness. It will be a community of free individuals, each possessing the same rights, the
same duties, and the same allegiances.

This section has examined Green's claim that rights are necessarily social. It has been shown that
moral rights only exist where they are recognised as contributing to the common good; that is,
where they are seen to push society to attain its telos. Legal rights may or may not embody moral
rights, but the ideal is the empowering of all and only moral rights through law. An essential part
of rights is their rational coherence — that is, they must conform to Kant's categorical
imperative. The second part of this section examined the effect of this argument when combined
with the growing explicitness of the eternal consciousness in the world. The Kantian respect for
persons, thus, spreads from families to tribes, and, finally, to individuals as members of the
human species. Implicit in this, it has been argued, is the supercession of the nation-state.