Thomas Hill Green

Born Apr. 7. 1836. at Birkin. Yorkshire; died Mar. 26, 1882, at Oxford. English idealist philosopher. Representative of neo-Hegelianism. From 1878 professor at Oxford University.

Under the influence of German classical idealism, and especially of Hegel’s philosophy, Green opposed the positivism of J. Mill and H. Spencer, which at that time dominated English philosophical thought. He called for a rejection of the philosophical tradition that began with J. Locke and D. Hume and for a return to the philosophy of absolute idealism. Green believed that reality is a system of relations created by an eternal self-consciousness, by god, and that the individual consciousness is secondary to this eternal consciousness. In ethics. Green rejected utilitarianism, regarding morality as the self-determination of the individual will, which identified with the demands of existing society. He reduced the progress of society to the progress of the self-consciousness of individuals. Green’s works were published posthumously.