I have good drafts of four papers that I’ll post as and when I’ve polished them up:
1. Social organicism in the political philosophy of Bernard Bosanquet
Abstract: This paper is an attempt to retrieve one part of Bosanquet’s political philosophy, the positive part which I term his “Social Organicism”. The most effective way to introduce this organicism is to locate it at three points of divergence between Bosanquet and the British tradition of political philosophy. These divergencies will yield three components to Bosanquet’s Social Organicism. The aim of this paper is to set out these components and use them to construct Bosanquet’s solution to the problem of political obligation.
The positive task of Bosanquet’s political philosophy is then to vindicate his view of the conditions of individual well-being, which relies on his conception of the individual, which in turn underlies his view of consent and to do this in a way as to arrive at a state with attributes (b1), (b2) and (c1).
This article focus mainly on this positive aspect of Bosanquet’s political philosophy. This aspect has not been examined in recent times – and older commentators who investigated it tended to subsume it under a general discussion of Bosanquest’s idealist metaphysics. I hold the view that Bosanquet is a considerable political philosopher, who employs an interesting and neglected philosophical psychology; and that his contribution here can be translated into more accessible language from the rather opaque metaphysical language and terminology he himself employs. I will however, refer to his metaphysical theory as so far as necessary to make Bosanquets’ position intelligible. An extended discussion of Bosanquet’s metaphysics would be beyond the ambit of this article, and would take us beyond the confines of political philosophy.
I shall attempt a critical examination and not merely an exposition of Bosanquet’s social organicism. But the point must be made that since there is no (or not much)* recent exposition of Bosanquet’s political philsophy, and since Bosanquet himself often fails to use the clearest language, a real effort is needed to recover the system of ideas embodied in his social organicism. Criticism can only come into play when the relevant concepts and structure of argument have been brought to light.
The central text to be examined is Bosanquet’s Philosophical Theory of the State. Reference will be made to other texts as appropriate.
The structure of this article is as follows:
Section 2: Individual and Society
Section 3: Society and State
Section 4: State and Individual
Section 5: Conclusions
If we follow this structure we shall be able to assemble the three main components of Bosanquet’s social organicism: his view of the the type of consent relevant to the state’s moral authority, his conception of the individual relevant to politics; and his view of the conditions of individual well-being. From this we can construct his solution to the problem of political obligation.
*I went up to Cambridge to see Dorothy Emmet ostensibly to talk about Bosanquet. Dorothy then, was 86, and sharp as a whistle, with a book on Whitehead about to (or maybe had just) come out. Well as the lunch progressed and the wine flowed, we became engrossed in a conversation about the history of 20th Century philosophy. Bosanquet took on a minor supporting role. I particularly recall her telling me about Whitehead’s encouragement (there were very few professional women philosophers then); her sharing a cab with Wittgenstein who was in a sullen mood (now there’s a surprise); and a whole raft of anecdotes. What was supposed to be a lunch became a five hour session followed by tea, followed by dinner (all the food had been prepared in advance – it’s as if she knew this wasn’t going to be only lunch). All this took place at the recently deceased Richard Braithwaite’s house, which I vividly recall. Dorothy was the sweetest, most unassuming and most gracious hostess I could have encountered. And that’s aside from being a super sharp and humane intellect. I wrote to her in 2000 to invite her down to London for the inaugural conference of the Michael Oakeshott Association. I received a letter back, dictated by her to an assistant, saying how kind the invitation was and that she really wasn’t up to it. It turns out that she was in terminal decline (couldn’t hold a pen), and was in an old-age home. Yet she still deemed it important to respond to me. For more about Dorothy see the Guardian obituary and the Lucy Cavendish College archive.
A postscript to Emmett and Wittgenstein which I found here:
While in Newcastle, Wittgenstein did little or no philosophical work. He had begun to doubt whether he was any longer capable of it, and he found laboratory work very demanding. It was, however, during this period that he appeared unexpectedly at a philosophy lecture given by the young Dorothy Emmett at Newcastle.
She had been invited by Freda Herbert, a chemical pathologist, to give a paper to the philosophy group that met in her flat. Dorothy Emmett stayed in the Grand Hotel (currently Bar Oz) in the Haymarket, and was enjoying the unusual wartime luxury of a bath with unlimited hot water, when the phone rang. It was Freda Herbert asking if it was all right for a stranger to come to the meeting. Dorothy Emmett felt that this was an unnecessary interruption to her bath and said so in no uncertain terms. It was only when she arrived to give her paper that she was told that the stranger was Wittgenstein. He had not yet arrived and she had hopes of getting through the paper before he appeared. However, he walked in when she had scarcely begun. She recognised him and was somewhat unnerved. Somehow she managed to finish her talk, whereupon Wittgenstein said “Now lets do some philosophy”, and proceeded to take over the meeting, completely ignoring the subject of her paper!
2. Has liberty a place in Hobbes’ philosophy?
Abstract: I argue that while civil peace, not freedom, is Hobbes’ major political value, his political philsophy, secures a number of dimensions of freedom to the citizen. I further suggest, as an endpoint, that if we read Hobbes prelusively – with a forward eye to the potentialities of his position – we can see his political philosophy as an early text for liberalism.
(Trivia: I found it astonishing that the then vicar of Malmesbury Abbey (1998) had no idea who one of Malmesbury’s most famous sons was. I also found that Trinity College Oxford’s library had their first edition of Leviathan in a glass display cabinet open at some random page and not at Hobbes’ most famous paragraph from Chapter XIII of Leviathan:
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
I’m pleased to say that the then librarian who was kind enough to show me Trinity’s library and stash of silverware immediately rectified this dreadful oversight. I don’t know if this book is still housed there: the librarian expressed his concern about the pollution in Oxford detriorating old master works.
3. Is JS Mill’s theory of liberty inconsistent with his utilitarian premisses?
4. What meaning, if any, can be ascribed to the terms “Hellenism” and “Hellenization”?
manwithoutqualities 