The Moral Philosophy of T.H. Green

It’s been some 25 years since my chum Geoff Thomas’ book was published. It holds the unusual distinction of being one of the very few Phds to be recommended to the OUP committee to publish as a book and it stands the test of time. The recommendation came from none other than Tony Quinton.

Examining Thomas Hill Green’s moral philosophy, Thomas defends a radically new perception of Green as an independent thinker rather than a devoted partisan of Kant or Hegel. Green’s moral philosophy, argues Thomas, includes a widely misunderstood defense of free will, an innovative model of deliberation that rejects both Kantian and Humean conceptions of practical reason, a barely recognized theory of character, and an account of moral objectivity that involves no dependence on religion–all of which yield a coherent body of moral philosophy that raises important problems neglected in contemporary ethics.