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The New Liberals and Chinese Civilization: Idealist Philosophy, Evolutionary Sociology, and the Quest for a Humanitarian Ethics in Edwardian Britain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 June 2023
Abstract
It is well known that the leading New Liberals L. T. Hobhouse and J. A. Hobson were critics of the British Empire, and their sympathy with China has been understood as an expression of their anti-imperialism. However, this article argues that this reading is at best one-sided. By examining Hobhouse's and Hobson's ethical and sociological thought, it demonstrates that their Sinophile position drew on a broader concern about the turn-of-the-century moral crisis. Informed by Idealist philosophy, positivism, and evolutionary biology, their quest for a post-Christian ethics led to an appreciation of the harmonic order of Chinese society and its secularism. The leading New Liberals’ earnest study of China on the one hand represented a departure from the Eurocentric position of British Liberals who had seen “stationary” China as a negative object lesson, and on the other anticipated a generation of Liberal/progressive thinkers who were attracted to Chinese culture.
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References
1 Hobhouse, L. T., Liberalism (London, 1911), 237Google Scholar.
2 Hobson, J. A., Imperialism: A Study (1902) (London, 1905), 326–7Google Scholar.
3 In today's linguistic context, it is widely assumed that “civilizations” can be measured by an objective and universal standard of progress, whereas “cultures” are relativist and incommensurable. This article does not adopt this distinction and uses the two words interchangeably, though “civilization” refers more to material/socioeconomic institutions, and “culture” more to mental/moral customs and practices. In this I follow the way in which Hobson and Hobhouse used these terms. Though they did not assume a linear progress of human society, they did consider civilizations/cultures as comparable and of lower/higher types or stages. See e.g. Hobson, Imperialism, 218–22; Hobhouse, L. T., Morals in Evolution: A Study in Comparative Ethics, 2 vols. (London, 1906), 1: 28–41Google Scholar. For a more detailed discussion of their views of human progress, see the third section below.
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5 Freeden, The New Liberalism, 4–5. This emphasis on the New Liberals’ ideological achievement was partly a reaction to the political quandary faced by the British left from the mid-1970s: see Jackson, Ben, “Socialism and the New Liberalism,” in Jackson, Ben and Stears, Marc, eds., Liberalism as Ideology: Essays in Honour of Michael Freeden (Oxford, 2012), 34–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is noteworthy that, compared to Freeden, Clarke and Collini are more cautious about regarding the New Liberalism as an abstract political ideology that can exist outside its historical context.
6 Collini's Liberalism and Sociology appears to be an exception among the literature on New Liberalism. However, as its subtitle, “L. T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England, 1880–1914,” suggests, the book takes Hobhouse's sociological theories to be “echoes of the rhetoric of the New Liberalism.” Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 234, 252–3.
7 Hobson, J. A. and Ginsberg, Morris, L. T. Hobhouse: His Life and Work (London, 1931), 11, 107–8Google Scholar. See also Ernest Barker, “Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, 1864–1929,” Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 15 (London, [1931]), 17–21.
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11 However, the dichotomy between liberal imperialists and liberal internationalists was not definitive. As Morefield and Bell point out, while the liberal internationalists opposed imperial expansion in Asia and Africa, their approving attitude towards an “imperial federation” of the settler colonies or a “paternalistic global order” revealed the imperialist element in their political thought. Morefield, Covenants without Swords, 3–4, 26; Bell, “Democracy and Empire,” passim.
12 Gregory Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire, 1850–1920 (Cambridge, 2010), Ch. 3.
13 Sandra M. Den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation: A Study in Late Victorian Thought (Oxford, 1996), 83–4.
14 J. A. Hobson, Confessions of an Economic Heretic (London, 1938), Ch. 1; Hobson and Ginsberg, Hobhouse, Ch. 1.
15 Hobson, Confessions, 74; Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 52 n. 6.
16 For Green's influence on Hobson and Hobhouse see e.g. Hobson, Confessions, 26; L. T. Hobhouse, “The Philosophy of Development,” in J. H. Muirhead, ed., British Contemporary Philosophy (London, 1924), 149–88, at 150.
17 Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats, 14–16.
18 R. L. Nettleship, Memoir of Thomas Hill Green (1888) (London, 1906), 195.
19 Ibid., 210, 221, 243–4; T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics (London, 1883), 339–40. The starting point of Green's ethics was to prove that man “is not merely a child of nature” and thus ethics was not “a part of natural science.” Green, Prolegomena, 3–11, quotations at 11, 3.
20 Nettleship, Memoir of Green, 195–6.
21 Ibid., 96, emphasis added.
22 Ibid., 246–7.
23 T. H. Green, “Fragment of an Address on the Text ‘The Word Is Nigh Thee’” (n.d.), in Works of Thomas Hill Green, ed. R. L. Nettleship, 3 vols. (London, 1885–8), 3: 221–9, at 221.
24 Melvin Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and His Age (London, 1964), 184.
25 T. H. Green, “Essay on Christian Dogma,” in Works of Thomas Hill Green, 3: 161–85, at 181–5.
26 Nettleship, Memoir of Green, 215–6.
27 Green, Prolegomena, 262.
28 T. H. Green, “Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract” (1881), in Works of Thomas Hill Green, 3: 365–86, at 371–2.
29 Nettleship, Memoir of Green, 214–15.
30 T. H. Green, “Introductions to Hume's ‘Treatise of Human Nature’” (1874), in Works of Thomas Hill Green, 1: 1–371, at 371.
31 Green, “Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract,” 371, quoted in Hobson, Confessions, 52–3.
32 L. T. Hobhouse, “The Roots of Modern Sociology” (1907), in Sociology and Philosophy (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 3–19, at 13.
33 J. A. Hobson, Work and Wealth: A Human Valuation (London, 1914), 14, emphasis added.
34 Hobhouse, “Philosophy of Development,” 150.
35 Ibid.
36 Hobson and Ginsberg, Hobhouse, 100–1, 105.
37 For Oxford Idealists’ rejection of a positive science of society see Den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation, Ch. 2.
38 G. D. H. Cole, “Obituary of J.A. Hobson,” Economic Journal 50 (1940), 351. Hobson's heretical view of economics, which emphasized the unintended repercussions of thrift and saving, would exclude him permanently from academic economics.
39 L. T. Hobhouse, The Theory of Knowledge: A Contribution to Some Problems of Logic and Metaphysics (London, 1896). For the work's importance in Hobhouse's turn to sociology see Morris Ginsberg, “Introduction,” in L. T. Hobhouse, Sociology and Philosophy: A Centenary Collection of Essays and Articles, ed. Sydney Caine (Cambridge, MA, 1967), xi.
40 T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays (London, 1894), 81–3.
41 Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution (New York, 1894), 98–100, 130–31, 227.
42 Ibid., 296–7.
43 Den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation, 92–101.
44 Ibid., 174.
45 J. A. Hobson, John Ruskin, Social Reformer (Boston, MA, 1898), 117–19.
46 For the sake of brevity, I will use the term “social Darwinist ethics” to encapsulate Kidd's and Ritchie's positions in the following discussion.
47 The key documents regarding their line of argument after the South African War are L. T. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction (London, 1904); and J. A. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism (London, 1909). See also Bell, “Democracy and Empire,” 345–61.
48 Comte's positivism would have been another source of this cosmopolitan pacifism. Hobhouse was personally related to the eminent British positivist J. H. Bridges, and he acknowledged his critical reception of Comte's idea of “religion of humanity.” See L. T. Hobhouse, Development and Purpose: An Essay towards a Philosophy of Evolution (London, 1913), xix–xx; Hobhouse, “Philosophy of Development,” 150. It is worth mentioning that Claeys argues that positivist philosophy also played a key role in Hobson's turn to anti-imperialism, but, as Cain points out, the evidence given is largely indirect. See Claeys, Imperial Sceptics, 236–45; P. J. Cain, “The Economics and Ethics of British Imperialism,” Historical Journal 55/1 (2012), 249–61, at 260–61. For Comte's idea of “the West” and anti-imperialism, see Georgios Varouxakis, “The Godfather of ‘Occidentality’: Auguste Comte and the Idea of ‘the West’,” Modern Intellectual History 16/2 (2019), 411–41.
49 J. A. Hobson, “Mr. Kidd's ‘Social Evolution’,” American Journal of Sociology 1/3 (1895), 299–312, at 309–10.
50 Ibid., 302.
51 “Nemo,” “The Ethics of Empire,” Progressive Review 11 (Aug. 1897), 448–62, at 451. For Hobson's authorship of this piece and the possible meaning of “Nemo,” see Claeys, Imperial Sceptics, 237–8.
52 L. T. Hobhouse, The Labour Movement (London, 1893), 24–5.
53 Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 81.
54 See e.g. Hobhouse, Development and Purpose, xix–xxv; Hobson, Confessions, 55, 74–5.
55 Hobson, Jingoism, 135.
56 “The Genesis of Jingoism,” Progressive Review 5 (Feb. 1897), 397–406, at 405–6.
57 For their qualified sympathy with the working-class movements see e.g. Hobson, Confessions, 126; Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 99–100.
58 Immanuel Hsu, The Rise of Modern China (Oxford, 2000), Ch. 14; Cain, Hobson and Imperialism, 67–8.
59 Charles H. Pearson, National Life and Character: A Forecast (London, 1893).
60 Hobson, Imperialism, 182.
61 Ibid., 305–6.
62 Ibid., 240–41, 306–7.
63 L. T. Hobhouse, “The Growth of Imperialism,” Speaker 5 (25 Jan. 1902), 474–5.
64 It is worth noting that Lowes Dickinson's Letters from John Chinaman, published anonymously in 1904, adopted a similar strategy of using China to expose the barbarity of European imperialism. Although Dickinson was also connected to the LSE (as a lecturer) and knew both Hobson and Hobhouse, there is nevertheless no evidence suggesting that they worked together to develop this line of argument.
65 J. A. Hobson, The Social Problem (1901) (London, 1902), 256; Hobson, Imperialism, 189. On the British Sociological Society see Chris Renwick, British Sociology's Lost Biological Roots (Basingstoke, 2012), Chs. 2–3.
66 L. T. Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory (New York, 1911), 118; Hobhouse, “Editorial,” 11. See also Hobson, Social Problem, 262–3.
67 Hobson, Social Problem, 261.
68 Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 85.
69 Ibid., 121–2.
70 Ibid., 111, 115, 119.
71 Ibid., 111; Hobson, Imperialism, 245.
72 Therefore it is clearly a mistake for Collini to suggest that Hobhouse's sociology “concentrate[d] on establishing the line of social evolution from which the direction of Progress could be ascertained.” Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 208, emphasis in original.
73 Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 111; Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 1: v.
74 Hobhouse, “Editorial,” 11; Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 111.
75 Stephen K. Sanderson, Evolutionism and Its Critics (New York, 2016), Ch. 5.
76 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 2: 238 n.2.
77 Hobson, Confessions, 161–2.
78 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 1: 367–8.
79 Hobson, Imperialism, 362–4; L. T. Hobhouse, “Democracy and Empire,” Speaker 7 (18 Oct. 1902), 75–6.
80 L. T. Hobhouse, Mind in Evolution (London, 1901), 352. See also Hobson, Imperialism, 186.
81 Hobson, Imperialism, 164. For the “cultural relativist” reading of Hobson's thought, see Cain, Hobson and Imperialism, 66; Claeys, Imperial Sceptics, 237–9.
82 Hobson, Imperialism, 297.
83 Ibid., 301–3.
84 Ibid., 285–6, 321.
85 Ibid., 321–2.
86 Ibid., 321.
87 Hobson argued that urbanization and industrialization had damaged British people's character and vitality by severing their connection to the native land. Claeys, Imperial Sceptics, 248. As Cain observes, Hobson's favorable view of agriculture in modern life was greatly indebted to Green's and Ruskin's radicalism. Cain, Hobson and Imperialism, 40–45.
88 Hobson, Imperialism, 321, 285.
89 Ibid., 319–20.
90 Ibid., 320–21.
91 Ibid., 241.
92 Ibid., 326–7.
93 Hobson cited works by Colquhoun (explorer), Archibald John Little (merchant), Meredith Townsend (journalist), and Edith Simcox (writer and critic).
94 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 1: 41.
95 Ibid., 1: 65, 199–200.
96 Ibid., 1: 116 n., 304–5.
97 Ibid., 1: 352.
98 Ibid., 1: 265.
99 Ibid., 2: 75–85, esp. 75, 82, 85.
100 Ibid., 2: 161.
101 Ibid., 2: 123, 117.
102 Ibid., 2: 117–18.
103 Ibid., 2: 148, 150.
104 Ibid., 2: 152–4.
105 Ibid., 2: 157.
106 Ibid., 2: 158–9.
107 Ibid., 2: 161.
108 James Legge, Religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism Described and Compared with Christianity (London, 1880). Norman J. Girardot, The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley, 2002), 280–85. Both Legge and Hobhouse were members of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in the 1880s, but I have found no evidence of their acquaintance.
109 Pierre Laffite, A General View of Chinese Civilization and of the Relations of the West with China, trans. J. C. Hall (London, 1887), 122–7. The affinity between positivism and Confucianism was also attested by Frederic Harrison, the famous British positivist, with whom Hobhouse was acquainted. See Frederic Harrison, “The Parliament of Religions,” Positivist Review 14 (Feb. 1894), 17–20, at 19.
110 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 2: 177.
111 Ibid., 2: 163, 165.
112 Ibid., 2: 177.
113 Ibid., 2: 170–71.
114 Ibid., 2: 177.
115 Ibid., 2: 163, emphasis added.
116 Ibid., 2: 173.
117 Ibid., 2: 166.
118 Confucius, Analects, Bk. 12, Ch. 2, quoted in Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 2: 166.
119 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 2: 167.
120 Ibid. Hobhouse's interpretation of Liberalism and tolerance struck similar notes: “The Liberal does not meet opinions which he conceives to be false with toleration, as though they did not matter. He meets them with justice, and exacts for them a fair hearing as though they mattered just as much as his own.” Hobhouse, Liberalism, 116. By contrast, Hobhouse showed his disapproval of the Taoist principle of nonresistance. [L. T. Hobhouse], “Non-resistance,” Manchester Guardian, 1 Feb. 1915, 7.
121 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 2: 177.
122 Ibid., 2: 165.
123 Ibid., 2: 165, 167–9.
124 Ibid., 2: 177 (quotation), 183–4; see also 2: 171 n. In addition, Hobhouse implied that Confucians overstressed filial piety at the expense of a man's reasonable attachment to his wife and children. Ibid., 2: 173 n.
125 Ibid., 2: 176, 178.
126 They never visited China, and I have found no evidence suggesting that their studies of China were informed by Chinese acquaintances.
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