Leonard Hobhouse

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse
)

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse,

Edward Westermarck, the distinction of being the first professor of sociology to be appointed in the United Kingdom, at the University of London. He was also the founder and first editor of The Sociological Review. His sister was Emily Hobhouse
, the British welfare activist.

Life

Hobhouse was born in

Manchester Guardian) and as the secretary of a trade union.[2]: ix–x  In 1907, Hobhouse returned to academia, accepting the newly-created chair of sociology at the University of London, titled the Martin White Professor of Sociology, where he remained until his death in 1929.[2]

Hobhouse was also an

atheist from an early age, despite his father being an archdeacon.[3]: 17  He believed that rational tests could be applied to values and that they could be self-consistent and objective.[3]
: 181 

Hobhouse was never religious. He wrote in 1883 that he was "in politics... a firm radical. In religion... an (if possible yet firmer)

republican and democratic motions at debating societies while he was at school.[4]
: 54 

Economic policy

Hobhouse was important in underpinning the turn-of-the-century 'New Liberal' movement of the Liberal Party under leaders like H. H. Asquith and David Lloyd George. He distinguished between property held 'for use' and property held 'for power'. Governmental co-operation with trade unions could therefore be justified as helping to counter the structural disadvantage of employees in terms of power. He also theorised that property was acquired not only by individual effort but by societal organisation. Essentially, wealth had a social dimension and was a collective product. That means that those who had property owed some of their success to society and thus had some obligation to others. He believed that to provide theoretical justification for a level of redistribution provided by the new state pensions.

Hobhouse disliked

Marxist socialism and described his own position as liberal socialism and later as social liberalism. Hobhouse thus occupied a particularly-important place in the intellectual history of the Liberal Democrats
.

Civil liberty

His work also presents a positive vision of liberalism in which the purpose of liberty is to enable individuals to develop, not solely that freedom is good in itself. Hobhouse said that coercion should be avoided not for lack of regard for other people's well-being but because coercion is ineffective at improving their lot.

While rejecting the practical doctrines of classical liberalism like laissez-faire, Hobhouse praised the work of earlier classical liberals like Richard Cobden in dismantling an archaic order of society and older forms of coercion. Hobhouse believed that one of the defining characteristics of liberalism was its emancipatory character, something that he believed ran constant from classical liberalism to the social liberalism he advocated. He nevertheless emphasised the various forms of coercion already existing in society apart from government. Therefore, he proposed that to promote liberty, the state must ameliorate other forms of social coercion.

Hobhouse held out hope that Liberals and what would now be called the

social democrat tendency in the nascent Labour Party
could form a grand progressive coalition.

Foreign policy

Hobhouse was often disappointed that fellow collectivists in Britain at the time also tended to be imperialists. Hobhouse opposed the

Hegelians
and therefore Germanizers.

Works

See also

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33906. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^
    ISBN 0-521-43112-3
    .
  3. ^ a b Hobson, J. A.; Ginsberg, Morris (1931). L. T. Hobhouse: His Life and Work. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
  4. ^
    ISBN 0-521-22304-0
    .

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leonard_Hobhouse&oldid=1204914648"