Leonard Hobhouse - Wikipedia Leonard Hobhouse From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (8 September 1864 – 21 June 1929) was a British liberal political theorist and sociologist, who has been considered one of the leading and earliest proponents of social liberalism. His works, culminating in his famous book Liberalism (1911), occupy a seminal position within the canon of New Liberalism. He worked both as an academic and a journalist, and played a key role in the establishment of sociology as an academic discipline; in 1907 he shared, with 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. Contents 1 Life 2 Economic policy 3 Civil liberty 4 Foreign policy 5 Works 6 See also 7 References 8 External links Life[edit] Hobhouse was born in St Ive, near Liskeard in Cornwall,[1] the son of Reginald Hobhouse, an Anglican clergyman, and Caroline Trelawny. He attended Marlborough College before reading Greats at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first-class degree in 1887. Upon his graduation, Hobhouse remained at Oxford as a prize fellow at Merton College before becoming a full fellow at Corpus Christi.[2] Taking a break from academia between 1897 and 1907, Hobhouse worked as a journalist (including a stint with the Manchester Guardian) and as the secretary of a trade union.[2] 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] He believed that rational tests could be applied to values and that they could be self-consistent and objective.[3] Hobhouse was never religious. He wrote in 1883 that he was "in politics... a firm radical. In religion... an (if possible yet firmer) agnostic".[4] In terms of his political and philosophical views, Hobhouse was Gladstonian; a devoted follower of the philosopher John Stuart Mill; and an admirer of John Morley, Bradlaugh; and Sir Charles Dilke, 2nd Baronet. Theose influences him to various feminist, democratic and secularist political stances. He often proposed republican and democratic motions at debating societies while he was at school.[4] Economic policy[edit] 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[edit] 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[edit] Hobhouse was often disappointed that fellow collectivists in Britain at the time also tended to be imperialists. Hobhouse opposed the Boer War, and his sister, Emily Hobhouse, did much to draw attention to the abject conditions in the concentration camps established by the British Army in South Africa. Initially opposing the First World War, he later came to support the war effort.[5] He was an internationalist and disliked the pursuit of British national interests as practised by the governments of the day. During the war, Hobhouse criticised the British Idealists such as Bernard Bosanquet in his book The Philosophical Theory of the State (1918) for being Hegelians and therefore Germanizers. Works[edit] The Labour Movement (1893) reprinted 1912 Theory of Knowledge: a contribution to some problems of logic and metaphysics (1896) Mind in Evolution (1901) Democracy and Reaction (1905) Morals in Evolution: a Study in Comparative Ethics in two volumes (1906) Liberalism (1911) Social Evolution and Political Theory (1911) Development and Purpose (1913) The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples (1915) Questions Of War And Peace (1916) The Metaphysical Theory of the State: a criticism (1918) The Rational Good: a study in the logic of practice (1921) The Elements of Social Justice (1922) Social Development: its Nature and Conditions (1924) Sociology and Philosophy: a Centenary Collection of Essays and Articles (1966) See also[edit] Books Reason and Revolution Topics Contributions to liberal theory Liberalism A. DE SANCTIS, Leonard T. Hobhouse: libero scambio e giustizia sociale, CET, Firenze, 2014 References[edit] ^ Freeden, Michael 'Hobhouse, Leonard Trelawny (1864–1929)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 accessed 15 Oct 2007 ^ a b c Meadowcroft, James (ed.) Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. pp. ix–x. ^ a b J A Hobson and Morris Ginsberg, L. T. Hobhouse: His life and work, George Allen & Unwin, 1931, p.17. ^ a b Collini, Stefan. Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England 1880-1914 (1983). p. 54 ^ "Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse Biography". www.bookrags.com. External links[edit] Quotations related to Leonard Hobhouse at Wikiquote Works written by or about Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse at Wikisource Works by Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Leonard Hobhouse at Internet Archive Short biography by David Howarth MP Profile at the Liberal International That Englishwoman (1989) on IMDb – A film directed by Dirk DeVilliers Authority control BIBSYS: 90168529 BNE: XX972489 BNF: cb12291051s (data) CiNii: DA02293985 GND: 118774581 ISNI: 0000 0001 2139 4908 LCCN: n80013128 LNB: 000212247 NDL: 00443460 NKC: skuk0000579 NLA: 35198789 NLG: 148419 NLK: KAC200605348 NTA: 069725411 PLWABN: 9810677029705606 SNAC: w6ks9fkf SUDOC: 02738263X Trove: 861479 VcBA: 495/171078 VIAF: 73916716 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n80013128 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leonard_Hobhouse&oldid=994742433" Categories: 1864 births 1929 deaths People from St Ive People educated at Marlborough College Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford Academics of the University of London English sociologists English political philosophers English agnostics English republicans British secularists British social liberals Hobhouse family Hidden categories: EngvarB from August 2014 Use dmy dates from August 2014 Articles with Project Gutenberg links Articles with Internet Archive links Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLG identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers Wikipedia articles with VcBA identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikiquote Wikisource Languages العربية Bân-lâm-gú Català Cymraeg Dansk Deutsch Español Français 한국어 Italiano עברית مصرى Nederlands 日本語 Norsk bokmål Polski Português Српски / srpski Suomi Svenska 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 17 December 2020, at 09:02 (UTC). 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