GREEN, Thomas Hill (Green Thomas Hill)

(1836-1882)
Born April 7, 1836 in Berkin (Yorkshire). The son of an Anglican priest. He was educated at Rugby and at Balliol College, Oxford University, which later was a researcher and a mentor (from 1860 to 1878). In 1878 he was elected professor of moral philosophy, and held that post until his premature death in Oxford, March 26, 1882. Green was the most influential teacher in Oxford, and perhaps in all of England, in the last quarter of the 19.
Thanks to Green empiricism of Hume and Mill and Spencer naturalism gave way to interest in the absolute idealism, based on the ideas of Kant and Hegel. According to Hume, as consciousness and nature, as they are knowable by human reason, are composed of a series of isolated sensations and images. For Spencer, consciousness is a byproduct of the evolution of body. Green criticized one or the other position, . arguing in the Kantian manner, . that nature (in the form, . as we know it) involves a clear ordered spatial, . temporal and logical relations and the source of such relations can only be the human mind,
. Thus, the mind, not as a byproduct of nature, in favor of its source and an organizer, and understanding of the world occurs when a person should respond to its questions in a reasonable start, or 'spiritual principle in nature'. Nature is a revelation of God's understanding is always partial, but growing.

This philosophy lies at the basis of ethics and political theory of Green's. The good life consists in the implementation of human potentialities, a return to the True Self, not focused on the needs of today, but the pursuit of the benefits that reason endorsed by virtue of their dignity and enduring value. The basis of political obligation is, according to Greene, the notion of 'general will'. Our commitment to the state based on the fact that the state serves as a means of implementing the common good. Our rights in respect of other people based on the fact that only the recognition of these rights can help in achieving the objectives set and us, and others. Among the most important works of Green - posthumously published Prolegomena to Ethics (Prolegomena to Ethics, 1883) and Lectures on the principles of political obligation (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, 1901).