L. T. Hobhouse

The foremost new Liberal political and social theorist was Leonard Trelawney Hobhouse (1864–1929). ¹ The last of the nineteenth century system builders, he produced works on epistemology, comparative psychology, ethics, sociology, and political theory. These works constituted a coherent system of thought which Hobhouse called the “philosophy of development.” This philosophy rested on the idea that progress was the basic historical experience. The core pf Hobhouse’s work, therefore, was sociological as Spencer or Comte understood that term; it was a history of the evolution of society, rather than an analysis of contemporary social structure. Sociology provided the basis for Hobhouse’s modification of the Liberal tradition. Hobhouse’s political philosophy was in basic agreement with T. H. Green’s, but he was able to justify Green’s idea of positive freedom by what he considered an empirical sociological method rather than by idealist metaphysics. In uniting Green’s political theory with his own evolutionary sociology, Hobhouse attempted to retain the Liberal ideas of J. S. Mill which had been obscured by Green. As Guido de Ruggiero wrote, “The best formulation of the new English Liberalism of the twentieth century is in our opinion that of Hobhouse. Here we find the teaching of Mill and Green in a modernized form.” ²