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L. T. Hobhouse as a Theoretical Sociologist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

George Mariz
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Extract

A glance at recent publications on the history of theoretical sociology in Europe would reveal that no one has yet attempted to write a full scale history of the early phases of that movement in Britain. There is certainly nothing that compares with Raymond Aron's Main Currents in Sociological Thought for British sociology. Aron's study, in fact, contains only scattered references to British thinkers and attaches little significance to them. Nor does this absence of Britishers result from some slight on Aron's part. While British sociology during the formative years of the discipline, roughly 1850-1930, did make some notable advances in its empirical branches, it produced no individual worthy to stand with theorists like Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto or Emil Durkheim.

The reasons for this shortcoming on the British part are numerous and diverse. First, British thinking generally was concerned with more practical problems and not with theoretical matters and thus, automatically favored less abstract forms of social science. Additionally, those few British thinkers interested in problems of theory generally failed to recognize the significance of the advances of Continental mental philosophers and psychologists whose work has done so much to enrich twentieth century social theory. Yet there is a deeper and more subtle set of reasons interconnected with those aforementioned for the relative stasis of British social thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , Winter 1974 , pp. 307 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1974

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References

1 This paper is not concerned with the most characteristic form of British sociology—empirical sociology. The term “sociology” throughout this essay is used in its generally accepted European sense to denote a scientific study of society which is both synethctic and historical. For the development of empirical sociology in Britain see Krausz, Ernest, Sociology in Britain, a Survey of Current Research (New York, 1969)Google Scholar. For the general history of British sociology see Abrams, Philip, The Origins of British Sociology, 1834-1914 (Chicago, 1968).Google Scholar

2 Aron, Raymond, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, 2 vols. (New York, 1965–1967)Google Scholar. On the “failure” of British sociology see Abrams, , The Origins of British Sociology, pp. 149–153.Google Scholar

3 Several histories deal with the general transformation of European thought in this era as well as with the rise of sociology. The standard work is by Hughes, H. Stuart, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890-1930 (New York, 1958)Google Scholar. For a dissenting view which argues that British thought went through an equally profound transition, sec Softer, Reba N., “The Revolution in English Social Thought, 1880-1914,” American Historical Review, LXXV (December, 1970):1938–1964.Google Scholar

4 This essay is not an attempt to account for or to explore all the influences that made Continental sociology the innovator. The question is one that offers a wide field for speculation, but it is certainly too large a task for an endeavor of this length.

5 Hynes, Samuel, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (Princeton, New Jersey, 1968), pp. 9–14.Google Scholar

6 The best biographical sketches of Hobhouse are SirBarker, Ernest, “Leonard Trelawney Hobhouse,” Proceedings of the British Academy XV (1929):536–554Google Scholar; and Hobson, J. A. and Ginsberg, Morris, L. T. Hobhouse: His Life and Work (London, 1931).Google Scholar

7 Hobson, and Ginsberg, , L. T. Hobhouse, p. 99Google Scholar. Nicholson, J. A., Some Aspects of the Philosophy of L. T. Hobhouse, University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. XIV, no. 4 (Urbana, 1926), p. 617.Google Scholar

8 Hobhouse, L. T., Theory of Knowledge: A Contribution to Some Problems of Logic and Metaphysics (London, 1896), pp. 386, 401Google Scholar. See also Hobhouse, L. T., “Principles of Induction,” Mind n.s., XVI (January, 1891):81–90Google Scholar. and Hobhouse, L. T., “Induction and Deduction,” Mind n.s., XVI (October, 1891):507–520CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A study which places materialism in mental theory in perspective and covers the major points of its development is Armstrong, D. M., A Materialist Theory of Mind (London, 1968)Google Scholar

9 Hobhouse, , The Theory of Knowledge, p. 510.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 581.

11 Hobhouse used this metaphor extensively in his later works, retaining it as a holistic concept throughout.

12 Hobhouse, , The Theory of Knowledge, pp. 597–607.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 623.

14 Ibid., pp. 618-619. Hobhouse wavered concerning the rigid application of this philosophical viewpoint to questions of theology and aesthetics.

15 Hobhouse, L. T., Social Evolution and Political Theory (New York, 1911)Google Scholar. For an excellent discussion of evolutionary social theory and especially the implications of biological evolution for social theory, see Burrow, J. W., Evolution and Society (Cambridge, England, 1966).Google Scholar

16 Hobhouse, , Social Evolution, pp. 39, 85–89, 101, 155.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 158, 163.

18 Hobhouse, L. T., The Rational Good (New York, 1921), p. iiiGoogle Scholar. See also Kraemer, William S., Hobhouse's Theory of the Rational Good and Its Critics (New York, 1946).Google Scholar

19 Hobhouse, , The Rational Good, p. 4.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., pp. 17, 22.

21 Ibid., pp. 40-41.

22 Ibid., pp. 76, 93-99, 156-7.

23 Hobhouse, L. T., The Elements of Social Justice (London, 1922). pp. 13–14, 39, 87Google Scholar. See also Hobhouse, L. T., Sociology and Philosophy: A Centenary Collection of Essays and Articles, Preface by Sidney Caine; Introduction by Morris Ginsberg (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966), pp. 85–88.Google Scholar

25 Hobhouse, , Elements of Social Justice, p. 169.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 171.