On T.H. Green’s Spinozism, Religiosity, and Integrity

For the truth of any practical idea the only possible evidence is its realisation—T.H. Green (1870) "The Witness of God" (16)

The event can only be approached through a series of fluctuating interpretations of it, behind which its original nature cannot be clearly ascertained.—T.H. Green "The Witness of God" (26)

A proposition which asserts divine causation for any phenomenon is not exactly false but turns out on strict analysis to be unmeaning T.H. Green (1878) "Faith" (78)

One advantage of jet-lag at an ungodly hour in Princeton is that I bumped into Paul Lodge, the eminent Leibniz scholar, at the local Starbucks – apparently the only place to get espresso at dawn -- with ample time to catch up and talk. While I would hesitate calling this first meeting pure chance (we were attending the same conference), the following day I was eager to check out Starbucks again to continue the conversation. For, I had sensed that Paul had embarked on his own journey to integrate the life of a professional philosopher and scholar, with the difficult attempt to live a life of integrity and a personal (to use an old-fashioned even much abused word) philosophy. I don't think I betray much of the privacy of our conversation, if I use this as acknowledgment to Paul that it's because of our two conversations, I have started reading T.H. Green.

I have to admit that previously I only knew Green through his long, critical introduction to Hume's Treatise in the old (Green/Grose) edition of the Treatise. Despite being my daily companion for several years, I do not recall ever reading Green's introduction carefully. So, all I knew of Green (a Whyte's Professor of Moral philosophy eventually) was that he was a politically active reformist and British Idealist, who died relatively young. I ordered quite a bit of his writings cheaply online, and they have been arriving in the mail since my meeting with Paul. As it happens a copy of the posthumously published Two Lay Sermons arrived first. When it suits me I have a providential streak, and so I start my study of Green not with his professional philosophy, but with his Sermons.

It would not be entirely unfair to call Green's Christianity in these Sermons a form of Spinozism. (Green himself notes the affinity: "Spinoza, who had more real hold on the idea, and better understood the spiritual import of the Christian resurrection than the dogmatic theologians, have been reckoned, and driven to reckon themselves, aliens from the Christians" "The Witness of God" (19)) Green's Christianity is focused on social justice, or what Spinoza calls "charity." Crucially, in Green, this is not just an embrace of the doctrine of works (although certainly he encourages good deeds), but also about the inner life that makes such charity possible ("faith" in Green's terms). As he writes, "It is not in the outward cast of a life, but in the way of living it, that the spirit of a man is shown" ("The Witness of God" (38)). So, Green's "spirit" is the means by which integration of the inner life and the way life is lived is achieved. The glue that holds inner and outer together is faith. As he writes:

If we are honest with ourselves, we shall admit that something best called Faith—a prevailing conviction of our presence to God and His to us, of His gracious mind toward us, working in and with and through us, of our duty to our fellow-men as our brethren in Him—has been the source of whatever has been best in us and in our deeds. If we have enough experience and sympathy to interpret fairly the life of the world around us, we shall admit that faith of this sort is the salt of the earth. Through it, below the surface of circumstance and custom, humanity is being renewed day by day, and unless our heart is sealed by selfishness and sophistry, though we may not consciously share in the process, there will be men and times that make us reverentially feel its reality.--T.H. Green (1878) "Faith" 64-5

It is undeniable fact that many Noble exemplars of humanity (say, in a variety of abolition and civil rights movements) have been animated by something like such a doctrine of God's presence.* But Green is careful to divorce this faith, first, from Christian theology. In fact, Green presents his version of Christianity as the original Pauline expression of the experience of the resurrection of Christ before it got corrupted by theological reinterpretation. Given that (as Green notes) Paul was not an eye-witness to the resurrection, the notion of 'experience' is not meant to provide evidence for the veracity of historical event. Second, as the (second) epigraph above suggests, Green wishes to make his Christianity not be hostage to (in Charlotte Toynbee's felicitous phrase) "the laws of historical evidence," (iv). In fact, what matters to Green is not the veracity of some miracle, but the (Pauline) interpretation given to the event of the resurrection. This interpretation is ultimately a matter of self-justifying faith. ("In its true nature, Faith can be justified by nothing but itself." "Faith" 74) I think, but perhaps need to read more, that according to Green the manifestation of faith coincides with the (Kantian) moral law, but it is animated by the conviction of God's presence. So, while Green clearly has accepted Hume's arguments that only leave room for fideism in a Christian of integrity, it is not unfair to call this position 'Spinozist,' because Green is careful to divorce the conviction of God's presence from theological argument and scientific refutation. To be sure, in so far as Green relies on an anthropomorphic God in his Sermons, he is promoting a popular, rather than elite, Spinozism (of the sort articulated in the Theological Political Treatise).

One might think that Green's response to science is merely defensive. But that is not quite right either. He offers two kinds of arguments to restrict the authority of science. First, "Nature remains to us an endless series in which the knowing of anything implies of itself something further to be known," ("Faith" 84). That is to say, science is an activity that has no completion. Green does not make clear in his Sermon why that would be problematic, but we can supply the answer: it thereby violates the demand of the principle of sufficient reason (because it generates a regress) or it entails an embrace of a thoroughgoing fallible-ism, which we may call "knowledge," but does not itself provide the regulative ideal ("there being a reality, one, complete, and absolute") that guides science. Second, anticipating Nietzsche, science itself presupposes something like faith of which its "existence" it is a "witness." (78)

Now, Green does not embrace faith in order to promote belief in the historical reality of God's violations of the ordinary course of nature. Green is as "strict" as the empiricist analytical philosophers that displaced his thought that such "propositions" betray what he calls "unmeaning" (see above). In fact, in reading Green, one has the uncanny suggestion that he is a stricter verificationist about meaning than those that derided him a generation or two later. But in his thought this does not lead to quietism (familiar in Wittgenstein) Rather, as he insists "You cannot find a verification of the idea of God or duty; you can only make it." ("Faith" (97))

Green's idea of moral truth would be bordering on the incoherent if we ascribed to him a kind of correspondence or coherence theory of truth. Rather, he relies on what I would call a metaphysical identity theory of truth familiar from Spinoza. Recall that in Spinoza there is no gap between existence and truth. This is quite mysterious when we are dealing with metaphysics, but not mysterious at all when we are dealing with ethics. That is, moral truths are not merely exhibited in our actions, but they are made thereby, and it is this making that provides "the only possible evidence" of these truths (emphasis added this time). So, when Green discusses Scriptures he does not appeal to them because they are sanctioned by miracles or by religious authority or by tradition, but only in so far as they instantiate truth. In fact, Green can even allow that much Scripture does not instantiate truth, so long as it promotes the kind of faith that provides integrity between one's inner life and exhibiting moral truth. This is the true religion that Spinozism promotes.

One may wonder, of course, what the epistemology of such moral truth amounts to. It is striking that in his Sermons, Green relies not just on our capacity for "experience" and (let's call it) receptive "sympathy," but that ultimately he makes recognition of moral truth a matter of fair interpretation (of life) not by way of a pre-existing standard, but in (reverential) feeling consequent to honesty with (uncorrupted) self. In one sense this is a feeble foundation for moral integrity. Few -- not just professional philosophers -- like being told that something really important is a matter of interpretation (fair or not). But upon further reflection it is not impossible, perhaps, that all human integrity, or Spinozistic true religion, has to be mediated by interpretation; but rather than remaining at the level of text or linguistic idealism, such interpretation starts and ends in feeling.

 

*Green himself seems to think this is an especially Christian contribution – and there are signs of ethnocentrism in his writing (about that soon more), but I don't see he requires that for his position.

Comments

[Aaron Garrett]

Have you seen David Brink's book on Green? It's excellent (as you would expect). You might find it interesting.

[Eric Schliesser]

I look forward to reading it, Aaron! (Does he mention the Spinozist connection?)

[David Brink]

Thanks Aaron. Eric, no I don't discuss Spinozistic echoes in Green's views about religion, faith, and metaphysics. One of many limitations in my little book. It's a very short book that aims to help resurrect Green's place in the history of ethics for readers unfamiliar with him and his texts by reconstructing and assessing his main contributions in the Prolegomena to Ethics and selected essays and lecture notes. I briefly comment on Green's unorthodox form of Christianity and his views about divine immanence, but the focus is on his attempted synthesis of the best elements in the Greek and modern ethical traditions, especially Aristotle and Kant. The focus is more analytical than contextual, but its approach to Green, like Green's approach to the history of ethics, is comparative at several points.

[Eric Schliesser]

Thank you, David, for not keeping me in suspense about the presence of Spinozism in your book. Yes, the Kantianism is (as I note in the post) very visible in the Sermons. Anyway, I look forward to using your work as a guide in my explorations of Green.

[Paul Lodge]

Eric: Thanks for the nod! I'm not sure whether I mentioned these in Princeton, but on Green's metaphysics I found Peter Hylton's article "The metaphysics of T H Green" very helpful. And there's also the work of my colleague Bill Mander in his recent magnum opus on British Idealism. However, in some ways the thing I enjoyed most in the Green Collected Works was the memoir written by Nettleship soon after Green died. It's not only a fascinating picture of the man, but of 19th C Oxford. Perhaps more interesting to locals than others, but for me a lot of fun to read.