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Leonard 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
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse
2 Economic policy
3 Civil liberty
4 Foreign policy
5 Works
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

Life
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 theUniversity of London 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
[3]
applied to values and that they could be self-consistent and objective.

Economic policy
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; it was a collective product. This means that those who had property owe some of their success to society and thus
had some obligation to others. This, he believed, provides theoretical justification for a level of redistribution provided by the new
state pensions.

Hobhouse disliked Marxist socialism, describing his own position as liberal socialism and later as social liberalism. Hobhouse
occupies a particularly important place in the intellectual history of theLiberal Democrats because of this.

Civil liberty
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 because we have no regard for other peoples' 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
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.[4] 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
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 ethicsin 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)
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

Books Topics
Reason and Revolution Contributions to liberal
theory
Liberalism

A. DE SANCTIS, Leonard T. Hobhouse: libero scambio e giustizia sociale, CET, Firenze, 2014

References
1. Freeden, Michael 'Hobhouse, Leonard Trelawny (18641929)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford
University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006accessed 15 Oct 2007 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33
906)
2. Meadowcroft, James (ed.)Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
pp. ixx.
3. J A Hobson and Morris Ginsberg,L. T. Hobhouse: His life and work, George Allen & Unwin, 1931, p.17.
4. http://www.bookrags.com/biography/leonard-trelawny-hobhouse/

External links
Quotations related to Leonard Hobhouse at Wikiquote
Works written by or aboutLeonard Trelawny Hobhouse at Wikisource
Works by Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Leonard Hobhouseat Internet Archive
Short biography by David Howarth MP
Profile at the Liberal International
That Englishwoman (1989)on IMDb A film directed by Dirk DeVilliers

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