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Who still has ‘sweetness and light’ in studies of Victorian culture and politics?*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Abstract
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References
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10 There is a dissident thesis about liberalism given by John Robertson which takes Adam Smith's Wealth of nations, stripped of any accompanying legal or moral philosophy, as the canonical text for Victorian liberalism. This thesis is that Smith's government had a primary task to protect itself against the anti-social order of the capitalist order. ‘The legacy of Adam Smith: government and economic development in the Wealth of nations’, in Victorian liberalism, nineteenth-century political thought and practice, ed. Richard, Bellamy (London, 1990), pp. 21–2 and 35.Google Scholar
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14 As John, Robertson (in Victorian liberalism (ed. Bellamy, R.), pp. 18–20)Google Scholar had argued that Duncan Forbes, Donald Winch and Knud Haakonssen have over-emphasized the importance of natural jurisprudence for Smith. Whether or not this is judicious, Robertson is in a strong position when he adds that Victorian readers of The wealth of nations were ignorant of its philosophical context.
15 Matthew, Arnold, Culture and anarchy, ed. Super, R. H. (Ann Arbor, 1965), p. 88.Google Scholar
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33 To say ‘she or he’ is to raise the issue that in the Victorian period, ‘she’ was an individual for writers such as J. S. Mill, but not for others such as Carlyle.
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36 Ibid. p. 4.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid. p. 63. See Michael, Freeden's ‘Political concepts and ideological morphology’, Journal of Political Philosophy, II.2 (1994), 140–64Google Scholar. Freeden attempts to reconcile the disparate descriptive and normative studies by historians and political philosophers. He also has a forthcoming book on ideology.
39 Collini is suspicious of the motives of some modern literary critics who dwell at length upon the literature they profess to despise. Public moralists, p. 372.
40 Collini's, analysis (Public moralists, pp. 35–49)Google Scholar of the salary levels of leading Victorian minds is, as he himself remarks, only suggestive. He does not analyse the income of writers and academics who were not members of elite institutions such as the Athenaeum. This means that while the figures are interesting they cannot be correlated with productivity, political opinions, or even greed. For example, the well-known grasping pluralism of H. S. Maine, who died leaving £46,000, is not compared to other heads of Oxbridge colleges nor to others who pushed themselves forward for lucrative positions such as a seat on the India Council.
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50 Collini, , Public moralists, p. 372.Google Scholar
51 Ibid. p. 220, n. 57.
52 Ibid. p. 203.
53 Ibid. p. 247.
54 Turner, , Contesting cultural authority, pp. 175–8, 201, 262–83Google Scholar. George Levine offers a critical perspective on Turner's views (‘Scientific discourse as an alternative to faith’, Victorian faith in crisis, p. 237).Google Scholar
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62 However, Nicholson does offer convincing reasons for sharing Collini's concern that modern scholars have often overlooked the political dimensions of Victorian morality.
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65 One of the few weaknesses in Nicholson's work is his attempt to re-start the nineteenth-century debate on whether the British Idealists were Hegelian. To suggest that, despite their own disclaimers, they were Hegelian does not produce helpful discussion. Bradley, in particular, is obscured by this claim. The chief reason for rescuing Bradley from this presumed association with Hegel is that the latter despised the vulgar for thinking abstractly, while the former built his moral philosophy upon what the vulgar thought.
66 Ibid. p. 25.
67 Ibid. p. 16.
68 Ibid. p. 216.
69 Bosanquet was accused by contemporaries such as L. T. Hobhouse of recommending despotism. However, Nicholson clears him of this charge and attempts to reinstate him in his rightful place as a liberal whose theoretical politics rested upon an individual who was integrated into his culture. This claim has to be taken with some care, because, while it is true that his idealist theory could lend itself to a liberal notion of self-development, in some of the public debates of the late nineteenth century Bosanquet seemed to be allied with views on character and morals which were then made common among contemporary conservatives than liberals.
70 Ibid. p. 199.
71 Ibid. pp. 60–1.
72 Ibid. p. 63.
73 Ibid. pp. 111–15.
74 Ibid. p. 130.
75 Mill's greatest influence on Hayek was in his refusal to construct a philosophical system. Like Mill, Hayek felt relaxed with the fact that inconsistencies might exist between philosophical discourses on different subjects. In the area of politics, Hayek was more critical of Mill. In his 1973 article on liberalism he berated the later Mill for turning away from the path of English liberalism.