[Gutenberg 20843] • An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times

Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882) was an English philosopher, political radical and temperance reformer, and a member of the British idealism movement. Like all the British idealists, Green was influenced by the metaphysical historicism of G. W. F. Hegel. He was one of the thinkers behind the philosophy of social liberalism. In 1855, he became an undergraduate member of Balliol College, Oxford, and was elected fellow in 1860. He began a life of teaching in the university - first as college tutor, afterwards, from 1878 until his death as Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy. The lectures he delivered as professor form the substance of his two most important works, viz, the Prolegomena to Ethics and the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, which contain the whole of his positive constructive teaching. Most of his major works were published posthumously, including his lay sermons on Faith and the Witness of God, the essay On the Different Senses of "Freedom" as Applied to Will and the Moral Progress of Man, Prolegomena to Ethics, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, and the Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract.