Role of the state: Idealist and positive

Green’s idea of moral freedom, ideal rights and rights as recognition of moral consciousness of the community, all imply and conceive an institution that presents conditions for their realization. In line with the idealist position, Green treats the state as the fullest embodiment of the divine spirit and revelations of divine idea, as Hegel did. However, notwithstanding this idealist position, Green did not treat the state as an end in itself. It is a means to an end—full moral development of individuals that compose it. He says that ‘the life of the nation has no real existence except as the life of the individuals composing it’.⁴⁷ Unlike Hegel, Green does not assign the state a purpose and end of its own. While making the state as a source of rights, Green however, does allow the individual to refuse to give obedience to the state. He says, one will never have the right to resist but one may be right in resisting.⁴⁸ And one will be right in resisting if existing circumstances make fuller moral development impossible. Thus, Green’s idealist position, though Hegelian, is primarily his own. He does not ask the individual to submit to the state merely because it is divine spirit incarnated but because it helps in moral development. Hegelian Green thus becomes positive liberal. The individual–state anti-thesis in Green’s theory is resolved by way of aligning the moral requirement of the former with moral purpose of the latter. And in the case of anti-thesis, Green’s individual has a limited obligation to the state.

The requirement of moral development of individuals brings in the role of the state. In terms of moral freedom, he explains the role of state as ‘human consciousness postulates liberty, liberty involves rights and rights demand the State’. Going backward, it means the state must become the source of those rights which are essential. Rights become the guarantor of liberty, which, in turn, is required for fullest moral development. Green assigns a negative role to the state by allowing the state to help remove hindrances in the way of moral development of personality and not to make men moral. For him ‘morality consists in a disinterested performance of self-imposed duties’ by the individuals. The State cannot provide such a function and cannot impose morality from outside. It should focus on removing the obstacles that prevent men becoming moral. For Green, obstacles which have a degenerating effect or those which affect mental and intellectual upliftment should be removed by the state. Amongst these, he includes: (i) mental or physical malnutrition (ignorance and poverty), (ii) violation of the sanctity of contract and its misuse, (iii) lack of education,⁴⁹ (iv) concentration of national wealth in the hands of a few depriving the workers of moral development.⁵⁰ These functions, negative in form, are positive in content, as they all require the state to make provision for food, health, public education, redistribution of national wealth, etc. As such, Green becomes an advocate of a positive and welfare state on moral basis.