The humanitarian imagination: L. T. Hobhouse and the dialectic of liberal utopia

Abstract

This thesis explores the humanitarian imagination of new-liberal social theorist L. T. Hobhouse. I present and historicise his conception of humanitarianism. In doing so, I give substance to his generic identification with humanitarianism by Hobhousian scholars, and I make a case for reading him, first and foremost, as a humanitarian thinker, whose main intellectual contribution was in the deployment of a dialectical method that he associated with progress. I also seek to contribute to a broader understanding of humanitarianism in history, detached from its contemporary institutional form. I adopt an approach to intellectual history that situates the intellectual firstly in relation to ideas, but ultimately in relation to material conditions; an approach that integrates it within the history of ideologies. I thus cast light on the ideological character of Hobhouse’s humanitarian imagination, and on the dependencies between imagination and ideology in a period in which humanitarianism had a different relationship to time and History, and in which it still seemed that the dialectic of progress and catastrophe might resolve towards the former.

Date of Award	20 Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Bertrand Taithe (Main Supervisor) & Stuart Jones (Co Supervisor)