What do you think?
Rate this book
The social and political thought of Herbert Spencer
269 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1978
4 people want to read
About the author
David Wiltshire
15 books9 followersDavid Wiltshire spent his childhood in Cheltenham before qualifying as a dental surgeon, from University College Hospital, London. He served his National Service in Aden and Singapore.
He is married with three children and eight grandchildren and lives in Bedford.
He is the author of fourteen published novels, some under the name of John Bedford.
BOOKS BY DAVID WILTSHIRE
STANDALONE NOVELS
THE TEARS OF AUTUMN
ENDURING PASSIONS
BENEATH US THE STARS
THREE UNPUTDOWNABLE WW2 HISTORICAL SAGAS BOX SET
He is married with three children and eight grandchildren and lives in Bedford.
He is the author of fourteen published novels, some under the name of John Bedford.
BOOKS BY DAVID WILTSHIRE
STANDALONE NOVELS
THE TEARS OF AUTUMN
ENDURING PASSIONS
BENEATH US THE STARS
THREE UNPUTDOWNABLE WW2 HISTORICAL SAGAS BOX SET
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 29, 2019
Wiltshire's doctoral thesis, like many others, has been almost forgotten - much like Herbert Spencer himself. But Wiltshire's thesis, and the book it spawned (the one under review), should be dusted off the shelves and read anew - both for its own merits and for the sake of reviving the lost art of Spencer scholarship.
The book, in fact, consists of two halves, titled Part 1 and Part 2. The first half is a fascinating if brief biographical account of Spencer's life. It is brimming with Wiltshire's Oxford-bred, understated, deadpan wit. It does not bring much new into Spencer scholarship, but it produces a coherent picture of Spencer's intellectual development. Its only faulty is the author's obsession, found across both parts, with Spencer's individualism and economic liberalism. Wiltshire spends the whole book attempting to undermine them. In the second part, he offers some good objections to them based on serious writers. But in the first part, he attacks, feebly, Spencer's commitment to liberal values as an unconscious, irrational relic of his childhood and youthful education. This does not hold water, since he also received a Christian education - which didn't seem to stick.
The second part is the longer section. This mostly consists of Wiltshire's attempt to analyse and disentangle the various conflicting and mutually supporting threads in Spencer's social and political philosophy. He offers analyses of Spencer's evolutionary theory, survival of the fittest, laissez faire doctrines, individualism, anti-militarism, sociological theory, etc. These analyses range from good to middling. Predictably, the author does not have a good grasp of the nuances of each sub-field, but he has enough of a grasp of each as to make each section robust enough to be worth reading. The majority of Wiltshire's effort, as I already indicated, is spent analysing and undermining Spencer's evolutionary individualism. In this, he has very little original to say, but he craftily borrows criticisms of economic liberalism from social liberal thinkers like T.H. Green and John Stuart Mill, as well as from evolutionary thinkers like T.H. Huxley and Kropotkin.
But his analysis is occasionally too shrill and demanding. It presents a powerful case against the foundations of Spencerian liberalism that, while occasionally brilliant, is marred by a failure to understand the economic and ethical foundations of Spencer's theory of freedom. As a result, he fails to see that Spencer's "natural rights" theory of justice is actually a type of utilitarianism that, at its core, puts the welfare of the people above any deontic or virtue-based considerations. Secondly, he swallows wholesale the Marxist and social liberal arguments against laissez-faire without much critical discussion of THEIR respective merits or empirical validity.
Towards the end of the book, unlike the cautious style that he elsewhere employs, Wiltshire offers exceedingly strong and unwarranted comments about the supposed inevitability of social planning combined with the supposed impossibility of liberal individualism as a doctrine of evolutionary development. Writing in the middle of the 20th century, the entrenchment of social democracy seemed to Wiltshire, just like it did to Mill and Green, like evolutionary destiny. This fatalism provides a powerful challenge to the liberal vision of Spencerian free market progressives, and it carries potent intellectual conclusions for social liberalism and socialism. I strongly disagree with these conclusions, but the intuitive power of these sentiments can explain why Spencer has been almost completely forgotten; and task of liberals going forward is to upend this social liberal view of history.
Overall, this review has been a tale of two books: the first half, the biography, and the second half, the scholarly analysis of Spencer's evolutionary individualism. There aren't many other good sources for Spencer's biography, so the first part can be recommended as a decent standalone intellectual biography - independently of the merits of the scholarly second half. The second half occasionally falters, e.g. when it fails to grasp the logical derivation of Spencer's theory of equal freedom, or when it resorts to groundless, empty posturing about the inevitability of socialism. On equally numerous occasions, however, it showcases flashes of brilliance. Even though I disagree with most of his conclusions, Wiltshire's careful analysis poses a fair challenge to the logic of Spencer's arguments. No reader can fail to appreciate Wilthire's keen eye on unearthing Spencer's many faults and contradictions. Some of them may be solvable - others clearly not.
Whether one is looking for a biography (Part 1) or a critical analysis (Part 2) of Herbert Spencer, Wiltshire's book provides an illuminating two-in-one solution - and mostly succeeds in both. While the book contains some shallow observations and scholarly errors, and while it occasionally succumbs to the simple faults and biases of social democratic and Marxist historiography, it presents a fascinating and illuminating case study of Spencer's social and political thought.
The book, in fact, consists of two halves, titled Part 1 and Part 2. The first half is a fascinating if brief biographical account of Spencer's life. It is brimming with Wiltshire's Oxford-bred, understated, deadpan wit. It does not bring much new into Spencer scholarship, but it produces a coherent picture of Spencer's intellectual development. Its only faulty is the author's obsession, found across both parts, with Spencer's individualism and economic liberalism. Wiltshire spends the whole book attempting to undermine them. In the second part, he offers some good objections to them based on serious writers. But in the first part, he attacks, feebly, Spencer's commitment to liberal values as an unconscious, irrational relic of his childhood and youthful education. This does not hold water, since he also received a Christian education - which didn't seem to stick.
The second part is the longer section. This mostly consists of Wiltshire's attempt to analyse and disentangle the various conflicting and mutually supporting threads in Spencer's social and political philosophy. He offers analyses of Spencer's evolutionary theory, survival of the fittest, laissez faire doctrines, individualism, anti-militarism, sociological theory, etc. These analyses range from good to middling. Predictably, the author does not have a good grasp of the nuances of each sub-field, but he has enough of a grasp of each as to make each section robust enough to be worth reading. The majority of Wiltshire's effort, as I already indicated, is spent analysing and undermining Spencer's evolutionary individualism. In this, he has very little original to say, but he craftily borrows criticisms of economic liberalism from social liberal thinkers like T.H. Green and John Stuart Mill, as well as from evolutionary thinkers like T.H. Huxley and Kropotkin.
But his analysis is occasionally too shrill and demanding. It presents a powerful case against the foundations of Spencerian liberalism that, while occasionally brilliant, is marred by a failure to understand the economic and ethical foundations of Spencer's theory of freedom. As a result, he fails to see that Spencer's "natural rights" theory of justice is actually a type of utilitarianism that, at its core, puts the welfare of the people above any deontic or virtue-based considerations. Secondly, he swallows wholesale the Marxist and social liberal arguments against laissez-faire without much critical discussion of THEIR respective merits or empirical validity.
Towards the end of the book, unlike the cautious style that he elsewhere employs, Wiltshire offers exceedingly strong and unwarranted comments about the supposed inevitability of social planning combined with the supposed impossibility of liberal individualism as a doctrine of evolutionary development. Writing in the middle of the 20th century, the entrenchment of social democracy seemed to Wiltshire, just like it did to Mill and Green, like evolutionary destiny. This fatalism provides a powerful challenge to the liberal vision of Spencerian free market progressives, and it carries potent intellectual conclusions for social liberalism and socialism. I strongly disagree with these conclusions, but the intuitive power of these sentiments can explain why Spencer has been almost completely forgotten; and task of liberals going forward is to upend this social liberal view of history.
Overall, this review has been a tale of two books: the first half, the biography, and the second half, the scholarly analysis of Spencer's evolutionary individualism. There aren't many other good sources for Spencer's biography, so the first part can be recommended as a decent standalone intellectual biography - independently of the merits of the scholarly second half. The second half occasionally falters, e.g. when it fails to grasp the logical derivation of Spencer's theory of equal freedom, or when it resorts to groundless, empty posturing about the inevitability of socialism. On equally numerous occasions, however, it showcases flashes of brilliance. Even though I disagree with most of his conclusions, Wiltshire's careful analysis poses a fair challenge to the logic of Spencer's arguments. No reader can fail to appreciate Wilthire's keen eye on unearthing Spencer's many faults and contradictions. Some of them may be solvable - others clearly not.
Whether one is looking for a biography (Part 1) or a critical analysis (Part 2) of Herbert Spencer, Wiltshire's book provides an illuminating two-in-one solution - and mostly succeeds in both. While the book contains some shallow observations and scholarly errors, and while it occasionally succumbs to the simple faults and biases of social democratic and Marxist historiography, it presents a fascinating and illuminating case study of Spencer's social and political thought.
Displaying 1 of 1 review