Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Great Britain

This imaginative and unusual book explores the moral sensibilities and cultural assumptions that were at the heart of political debate in Victorian and early twentieth-century Britain. It focuses on the role of intellectuals as public moralists, and suggests ways in which their more formal political theory rested upon habits of response and evaluation that were deeply embedded in wider social attitudes and aesthetic judgements. Stefan Collini examines the characteristic idioms and strategies of argument employed in periodical and polemical writing, and reconstructs the sense of identity and of relation to an audience exhibited by social critics from John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold to J. M. Keynes and F. R. Leavis. Dr Collini begins by situating the leading intellectuals in the social and political world of the Victorian governing classes. He explores fundamental values like 'altruism', 'character', and 'manliness', which are revealed as the animating dynamic of much of the political thought of the period. The book assesses the impact of increasing academic specialization across a range of disciplines, and offers an illuminating analysis of the public voice of legal theorists like Maine and Dicey. Through a detailed study of J.S. Mill's posthumous reputation Dr Collini uncovers the process by which the genealogy of images of national cultural identity is established; and he concludes with a provocative exploration of the nationalist significance of what he calls 'the Whig interpretation of English literature'. Public Moralists is a subtle and illuminating study by a leading intellectual historian which will redirect debate about the distinctive development of modern English culture.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; Prt One: Governing Values: Leading minds: The world of the Victorian intellectual; The culture of altruism: Selfishness and the decay of motive; The idea of character: private habits and public virtues; Part Two: Public Voices: Their master's voice: John Stuart Mill as a public moralist; Manly fellows: Fawcett, Stephen, and the liberal temper; Part Three: Moral Sciences: Their title to be heard: professionalization and its discontents; An exclusively professional subject: the jurist as public moralist; Part Four: English Geneologies: From dangerous partisan to national possession: John Stuart Mill in English culture 1873-1933; The Whig interpretation of English literature: literary history and national identity; Index

Review :
'Stefan Collini is a sophisticated, witty and thoughtful historian of ideas ... Collini is a fertile and gifted author ... His book on Matthew Arnold ... is a marvel of a compression and trenchant good sense ... [Public Moralists is] a superior book ... sets the mind spinning.' Sheldon Rothblatt, The Higher