Green T(homas) H(ill) (1836–82), British absolute idealist and social philosopher. The son of a clergyman, Green studied and taught at Oxford. His central concern was to resolve what he saw as the spiritual crisis of his age by analyzing knowledge and morality in ways inspired by Kant and Hegel. In his lengthy introduction to Hume’s Treatise, he argued that Hume had shown knowledge and morality to be impossible on empiricist principles. In his major work, Prolegomena to Ethics (1883), Green contended that thought imposed relations on sensory feelings and impulses (whose source was an eternal consciousness) to constitute objects of knowledge and of desire. Furthermore, in acting on desires, rational agents seek the satisfaction of a self that is realized through their own actions. This requires rational agents to live in harmony among themselves and hence to act morally. In Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (1885) Green transformed classical liberalism by arguing that even though the state has no intrinsic value, its intervention in society is necessary to provide the conditions that enable rational beings to achieve self-satisfaction. See also HUME , IDEALISM , POLITICAL PHILOSOPH. J.W.A.