Herbert Spencer Essay -- essays research papers

Herbert SpencerThe close extreme reflection of nineteenth-century individualism is to be found in the encyclopaedic system of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Both his paternal and maternal ancestors were of a long incline and French nonconformists, dissenters and rebels, and Spencer traces in his "Autobiography" his "conspicuous disregard" of policy-making, religious, and social billet to the tradition of independence and dissent so long cherished by his family. Spencers education was informal, unconventional, and highly deficient in the more conventional studies of literature and history. His father encouraged his interest in the science and tecnology, and Spencer became an engineer. However, he practiced his profession for a few years, because he became increasingly raise in political economy, sociology, biology, and philosophy. He was a subeditor of The economist from 1848 to 1853, and then ventured into a full-time career as a free-lance author.As previous(pr edicate) as 1842 Spencer contributed to the Nonconformist a series of letters called The Proper cranial orbit of Government, his first major publication. It contains his political philosophy of extreme individualism and Laissez Faire, which was non much modified in his writings in the following lux years. Spencer expresses in The Proper Sphere of Government his belief that "everything in constitution has its laws," organic as well as inorganic matter. Man is reduce to laws bot in his physical and spiritual essence, and "as with human beings individually, so with man socially." Concerning the evils of society, Spencer postulates a "self-adjusting principle" under which evils rectify themselves, provided that no one interferes with the built-in law of society.In discussing the functions of the state, Spencer is concerned with what the state should not do, rather than what it should do. care of order and administration of justice are the only two fit rea lms of government activity, and their purpose is "simply to defend the natural rights of man to shelter person and property." The state has no business to promote religion, regulate heap and commerce, encourage colonization, aid the poor, or enforce sanitary laws. Spencer went even so far as to deny the state the right to wage struggle but as he says in his Autobiogra... ...yond the ethical sanction bestowed on it by the free consent of the citizens " The function of Liberalism in the past was that of putt a limit to the powers of the king. The functions of true Liberalism in the future will be that of putting a limit to the powers of parliaments."Spencers political ideas hardly changed in the midst of 1842, when he published his Proper Sphere of Government, and 1903, the year of his death. The constancy of his political thought in the face of rapidly changing social and economic scene explains why the same ideas that were the last word in innate individualism in the eighteen-forties had become the orthodox conservatism by 1900. And Spencers appeal to the English Liberals to return to their original individualism remained unheard, but he correctly foresaw that Conservatives would become the defenders of economic individualism. Spencer failed to see that the issue of the state discussion in the economy was essentially one of means and not of objectives, and that Laissez Faire could be progressive, dynamic, and revolutionary at one time early 19 century-, and conservative, stagnant, and aseptic at another time late 19 century-.