Revival: A Philosophy of Social Progress (1920)

Edward Johns URWICK (1867–1945) was a student of the liberal theorist T. H. Green, along with Bernard and Helen Bosanquet, he worked for the Charity Organisation Society at Toynbee Hall in the East End of London. In 1897 the Society reformed itself as a training body for social workers and took the name ‘School of Ethics and Social Philosophy’, later ‘School of Sociology’. Urwick was appointed as its first director. Financial difficulties led the School to merge with the London School of Economics in 1912, becoming its Department of Social Science and Administration. Urwick was joint Head of Department, along with Hobhouse. Urwick left the LSE in 1924, having been invited by Robert MacIver to join him at Toronto to teach social policy in the Department of Political Science. He set up the Department of Social Service in 1928 and headed this until his retirement in 1937. Early works on youth, delinquency, and wealth were followed by his principal book The Social Good (1927) which was published shortly after he left Britain and set out an evolutionary theory of moral progress and citizenship. He developed an idealist view of society as a system of moral representations.

• 1. social life and its problems: the reformer’s interest and the social philosopher’s interest. the social mphilosopher’s position explained. 2. society considered as subject to the forces and laws of the physical world 3. society considered as subject to the forces and laws of organic life 4. society considered as subject to the laws of mind 5. society considered as subject to the laws of mind (continued) 6. society considered as an ethical structure: a unity dependent upon purpose 7. the implications of citizenship, and the rights and duties of the citizen 8. the spiritual element in social progress, and the nature of the true individual 9. the real purpose of the social process; and the tests of the reformer’s aims and methods 10. the final criteria of social progress