Wallas, Graham
Wallas, Graham (1858–1932)A leading member of the Fabian Society, he was a close associate of Beatrice and Sydney Webb and was actively involved in the London County Council and the London School Board. In 1895 he was offered the directorship of the London School of Economics but preferred to take a teaching role. He spent the rest of his academic life at the LSE, holding the Chair of Politics from 1914 to 1923. His main ideas were formed during his studentship at Oxford, where he encountered the English idealism of T. H. Green and Bernard Bosanquet. In Human Nature in Politics (1908), he argued that biological conditions and cultural forces were more important than the rational calculation stressed by utilitarianism. He stressed the crucial role played by cultural traditions and customs in forming the ‘social heritage’ of a society (Our Social Heritage, 1921). He...
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