The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (258 page)

See
social democracy
.

 
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The officer of the UK House of Commons, elected on a non-partisan basis by MPs from among their own number, responsible for the administration of the House, for presiding over its debates, and for its representation in relation to the monarch, official visitors, and other parliaments. The office of Speaker has been replicated by many other parliaments, particularly those in the Commonwealth, and in the US
House of Representatives
, although there the Speaker's election and function are highly partisan.
JBr 

 
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The concept of species-being (
Gattungswesen
) employed extensively by Hegelians in Germany in the 1830s and 1840s, was used primarily to argue for the absolute uniqueness of man due to man's possession of consciousness: not just consciousness of self, which other social animals possessed, but rather consciousness of species or essential nature. Hence man was
sui generis
in his ability to reflect about his own species and also in the ability to make his own nature an object of thought. The contemplative life was distinctly and exclusively human. Indeed, man was taken to transcend a merely animal individuality in thought and for some, like
Feuerbach
, this meant that human individuality was not
selbst-sein
, being oneself, but
mitsein
, being with another.
Marx
extended the concept of species-being. While he accepted that man was unique, he also believed that the distinctively human attribute was not thought or consciousness
per se
, but rather free and conscious material production. It was, therefore, free labour which constituted man's active species life.
JH 

 
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(1820–1903)
English evolutionary philosopher. Born in Derby, the son of a respected private teacher and the only survivor in a family of nine. Spencer was educated in austere Unitarian circumstances by his father and by his uncle. He worked first as a railway engineer and then, at the age of 28, he became sub-editor of
The Economist
, a London weekly committed to free trade and
laissez-faire
( See
Bagehot
). He is surely now amongst the most remote and forbidding of the eminent Victorians. The fourteen enormous volumes of
The Synthetic Philosophy
, which were painstakingly compiled over thirty-six years, are nowadays barely looked at, let alone read. And the
Autobiography
completed in 1889 spreads to over 400,000 words. In general, Spencer always endeavoured to subsume phenomena under his philosophy of evolution, a philosophy resting squarely on
Lamarckism
. In the course of his life, he ranged under his definition of evolution not only the nebular hypothesis, the conservation of energy, and the social organism, but also
laissez-faire
economics, political individualism, and a utilitarian ethic based on hedonism. However, Spencer stopped creative thinking around 1860, a stoppage which was matched by a personal descent into despair and solitude, his own earlier and radical individualism increasingly giving way to a grumbling and pessimistic conservatism. Longevity was Spencer's worst enemy.

 
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(1632–97)
Dutch philosopher and theologian. Spinoza was born in Amsterdam, of Spanish-Portuguese-Jewish origin. His family had taken refuge in the United Provinces to escape persecution in Spain. He was a brilliant student. His thirst for knowledge led him to study under Francis van den Enden , a freethinker. By 1656 his views were so unorthodox that he was accused of atheism and banned from the synagogue. He earned his living by grinding lenses, which incidentally put him in touch with developments in optics, and hence with the advances in mathematics of the time. Meanwhile he continued his reflections and wrote many philosophical works, especially on ethics. However, the works which concern us are the
Tractatus Theologico-Philosophicus
of 1670, and his
Tractatus Politicus
, which he did not finish.
Having been attacked by Calvinists, Catholics, and Jews, he advocated freedom of thought, religious thought in particular. Like
Hobbes
, he believed that the state came into being to prevent anarchy. But unlike Hobbes he did not believe autocracy was the solution. He passionately believed in democracy, in the right to disagree and hold contrary opinions short of anarchy. The ultimate objective was wisdom, which, for Spinoza was reasoned judgement or rational behaviour. It was this that the state was established to promote.
CB 

 
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