Abstract

In 1999, British Idealism scholars and political philosophers commemorated the centenary of Bernard Bosanquet’s The Philosophical Theory of the State. This book, which is regarded as Bosanquet’s major contribution to political philosophy, contains a detailed account of “the fundamental ideas of a true social philosophy” culminating in a comprehensive analysis of the concept of the state structured around core ideas such as political obligation, the real will and its psychological foundations, freedom, self-realisation, individuality, citizenship, the ethical institutions, and the metaphysics of the self. Bosanquet elaborates the idea of the state by embarking on a re-assessment and critique of Rousseau’s general will and by focusing on a constellation of concepts articulated in Hegel’s Philosophie des Rechts. He attacks the principles of empiricism and atomistic individualism and provides a political philosophy based on the fundamental doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Green and Bradley. Bradley’s moral philosophy was one “of the main conceptions underpinning The Philosophical Theory of the State”. Bosanquet refers frequently to Ethical Studies, and acknowledges Bradley’s contribution to representing the Hegelian distinction between Sittlichkeit and Moralität in English philosophy. Ethical Studies has a prominent position in the history of British Idealism: it served “as a manifesto of British Idealism” ; it was the first systematic statement of idealistic ethics in England ; and it expounded and defended a theory of morality as a theory of rational activity. Bosanquet contemplated writing a book on Ethics — a project that was never to be realised because it was forestalled by Bradley’s book.