Abstract

One of the most well-known dimensions of British idealist philosophy concerns its understanding of ethics. The three philosophers who will be examined here are F.H Bradley, T.H. Green and Bernard Bosanquet. The key treatises on ethics for the British Idealists, between the 1870s and the 1920s, were largely Bradley’s Ethical Studies and Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics. Other Idealist philosophers, such as Bosanquet, J.H. Muirhead and J.S. Mackenzie, also wrote more synoptic works on ethics, but the former works by Green and Bradley retained an assured pre-eminence. The present essay provides a comparative overview of the ethics of Bradley Green and Bosanquet. It then turns to some of the key linking features of British Idealist understanding of ethics and finally analyses certain intrinsic philosophical problems within Idealist ethics. [129 words]