W. J. Mander presents the first ever synoptic history of British Idealism, the school of thought which dominated English-language philosophy from the 1860s to the early 20th century. He restores to its proper place this neglected period of philosophy, introducing the exponents of Idealism and explaining its distinctive concepts and doctrines.

W. J. Mander and Stamatoula Panagakou’s book is one of the latest expressions of the resurgence of British Idealism after its demotion in British philosophy as a result of the ascendancy of analyti...

In the early twentieth century, a rare strain of British idealism emerged which took Leibniz's Monadology as its starting point. This paper discusses a variant of that strain, offered by Hilda Oakeley. I set Oakeley's monadology in its philosophical context and discuss a key point of conflict between Oakeley and her fellow monadologists: the unreality of time. Oakeley argues that time is fundamentally real, a thesis arguably denied by Leibniz and subsequent monadologists, and by all other British (...) idealists. This paper discusses Oakeley's argument for the reality of time, and Oakeley's attack on the most famous account of the unreality of time offered in her day: that of J. M. E. McTaggart. I show that Oakeley's critique of McTaggart can be extended to challenge all monadologists, including that of the great monad, Leibniz himself. (shrink)

[INTRODUCTION] Like the terms 'dialectic', 'Aufhebung' (or 'sublation'), and 'Geist', the term 'concrete universal' has a distinctively Hegelian ring to it. But unlike these others, it is particularly associated with the British strand in Hegel's reception history, as having been brought to prominence by some of the central British Idealists. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that, as their star has waned, so too has any use of the term, while an appreciation of the problematic that lay behind it (...) has seemingly vanished: if the British Idealists get any sort of mention in a contemporary metaphysics book (which is rarely), it will be Bradley's view of relations or truth that is discussed, not their theory of universals, so that the term has a rather antique air, buried in the dusty volumes of Mind from the turn of the nineteenth century. This is not surprising: the episode known as British Idealism can appear to be a period that is lost to us, in its language, points of historical reference (Lotze, Sigwart, Jevons), and central preoccupations (the Absolute). Even while interest in Hegel continues to grow, interest in his Logic has grown more slowly than in the rest of his work, with Book III of the Logic remaining as the daunting peak of that challenging text - while it is here that the British Idealists focussed their attention and claimed to have uncovered that 'exotic' but 'vanished specimen', the concrete universal. Finally, as the trend of reading Hegel pushes ever further in a non-metaphysical direction, it might be thought that the future of the concrete universal is hardly likely to be brighter than its recent past - for it may seem hard to imagine how a conception championed by the British Idealists, who were apparently shameless in their metaphysical commitments, can find favour in these more austere and responsible times. In this paper, however, I want to make a case for holding that there is something enlightening to be found in how some of the British Idealists approached the 'concrete universal', both interpretatively and philosophically. At the interpretative level, I will argue that while not everything these Idealists are taken to mean by the term is properly to be found in Hegel, their work nonetheless relates to a crucial and genuine strand in Hegel's position, so that their discussion of this issue is an important moment in the reception history of his thought. At a philosophical level, I think that the question that concerned Hegel and these British Idealists retains much of its interest, as does their shared approach to it: namely, how far does our thought involve a mere abstraction from reality, and what are the metaphysical and epistemological implications if it turns out it does not? As such, I will suggest, taking seriously what these British Idealists have to say about the concrete universal can help us both in our understanding of Hegel, and in our appreciation of the contribution Hegel's position can make to our thinking on the issues that surround this topic. (shrink)

In particular, as we shall see, Collingwood is often dismissed as having held an indefensible, outmoded ‘ideal’ theory, according to which the work of art is primarily ‘mental’, while his potential role in current debates is simply ignored. I will argue that this view is largely mistaken.

British idealist aesthetics is not well known, and to the extent that it is known, it is generally through the writings of R.G. Collingwood, who is sometimes described as an idealist of the ‘third generation.’.

It is generally acknowledged that the British Idealism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had a significant influence in the philosophy, politics, and culture of that country. In this study, I argue that it also had a considerable impact throughout much of the English-speaking world, and beyond -- in Canada, Australia, the United States, South Africa, India, and even East Asia. This idealism engaged 'local' philosophical traditions and culture, contributed to them, and sometimes led to (...) 'new' philosophies or traditions, and so may be described as a 'migrating tradition.' While the character and extent of this influence varied according to where and how it migrated, British Idealism can, nevertheless and in amodestway, be said to have had an 'empire'. This study, then, addresses both a historical issue and the broader philosophical question of why British Idealism was successful in this diaspora, and it identifies a number of features of this Idealism which may explain this. (shrink)

British idealism flourished in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries. It was a movement with a lasting influence on the social and political thought of its time in particular. British idealists helped popularize the work of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel in the Anglophone world, but they also sought to use insights from the philosophies of Kant and Hegel to help create a new idealism to address the many pressing issues of the (...) Victorian period in Britain and its aftermath. These contributions related to theories of freedom, the common good, political obligation, the state, and punishment. The British idealists also made important contributions in areas other than Hegelian scholarship and ethics, including logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. The movement declined by the start of World War I. This entry will highlight the most important work by British idealists themselves and by their best interpreters. Thus this entry will be grouped by individuals rather than by theme. (shrink)

In truth-functional analysis we need not worry about the purported ambiguity of the English ‘or,’ for we can assign different symbols and define each by means of a truth table. However, at least in classes in elementary logic, we often try to indicate that there is some rationale to the assignation of truth values by marshaling English disjunctive sentences which will clearly render an inclusive or an exclusive reading, without the explicit addition of one of the qualifying phrases, “or both” (...) or “but not both.” At this point one discovers people writing on logic saying quite different things about the English ‘or.’ In his Methods of Logic Quine takes the inclusive sense to be the more naturally intended and claims that “indisputable instances of the exclusive use” are rare. Yet in The Principles of Logic Bradley says that no one ever really intends to use ‘or’ in any other than an exclusive sense; and Bosanquet followed him in this. In this paper I am interested in attempting to discover why the British Idealists held that ‘or’ is always exclusive, especially in the face of various examples which, prima facie, establish both uses in English. Why would Bradley feel compelled to deny “any possible instance in which alternatives are not exclusive”? As it turns out, the position held by Bradley and Bosanquet is stronger and more interesting than one initially expects. (shrink)

According to the editors of this book, “The history of philosophy as taught today is a highly selective activity. In its determination to tell a particular story, it passes over in silence large swathes of otherwise interesting philosophical work”. This claim would have been worthy of serious consideration had it been made a few decades ago—that is to say, at a time when analytic philosophy was a clearly recognizable philosophical movement. The “particular story” according to which the works of the (...) British idealists were allegedly sacrificed would then have been easily identified as the story of how the young Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore showed the absurdity involved in holding that... (shrink)

Idealism became the dominant philosphical school of thought in late nineteenth-century Britain. In this original and stimulating study, Sandra den Otter examines its roots in Greek and German thinking and locates it among the prevalent methodologies and theories of the period: empiricism and positivism, naturalism, evolution, and utilitarianism. In particular, she sets it in the context of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debate about a science of society and the contemporary preoccupation with `community'.

Perhaps one of the most underappreciated philosophical movements is British Idealism. This movement arose during the latter half of the nineteenth century and began to wane after the outbreak of the First World War. British Idealism has produced a number of important figures, such as Bernard Bosanquet, R. G. Collingwood, F. H. Bradley and T. H. Green, as well as other important, but less well known, figures, such as J. S. Mackenzie, John Henry Muirhead and James (...) Seth. It has also given us a number of lasting philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Despite the fact that by the end of the nineteenth century philosophically Natural Rights had been severely undermined, and that the British Idealists found anathema most of the principles upon which they relied, such theories still had a currency among some political polemicists. The Idealists retained the vocabulary and transformed the meaning to refer to those rights which it is imperative that the state or society recognise as indispensable to social existence. The criterion of such necessity was their contribution (...) to the common good. Such thinks as Green, Bosanquet, Ritchie, Jones and Watson offer a developmental view of Natural Rights, acknowledging that societies evolve giving rise to more refined versions of what constitutes the common good. While the idea of Human Rights depends upon the existence of a moral community, the common good is not necessarily judged only in relation to that community. There is nothing sacred about state borders or sovereignty, and the extension of the moral community beyond such arbitrary limits is both possible and desirable. This way of conceiving Natural Rights has become one of the dominant ways, in a variety of forms, of characterising the post 1945 Human Rights Culture. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

A new moral philosophy emerged on the British philosophical scene in the late 1870s, one referred to as the idealist ethic of social self-realization, which rapidly became the dominant mode of moral thought for over twenty years. This chapter discusses the views of the pioneers of idealist ethics, F. H. Bradley and T. H. Green.

This paper considers how Schelling’s earlier work functions as a fifth column for the Germano-Coleridgeans, particularly Coleridge himself and Green. I consider their engagement with Schelling’s First Outline in relation to the Hunterian collection bought by the Crown in 1799, which made the life sciences a public concern within the framework of how knowledge was to be organized. The paper explores the pressure the life sciences put on philosophy and the constraining of both, in the context of British (...) class='Hi'>Idealism, by religious imperatives that are internal, conceptual censors, and external (cultural and institutional) censors. Consolidating his work between the Romantic and Victorian periods, Green is a neglected figure in a progress from natural to political theology that coincides with a shift in British idealism from Schelling to a sanitized Hegel. Coleridge’s dialogue with and often expedient misrepresentations of Schelling are more complex, as he uses Schelling’s “Stufenfolge” to argue for a design in nature, yet is constantly troubled by a biodiversity and difference in nature to which Schelling was more open. Initially deploying Schelling to reconcile transcendental and natural philosophy, Coleridge can never entirely escape the trouble that biology causes philosophy and that philosophy (through Schelling) causes religion. (shrink)

The British Idealist movement flourished between the 1860s and 1920s and exerted a very significant influence in the USA, India and Canada, most notably on John Dewey and Josiah Royce. The movement also laid the groundwork for the thought of Oakeshott and Collingwood. Its leading figures – particularly Green and Caird – have left a number of complete or near complete manuscripts in various British university archives, many of which remain unpublished. This important collection widens access to this (...) unpublished material by transcribing, editing and then publishing the most significant pieces. The project focuses on the moral, political, and religious writings – the areas of most interest to scholars. This annotated, critical edition opens them up to the academic community. (shrink)

The British idealists made significant and lasting contributions to the social and political thought of the nineteenth century. They contributed to the evolution debate in insisting that the social organism could not be understood in naturalistic terms, but instead had to be conceived as an evolving spiritual unity. In this respect the British idealists developed a distinctive view of the state constitutive of the individual and they are commonly acknowledged as the forerunners of modern communitarian theory. Furthermore the (...) idealists contributed to the major debates of their day, including evolution, democracy, the role of the state, education and international relations. In his introduction, David Boucher develops the themes illustrated in the writings of the British idealists. This volume also contains biographies of the British idealists which incorporate their principal works. (shrink)

The degree to which British Idealists, both Absolutists and Personalists, were influenced by evolutionary debates has been underestimated, and far from being outright opponents they developed their own particular brand in order to demonstrate the relevance of their philosophies to addressing the important issues of the day. They were opposed to naturalism, but agreed with the likes of Darwin and Spencer that nature and spirit exhibit a continuity. Where they disagreed was in the naturalistic emphasis of giving priority to (...) nature in explanation, that is, explaining the higher in terms of the lower. They also agreed with the likes of Wallace and Huxley, in giving a special place to ethics in the evolutionary process. They disagreed because of the wedge they perceived them to be driving between nature and spirit. The British Idealists begin with the principle of unity and contend that nature and spirit are continuous, and while nature is not intelligent, it is intelligible only to the human mind. Nature and Spirit are mutually dependent and to assert the reality of one over the other is to make abstractions of both. In fully acknowledging spirit in the evolutionary process they were able to reconcile their religious consciousness and the idea of freedom with the theory of evolution. (shrink)

The British Idealists were a force to be reckoned with in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, until they appeared as the philosophical casualty of the Great War. This volume, part of the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, reproduces selections dealing with social and political philosophy from ten different authors of that tradition. Leading political theorist Bernard Bosanquet has three separate selections totaling fifty-three pages. T. H. Green has only one passage included here since there exists (...) a Cambridge published selection of his work put out in 1986. (shrink)

William Sweet gathers responses to the major writings of the leading figures of the British idealist movement, including contributions by Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Sir Ernest Barker, Sir Henry Jones, R.F.A. Hoernle, J.S. MacKenzie, Brand Blanshard and others.

Often regarded as an aberrant phase in the history of late 19th and early 20th-century philosophy, British Idealism provoked a wide range of attacks and replies from all the major figures of the time, such as Sidgwick, Dewey, Broad and Russell. This work reflects the shifting intellectual boundaries of British Thought between 1860 and 1920.

The growing interest in the philosophy of the British Idealists required a comprehensive and accessible volume containing an anthology of their work. Boucher’s book, with its special emphasis on the moral, social and political philosophy of British Idealism, fills a gap in the existing literature and provides readers with the insights of such philosophers as Edward Caird, T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, John Watson, Bernard Bosanquet, Henry Jones, D. G. Ritchie, J.H. Muirhead, Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, and (...) J.S. Mackenzie. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Biographical Encyclopedia of British IdealismKarim DharamsiWilliam Sweet, editor. Biographical Encyclopedia of British Idealism. New York-London: Continuum, 2010. Pp. xx + 724. Cloth, $295.00.The term ‘British Idealism’ underdetermines the interests and geographies of philosophers classed under its heading. It may imply a common goal or, indeed, location. This is misleading. The Biographical Encyclopedia of British Idealism goes a long way in demonstrating (...) the challenge of grouping together philosophers with divergent interests and historical pedigrees, sharing some affiliation with Idealist thinking in Britain from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many transcend so-called Analytic and Continental categories, and if not transcend, certainly sidestep them. William Sweet’s volume is at once an archaeological guide to British Idealism and a guide to its relevance today. The volume excavates deeply hidden contributions to philosophy and may destabilize our customary assumptions about the geographical limits of Western philosophy; the contributors to the volume ask readers to extend their community of interest to scholars from Southern Africa, India, and East Asia. Calling philosophers working in India and East Asia “British” is also an important reminder; it has its obvious links to British imperium while at the same time speaking to the influence of Idealist thinking outside the frame of colonial England to thinkers working outside the canonical disputes of Western philosophy.This massive volume, uncompromisingly detailed and comprehensive, does have the elements of a survey, but this is not its intent, nor does one get this impression on reading its entries. This Encyclopedia aims to historically and philosophically contextualize Idealist thought. The first six chapters do just this. They are “Idealism in Britain” (William Sweet); “Idealism in Australia and New Zealand” (Mark Weblin); “The Impact of Idealism in North America” (Leslie Armour); “British Idealism in Southern Africa” (William Sweet); “British Idealism in India” (William Sweet); and “British Idealism in East Asia” (William Sweet). [End Page 146] The remainder of the volume includes entries on well-known Idealist philosophers, lesser known thinkers, and important critics of Idealist philosophy, including the familiar and highly influential Russell and Moore. I will say a little bit about the excellent chapter on British Idealism in India.While readers may have familiarity with Idealism in North America and Britain, it may come as a surprise to learn that Indian philosophers, influenced by a great deal of British philosophy, were particularly keen on Idealism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sweet provides readers with a short history of Indian higher education and the place, for instance, of Kant and Hegel in the philosophy curriculum throughout India in the late nineteenth century; it was not long after that British Idealists were being taught to students in Bombay (Mumbai), Madras, and Calcutta (still important centres of higher education in India) along with Allahabad, Mysore, Pondicherry, and Amalner. Idealists in India, much like their counterparts in Britain, labored beyond academic philosophy, extending their discussions to questions of nationalism in India and contributing to ideas in social and political thought.The attraction of British Idealism (indeed, any “Western” Idealist philosophy) to Indian intellectuals may seem mysterious to some readers. Sweet maintains that Indian philosophy was and is by its own historical sense idealist and so the British variant was not so much as “imported” as finding a natural home. Sweet thinks that the revival of interest in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta can be reasonably traced to the influence of British Idealism’s place in Indian philosophy. There is little dispute that Kant, Hegel, and the British thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries influenced how Indian philosophers understood the discipline’s Western identity and aims. Indian philosophers had begun to enter discussions belonging to another history. Hiralal Halder’s Hegelianism and Human Personality, published in 1910, and Ras-Vihari Das’s doctoral dissertation of 1930, The Self and the Ideal, could easily be taken as titles of works in Western European or North American libraries. Philosophy no doubt includes philosophers who come from many histories, and the discipline may be resistant to simple geographical reduction.Sweet cautions readers that Indian philosophers contributed to the development of Indian philosophical thought; they were not merely expositors... (shrink)

This chapter presents the major figures of British idealism who wrote on religion, identifies and discusses some of the dominant themes in their work, and discusses how they engaged in, or contributed to, a philosophy of religion. It is argued that there is a development in reflection on religion in idealist thought in Britain in the 19th century: from a first generation, including J.F. Ferrier J.H. Stirling, and Benjamin Jowett, through a second generation, to a final phase: a (...) metaphysics of the Absolute found in the absolute idealists F.H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet and an ethical theism in the personal idealist Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison. While acknowledging the differences among these authors, the chapter concludes by identifying some common characteristics in British idealist thought on religion. (shrink)

British idealism is usually regarded as having been, in the main, indifferent to the problems of the philosophy of history. The interest in the philosophy of history found in German, and later in Italian, idealism was allegedly not shared by the early generations of the British idealists. At best they are regarded as unwitting precursors of things to come, some of their reflections paving the way for subsequent advances in historical thinking. The British idealists, however, (...) were not as economical with their historical pronouncements as commonly believed. A more careful examination of their general writings and lesser known contributions reveals a more complex picture. One of stronger historical consciousness, knowledge of the philosophical developments in history, interest in its problems, and active involvement with historical scholarship. Further study will certainly illuminate the details of the entire character of British idealism with regard to its historical concerns. (shrink)

(1996). Is later British idealist political theory fundamentally conservative? 1. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 403-408.

This article investigates the relationship between two influential intellectual schools in late 19th century Britain, namely social evolutionary theories and British Idealism, by focusing on the work of D.G. Ritchie who drew inspiration from both sources. In particular, it argues that Ritchie's work can best be understood as an attempt to overcome certain metaphysical problems in the work of his teacher, T.H. Green, by integrating an Idealist account of social development with a Darwinian one, and analyses the effects (...) this synthesis has for his social and political thought. Ritchie's approach is also set in the context of developments in Victorian evolutionary theory and is contrasted with that of other influential Idealists, notably Bernard Bosanquet. More widely, it is claimed that examining Ritchie's synthesis sheds light on the degree to which the labels “idealist” and “positivist” can be reliably used in the later Victorian period, in the areas of both scientific and social investigation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Strange Death of British IdealismEdward SkidelskyIIn 1958, the Oxford philosopher G. J. Warnock opened his survey of twentieth-century English philosophy with some disparaging comments on British Idealism. It was, he writes, "an exotic in the English scene, the product of a quite recent revolution in ways of thought due primarily to German influences." Analytic philosophy, by contrast, represents a return to the venerable lineage of (...) British empiricism, as Bertrand Russell "symbolically joins hands" with his godfather John Stuart Mill. "Hume and Berkley would have been sadly puzzled by the pages of Bradley, to say nothing of Hegel's. But either might have conversed quite naturally with Moore, and with Russell too, at least in his less technical moments."1All this is rhetoric rather than history. Russell can be called the inheritor of Mill only with respect to his political and social attitudes; his main philosophical endeavour—the establishment of mathematics on a priori foundations—ran diametrically opposed to Mill. And Hume and Berkley would have been just as sadly puzzled by Moore's analysis of language—an activity they both regarded as the defining vice of scholasticism—as by anything in Bradley.Warnock's error has proved remarkably persistent. Only recently, thanks largely to the work of Peter Hylton, has the anti-empiricist, Platonist character of Russell's early thought been properly appreciated.2 I do not intend, in what follows, to retrace these philosophical arguments. My question is historical. It concerns the role of national feeling, first in the demise of Idealism after the First World War, and later in the interpretation of that demise after the Second. With regard to first question, I argue that the rejection of Idealism in Britain was in no sense [End Page 41] a reassertion of national tradition. The opposite is closer to the truth; the change in philosophical fashion was primarily a consequence of a widespread revulsion against nationalism following World War I. That this was later misinterpreted owes largely—and this is my second claim—to the very different climate prevailing in Britain after World War II. If in the twenties the British reserved their scorn for "Prussian militarism," in the fifties everything associated with Germany, its philosophy included, was viewed as irredeemably tainted. Analytic philosophy tried to present itself as a home-grown product, with deep roots in the English empiricist tradition. This partly accounts for the change in style from the highly technical scientism of Russell and the logical positivists to the concern with "ordinary language" characteristic of post-war Oxford philosophy. The fact that most of analytic philosophy's continental exponents were forced by Hitler into British or American exile assisted in the process of its naturalisation. Within a decade, it was possible to regard "analytic" and "Anglo-Saxon" philosophy as synonyms.Warnock's mistake now becomes easier to understand. He has interpreted the early twentieth century in the light of the post-war period, coming to the conclusion that Moore and Russell's rejection of Idealism was a reassertion of English national tradition. He has condensed fifty years of history into a single moment. I intend in what follows to pull apart the stages that Warnock has concertinaed together, demonstrating that national feeling played a far more complex and contradictory role in the history of British philosophy.IIOn one point Warnock is correct: Idealism did not perish of refutation. "Metaphysical systems do not yield...," he writes, "to frontal attack. Their odd property of being demonstrable only, so to speak, from within confers on them also a high resistance to attack from outside.... Such systems are much more vulnerable to ennui than to disproof" (Warnock, pp. 10–11). The claim of Russell and Moore to have "refuted" Bradley is regarded with scepticism by most recent commentators. Idealism, they point out, rested on something more substantial than a mere failure of logic or common-sense, and was therefore not vulnerable to the kind of simple knock-down arguments advanced by Russell and Moore. The causes of its decline must be sought elsewhere, in the broader cultural and political tendencies of the age.Had Russell and Moore's arguments been truly knock-down... (shrink)

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]. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is contended that British Idealists, New Liberals and Liberal Imperialists were all in favour of imperialism, especially when it took the form of white settler communities. The concession of relative autonomy was an acknowledgement of the potential of white settler communities to go the way of America by severing their relationship with the Empire completely. Where significant differences emerge in their thinking is in relation to non-white territories in the Empire where native peoples comprised the majority, and the (...) British Government and its agents administered in trust ‘lower’ peoples on the scale of civilisation with the ostensible goal of guiding them towards self-determination in the Empire. The differences in degree of commitment to these ideals were largely expressed in terms of the pejorative categories of ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ imperialism, which were flexible and manipulated for political gain, rather than analytic precision. Liberal Imperialists and New Liberals were opposed to each other in terms of the degree to which they supported imperialism, whereas British Idealists aligned themselves on both sides of the divide. (shrink)