Personal Idealism

Abstract

The Scottish philosopher, Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (1856–1931), was one of the editors of Essays in Philosophical Criticism, the volume, as we said in the last chapter, that is credited with making known the wide range and scope of British interest in Hegel.1 Two years later he published, Scottish Philosophy, in which he argued that Hegelian philosophy should be understood as a partner with Scottish realism in its critique of Kant, Hamilton and the British empiricists. Thus, in 1887, when he published, Hegelianism and Personality, a book sharply critical of the Hegelian tendency to identify divine and human consciousness, his friends were surprised and thought that he was abandoning the Hegelian approach to philosophy. In fact, he was not so much abandoning Hegelianism as he was developments in the absolutist wing of Hegelianism. This book led to what some have called a revolution in the Hegelian camp resulting in an opposition movement to the absolutism of Bradley and Bosanquet. This movement came to be called personal idealism.KeywordsPersonal IdealismMoral IdealNatural TheologyMoral ExperienceTeleological ExplanationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.