War, Nations, and Democracy: Changes in the Civic Discourses of British Idealists in the Face of Imperial Conflict

Abstract: A number of recent studies have used the flat ontologies and other deflationary arguments in recent philosophy to argue for a return to Victorian materialisms, Darwinian and otherwise. In such views, the Victorian opponents of materialism end up coming across as conservative reactionaries. While such charges certainly have force, the opponents of materialism also had real philosophical weight behind their position. In particular, it's very difficult to see how any materialist philosopher, Victorian or Latourian, could answer the basic question of ethics: why should I be moral at all? If we center this question, the movement now termed "British idealism" looks more worthy of consideration than it might otherwise.

Abstract: Bernard Bosanquet's interpretation of Hegel's aesthetics offers a compelling model for imagining a novel theory that is inclusive instead of exclusive and which tends toward a broader imagining of the space of aesthetics. Unlike many dialectical thinkers, Bosanquet wishes to understand aesthetics in terms of all objects being produced—in a manner reminiscent of twenty-first-century distant reading. This essay suggests the value of Bosanquet, and perhaps of British idealism more generally, for beginning to imagine a way past the persistent debates (close vs. distant reading, critique vs. post-critique) of contemporary literary studies.

The purpose of this work is to provide a different perspective with which to look at the notion of liberty. In order to do this, it is necessary to refer to the two philosophical ideas of spontaneity and the sublime. These two ideas, which are substantially developed within the philosophical theories of J. S. Mill and Edmund Burke, are taken up by one of the last representatives of British idealism, Henry Jones. Jones's exploration of the philosophical ideas of spontaneity and the sublime, as developed within the theories of Mill and Burke, offers a novel perspective on the notion of liberty. By integrating these two ideas, Jones presents a coherent and unified understanding of freedom, making a significant contribution to the concept of liberty and demonstrating that true freedom can encompass both individual self-determination and a sense of interconnected responsibility towards others and the natural world. This integrated understanding enriches the discourse on freedom and opens up new avenues for exploring the complexities of human liberty.

Comparative to the commonplace focus onto developments in mathematics and physics, the life sciences appear to have received relatively sparse attention within the early history of analytic philosophy. This paper addresses two related aspects of this phenomenon. On the one hand, it asks: to the extent that the significance of the life sciences was indeed downplayed by early analytic philosophers, why was this the case? An answer to this question may be found in Bertrand Russell's 1914 discussions of the relation between biology and philosophy. Contrary to received views of the history of analytic philosophy, Russell presented his own 'logical atomism' in opposition not only to British Idealism, but also to 'evolutionism'. On the other hand, I will question whether this purported neglect of the life sciences does indeed accurately characterise the history of analytic philosophy. In answering this, I turn first to Susan Stebbing's criticisms of Russell's overlooking of biology, her influence on J.H. Woodger, and her critical discussion of T.H. Huxley's and C.H. Waddington's application of evolutionary views to philosophical questions. I then discuss the case of Moritz Schlick, whose evolutionist philosophy has been overlooked within recent debates concerning Logical Empiricism's relation to the philosophy of biology.

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the scholarship on Giuseppe Mazzini’s impact on British radicalism, through an analysis of British idealist engagements with his life and writings between 1858 and 1929. Section one introduces the topic. Section two sketches a background for the analysis, highlighting Mazzini’s place within the milieu of European exiles living in Britain from the 1840s to the 1870s, ultimately focusing on Mazzini’s engagements at Oxford. Section three explores the ways in which, despite areas of agreement, ultimately the Weltanschauung of the foundational figure in British idealist social and political thought and practice, Thomas Hill Green, differed fundamentally from that of Mazzini. Section four argues that despite these fundamental philosophical differences, Green’s practical political theory drew directly on Mazzini’s writings, although differing over the crucial issue of the proper role of the state in the republic. From this basis, section five analyses the engagements with Mazzini’s writings by the next generation of British idealists, especially John MacCunn. The analysis concludes that although in 1881 Toynbee had reasonable grounds for characterising Mazzini as ‘the true teacher of our age,’ this claim became increasingly unsustainable from the late 1880s onwards, as evolutionary theory came to ground British idealist political thought.

This paper began as an address at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Vereniging het Spinozahuis in Amsterdam in 1997. I trace the highlights of Spinoza reception and scholarship in the Anglo-American philosophical community from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Beginning with the British Idealists’ enthusiasm for Spinoza as a systematic metaphysician, I move through the indifference of the (anti-metaphysical) positivists to the renewal of interest among more naturalistically-minded analytical philosophers in the second half of the twentieth century. Along the way there are brief discussions of a few individual thinkers who engaged with Spinoza in especially interesting or influential ways, such as Caird, Santayana, Russell, Wolfson, Hampshire, and Curley.

This essay considers one important episode in the relationship between the British novel and the philosophical movement known as British Idealism. Focusing on two novels from the 1880s, Walter Pater'sMarius the Epicureanand Mary Augusta Ward'sRobert Elsmere, I show how both works adapt the generic framework of the bildungsroman to reflect a distinctively idealist notion of development, which conceives of ethical, spiritual, and aesthetic growth as a kind of death—a “dying to live.” Viewed, in this way, from beyond the grave, the early deaths of both Pater's and Ward's eponymous protagonists represent not a critique of the logic of bildung but its ultimate fulfillment.

Abstract This paper provides a new reading of the theology of Lux Mundi (1889), emphasising the creative and constructive theological leadership of Henry Scott Holland (1847–1918). A wide range of works by Holland are examined, showing his resistance to the philosophical Idealism of Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882). This usefully illustrates ways in which Holland provided inspiration for later Anglican Social Theology. Holland’s influence on key trends in Anglican interpretation of doctrine, including theories of sin, penitence, forgiveness, atonement, and sacrifice are explored with reference to the moral climates of both the finde-siècle and the Great War (1914–1918).

This article examines the relationship between British Idealist philosophy and modernist form, particularly the stream of consciousness technique. Idealism was ascendant from the 1870s to the 1920s, and the writer/philosopher May Sinclair participated in its conceptual discourse, finding the British Idealists’ contention that time is unreal an especially valuable insight for her literary agenda. For many of the idealists, time is unreal in the sense that multiple temporal series coexist within the universe or atemporal “Absolute.” This idea, which was debated in the journal Mind and elsewhere, played a significant role in the literary conception of “stream of consciousness,” a term first applied to literature by Sinclair in 1918. Considering the interplay of literature and philosophy during this period expands our understanding of the genealogy of modernist form and its effects. In particular, in evoking an experience of the timeless, for Sinclair stream of consciousness draws together authors, characters, and readers, generating among them complex investments, both ethical and ontological.

Rethinking Constant’s ancient liberty: Bosanquet’s modern Rousseauianism

The study presents the early period of the history of the Aristotelian society on the basis of the theoretical principles of network analysis by Randall Collins. The theoretical basis of network analysis has significant heuristic capabilities and help to understand the process of development of the Aristotelian Society, which has turned from a group of philosophy enthusiasts into a professional philosophical association. It is emphasized that quantitative criteria of periodization are problematic because they do not take into account the complex intellectual atmosphere in British philosophy of the late XIX–early XX century. The article discusses popular historical and philosophical cliches that simplify the reflection of this period only as an arena of rivalry between British idealists and analytical philosophers. The important role of Shadworth Hodgson as the first president of the Aristotelian Society is also considered.

Judith N. Shklar on disobedience and obligation in a “society of strangers”

Although an extensive literature on the British idealist theory of human rights exists, it is limited by its focus on prominent British idealist philosophers and its predominant interest in civic and political rights. This article broadens our understanding of the subject by examining the lesser-known British idealist John Stuart Mackenzie’s work on economic and social human rights. Mackenzie’s reflections on the matter appear to be significant as an early example of employing human rights language as a solution to widespread poverty and destitution in Britain. His use of a tripartite idealist perception of human nature allows Mackenzie to underline the complexity of human potential and human need that must be protected in all spheres of social interaction. In light of ongoing challenges to the legitimacy of economic and social rights as human rights, Mackenzie’s work constitutes a solid example of a maximalist approach to human rights that aims to not merely ensure survival but leads to the realization of a truly human life.

That the great Scottish man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) exercised a formative influence over late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century ‘British Idealism’ has long been recognized by historians. Through works such as Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), Heroes and Hero-Worship (1841), Past and Present (1843), and Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Carlyle transmitted his ideas regarding the immanence of the divine in nature and man, the infinite character of duty, and the ethical role of the state to a generation of subsequent philosophers. The following article will extend this insight, arguing that through the agency of an array of migrant Scottish intellectuals, Carlyle's writings made an equally significant contribution to the development of Idealism in English-speaking Canada.

British Idealism, Complexity Theory and Society: The Political Usefulness of T. H. Green in a Revised Conception of Social Democracy

russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (summer ): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn –; online – c:\users\ken\documents\rj\type\red\rj   red.docx -- : PM Reviews A NEW COMPANION TO RUSSELL STUDIES Aaron Preston Philosophy / Valparaiso U. Valparaiso, in –, usa aaron.preston@valpo.edu Russell Wahl, ed. The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell. London and NewYork: Bloomsbury Academic, . Pp. xviii, . us$. (hb). isbn: -----. his Companion is a most welcome guide, both to the thought of Bertrand Russell himself, and also to the evolving fields of Russell scholarship and the history of analytic philosophy, at the points where the two intersect.The book is comprised of fourteen essays covering not only the main areas of Russell ’s thought, but also some important historical and socio-disciplinary dimensions of Russell’s intellectual life. It also includes a helpful timeline of key events in Russell’s life, and a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography of works by and about Russell. Every last essay is top-notch. Every last essay is top-notch, and adds something new and interesting to our understanding of Russell’s thought. I can’t hope to do justice to any of them, let alone all of them, in this review.While I will try to say something informative about each one, limits both of space and of my own interests and competencies mean that I will end up saying more about some than others. The volume is divided into two parts, which I will discuss in turn. Part , “Russell in Context”, consists in five essays discussing Russell’s connections with British idealism (James Levine), Pragmatism (Cheryl Misak), Frege and Meinong (Bernard Linsky),Wittgenstein (Russell Wahl), and the Vienna Circle (François Schmitz). Levine’s chapter provides a detailed discussion of the ways in which Russell ’s engagement with British idealism influenced his philosophical development , beginning with his foray into idealism itself, moving on to Moorean realism, and finally into his post-Peano period. Of special interest to me was Levine’s discussion of the specific form of the ontological argument that famously converted Russell to Hegelianism. Why anyone would accept the soundness of any given form of the ontological argument is often a matter of T  Reviews c:\users\ken\documents\rj\type\red\rj   red.docx -- : PM great puzzlement, even for theists.Whether one finds such an argument compelling usually turns upon the ontological assumptions one brings to it, rather than the logic of the argument itself. So it was with Russell, who accepted it on the basis of a Bradleian view of the ontology of judgment. But this is just a single point in a very rich chapter exploring how idealism exerted an ongoing influence on Russell’s thinking in many different areas, including the nature of simples, propositions, relations, meaning, understanding, knowledge, time, magnitude, number and the nature of philosophy itself. Misak’s chapter successfully complicates the standard view that Russell “was resolutely antagonistic to pragmatism” (p. ). She demonstrates that his objections to pragmatism were directed mainly at the versions endorsed by Schiller, Dewey and above allWilliam James, but that Russell thought very highly of C. S. Pierce, and had leanings of his own that could be construed as “pragmatist” in nature. In fact, Ramsey claimed to embrace a pragmatism derived from Russell himself.What he meant, Misak explains, was that Russell endorsed “the pragmatist idea that a belief is a habit or disposition to behave, and can be evaluated as such” (p. ). One wonders, though, whether this ought to be described as a “pragmatist idea,” given that it originated with Alexander Bain, who is usually thought of as a “British Empiricist”, and that, as Misak discusses, it can be taken in a more extreme, behaviourist direction or a more moderate, pragmatist direction.That matter aside, Misak proceeds to discuss Russell’s visit to Harvard in .There his familiarity with Piercean pragmatism deepened through interactions with faculty and students, especially Josiah Royce, who was then recasting his personalistic idealism in light of Pierce’s theory of meaning. Misak shows that Russell’s time at Harvard gave him “a new, positive thought about what is good in...

Reviewed by: Being and the Cosmos: From Seeing to Indwelling by Robert E. Wood George Lucas WOOD, Robert E. Being and the Cosmos: From Seeing to Indwelling. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018. viii + 118 pp. Paper, $34.95 The intellectual sources of this book are many, varied, and impressive in their scope. But the spirit of the book seems most naturally akin to the long tradition of holistic evolutionary cosmology, from Friedrich Schelling to Samuel Alexander, Bergson, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin (and now even, apparently, Thomas Nagel). Citing the latter's turn toward a teleological conception of evolution in which human consciousness is the supervenient stage, Wood maintains that the cosmos itself manifests no sharp boundaries or distinctions between what is apparently physical, material, biological, psychological, or ultimately spiritual. It can be best understood instead as "the World (the 'Whole') coming, in time, to a conscious awareness of itself." The task of metaphysics is to defend this speculative cosmology, sorting out and displaying the temporal relationships between these domains of "seeing" or experience, describing their evolutionary emergence from one to the other in increasingly complex arrangements, while resisting the bifurcating and destructive dialectic both of reductionism and simplistic materialism on one hand, and of deconstruction(ism) and relativizing antifoundationalism on the other. The fundamental fallacy of these caustic (but only partial and limited) rival modes of explanation is what each invariably denies, overlooks, or omits, namely, the recognition of (and provision of room for) "interiority" or the inwardness of Being. The outwardly observable physical cosmos itself, and the varied "furniture" of this universe, we might observe, simply "has no insides," exhibiting only external mechanical relatedness. Neurophysiology based upon such truncated modes of thought, for example, cannot prove valid if it first germanders out of all consideration some of the most interesting and important features of neurocognitive experience that beg for explanation. This brief work consists of an introductory overview of this perspective, followed by four chapters on neuropsychology, the concept or notion of Being, what Professor Wood terms the "bipolarity" of human awareness, and a concluding chapter entitled "The Universe has an Inside," which provides a succinct summary of his evolutionary cosmology. All four chapters originated in lectures or presentations given by their author over several years, including three terms as president of the North Texas Philosophical Society. Three of these lectures were subsequently published, including one in this journal. Wood grounds his work in the organic holism of ancient Greek cosmology, for which his principal resources are Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas. This is certainly more than sufficient, but there are other allied and friendly authorities whose voices are either missing or perhaps (given this author's scholarly reach and erudition) tacitly presupposed in his graceful, summative philosophical perspective. R. G. Collingwood, for example, whose Idea of Nature traced the century's long competition between the organic and mechanistic-materialistic worldviews, showed how the profound insights of ancient Greek cosmology were once again [End Page 863] reasserting their authenticity in the contemporary era (precisely as Professor Wood does in these essays). My own esteemed teacher, the late British idealist philosopher Errol E. Harris, repeatedly espoused a modern, holistic (and organic) cosmology grounded in the natural sciences, along the lines that Wood defends in this treatise, in which Mind is likewise, in a very real evolutionary sense, "the World come to consciousness of Itself." Harris's highly regarded work Nature, Mind and Modern Science (1954) is cited in the author's bibliography. What distinguishes Wood's approach to speculative cosmic holism from these many other companionable and supporting conceptions is his derivation of Indwelling (the interiority of Being) from his own phenomenological analysis of "seeing," aided by the philosophical musings of the later Heidegger. He is highly critical, by contrast, of the limitations inherent in superficial representational or "picture-thinking" of materialist neurological accounts of Mind, like those of Daniel Dennett and Patricia and Paul Churchland, that claim explanatory adequacy and yet miss (or deliberately ignore) so much that a phenomenological bracketing discloses. Something like the phenomenological psychology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the author believes, is far closer to providing an adequate pathway toward...

Abstract That the great Scottish man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) exercised a formative influence over late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century ‘British Idealism’ has long been recognized by historians. Through works such as Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), Heroes and Hero-Worship (1841), Past and Present (1843), and Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Carlyle transmitted his ideas regarding the immanence of the divine in nature and man, the infinite character of duty, and the ethical role of the state to a generation of subsequent philosophers. The following article will extend this insight, arguing that through the agency of an array of migrant Scottish intellectuals, Carlyle’s writings made an equally significant contribution to the development of Idealism in Australia and New Zealand. In doing so, the article draws upon not only published treatises and monographs, but also speeches as reported in the local press, unpublished doctoral dissertations, and, in one notable case, archival sources. Together, these demonstrate beyond doubt the important and enduring contribution of Thomas Carlyle to Australasian Idealism.

British idealism and the concept of the self