School of thought
British Idealism
Movement
Classification
- Period
- c. 1865-1925 CE
- Regions
- europe
- Domains
- Metaphysics
Overview
British Idealism is the movement that took up Hegel's view that reality as a whole forms a single, all-encompassing rational system — the Absolute — whose character is ultimately mental or spiritual. Green, Bradley and Bosanquet built their systems on it, and for a generation it was the dominant academic philosophy in Britain. Josiah Royce developed a closely related absolute idealism in the United States, which this entry treats as a counterpart rather than as part of the British movement. Moore and Russell broke with it around 1900, and that break is where analytic philosophy begins.
Key ideas
- The Absolute: Reality is a single, all-inclusive, rational whole. Individual things, taken in isolation, are abstractions from that whole.
- Internal Relations: Relations help constitute the things they relate rather than merely connecting already independent items.
- Coherence Theory of Truth: Truth is understood through the coherence of beliefs within a comprehensive system.
Key figures
F. H. Bradley · T. H. Green · Bernard Bosanquet · J. M. E. McTaggart
Positions held
Influenced by
- German Idealism
Stirling's The Secret of Hegel (1865) opened a sustained British and American reception of Hegel, from which Green, Bradley, Bosanquet and Royce built their own systems of the Absolute.
Later connections
- Analytic Philosophy Reacted to this tradition
Russell's and Moore's rejection of British Idealism was a founding catalyst for the analytic movement.
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Idealism
- W. J. Mander, British Idealism: A History (Oxford University Press, 2011), ch. 1
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Idealism, §5 (British and American absolute idealism as a development of Hegel)
- Appearance and Reality — F. H. Bradley
- The Philosophy of Loyalty — Josiah Royce