Bernard Bosanquet

Bernard Bosanquet (; 14 June 1848 – 8 February 1923) was an English philosopher and political theorist, and an influential figure on matters of political and social policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work influenced but was later subject to criticism by many thinkers, notably Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Bernard was the husband of Helen Bosanquet, the leader of the Charity Organisation Society, and the brother of scientist and music theorist Robert Bosanquet and Admiral Day Bosanquet.

Life Born at Rock Hall near Alnwick, Bosanquet was the son of Robert William Bosanquet, a Church of England clergyman. He was educated at Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford. He gained first class honours in Classical Moderations (Greek and Latin), 1868, and in Literae Humaniores (a combination of philosophy and ancient history), 1870. After graduation, he was elected to a Fellowship at University College, Oxford, but, after receiving a substantial inheritance upon the death of his father in 1880, resigned it in order to devote himself to philosophical research. He moved to London in 1881, where he became an active member of the London Ethical Society and the Charity Organisation Society. Both were positive demonstrations of Bosanquet's ethical philosophy. Bosanquet published on a wide range of topics, such as logic, metaphysics, aesthetics and political philosophy. In his metaphysics, he is regarded as a key representative (with F. H. Bradley) of absolute idealism, although it is a term that he abandoned in favour of "speculative philosophy".

He was one of the leaders of the so-called neo-Hegelian philosophical movement in Great Britain. During this time, when absolute idealism was in vogue in Britain, Bosanquet was one of the most dominant figures in British philosophy. However since the decline of that movement, he has been largely forgotten.

Bosanquet was strongly influenced by Plato and Aristotle, but also by the German philosophers Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Among his best-known works are The Philosophical Theory of the State (1899), his Gifford lectures, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912) and The Value and Destiny of the Individual (1913).

Bosanquet was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1894 to 1898.

Idealist social theory

In his Encyclopedia, Section 95, Hegel had written about "the ideality of the finite." This obscure, seemingly meaningless, phrase was interpreted as implying that "what is finite is not real" because the ideal is understood as being the opposite of the real. Bosanquet was a follower of Hegel and the "central theme of Bosanquet's idealism was that every finite existence necessarily transcends itself and points toward other existences and finally to the whole. Thus, he advocated a system very close to that in which Hegel had argued for the ideality of the finite."

Works

Books Athenian Constitutional History, as represented in Grote's History of Greece, critically examined by G. F. Schoemann, translated by B. Bosanquet et al. (1878) A History of Aesthetic (1892, second edition 1904) Knowledge and Reality: A Criticism of Mr. F.H. Bradley's Principles of Logic (1885) The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art translated and edited (1886) Logic, or The Morphology of Knowledge in two volumes: Volume 1, Volume 2 (1888; revised edition 1911) The Civilization of Christendom, and Other Studies (1893) Essentials of Logic; Being Ten Lectures on Judgment and Inference (1895) Companion to Plato's Republic for English Readers, Being a Commentary Adapted to Davies and Vaughan's Translation (1895) Essays and Addresses (1889) The Philosophical Theory of the State (1899) Psychology of the Moral Self (1904) The Meaning of Teleology: A lecture read to the British Academy in 1906 The Principle of Individuality and Value, Macmillan, 1912. (Gifford Lectures, 1910–12) The Value and Destiny of the Individual, Macmillan, 1923. (Gifford Lectures, 1910–12) The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects (1913) Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915) Social and International Ideals: Being Studies in Patriotism (1917) Some Suggestions in Ethics (1919) Croce's Aesthetic: A lecture read to the British Academy in 1919 Implication and Linear Inference (1920) What Religion Is (1920) The Meetings of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy (1921)

Articles Review of Benno Erdmann's Logik. Bd. 1. Logische Elementarlehre (Halle: Niemeyer 1892) by Bosanquet in Mind (1892), N.S. No. 2