Bernard Bosanquet, FBA (; 14 June 1848 – 8
February 1923) was a British 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 and William James. Bernard
was the husband of Charity Organisation Society
leader Helen 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.
After graduation, he was elected to a Fellowship
at University College, Oxford, but, after
receiving a substantial inheritance, 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 politics. 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. He was strongly influenced by the
ancient Greek philosophers 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."The relation
of the finite individual to the whole state
in which he/she lives was investigated in
Bosanquet's Philosophical Theory of the State
(London, 1899). In this book, he "argued that
the state is the real individual and that
individual persons are unreal by comparison
with it." But Bosanquet did not think that
the state has a right to impose social control
over its individual citizens. "On the contrary,
he believed that if society is organic and
individual, then its elements can cooperate
apart from a centralised organ of control,
the need for which presupposes that harmony
has to be imposed upon something that is naturally
unharmonious."The relationship between the
individual and society was summarised in Bosanquet's
preface to The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy
of Fine Art (1886):
Man's Freedom, in the sense thus contemplated,
lies in the spiritual or supra-sensuous world
by which his humanity is realized, and in
which his will finds fulfilment. The family,
for example, property, and law are the first
steps of man's freedom. In them the individual's
will obtains and bestows recognition as an
agent in a society whose bond of union is
ideal — i.e. existing only in consciousness
; and this recognition develops into duties
and rights. It is in these that man finds
something to live for, something in which
and for the sake of which to assert himself.
As society develops he lives on the whole
more in the civilized or spiritual world,
and less in the savage or purely natural world.
His will, which is himself, expands with the
institutions and ideas that form its purpose,
and the history of this expansion is the history
of human freedom. Nothing is more shallow,more
barbarously irrational, than to regard the
progress of civilization as the accumulation
of restrictions. Laws and rules are a necessary
aspect of extended capacities. (p. xxvii)
== Works ==
=== Books ===
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 Philosophical Theory of The State (1899/2001),
Kitchener: Batoche Books
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 Essentials of Logic, being ten lectures
on Judgment and Inference (1895)
Essays and Addresses (1891)
A History of Aesthetic (1892, second edition
1904)
The Civilization of Christendom, and other
studies (1893)
A Companion to Plato's Republic for English
readers (1895)
The Education of the Young in the Republic
of Plato translated from Books 2,3 and 4(1901)
Psychology of the Moral Self (1904)
The Meaning of Teleology: a lecture read to
the British Academy in 1906
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
== References ==
== External links ==
"Bosanquet, Bernard". Encyclopædia Britannica
(12th ed.). 1922.
Bernard Bosanquet – Encyclopædia Britannica,
1998
Sweet, William. "Bernard Bosanquet". In Zalta,
Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Bernard Bosanquet page
Archives Hub: Bosanquet Papers
Sweet, William. "Bernard Bosanquet". The Thoemmes
Encyclopedia of the History of Ideas. Archived
from the original on April 24, 2006.
