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British Idealism was an important philosophical movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, mainly in Oxford and Scotland – although some Idealists, such as McTaggart and Oakeshott, studied at Cambridge. The movement was influential in Britain an throughout the English-speaking world.

British Idealists adopted philosophically Idealist views – ie. reality as it is perceived does not exist independently of the perceiver. They used the Idealist viewpoint in uniting opposing issues in such domains as politics, religion and history – for instance, Socialism and individualism or faith and reason. As a result, the British Idealists made original contributions to many domains of philosophy.

The Idealists were highly influenced by philosophical movements both within Britain and on the Continent. While their views of British philosophical movements such as empiricism and utilitarianism were mostly negative, they were greatly, positively influenced by the German Idealists, such as Kant and Hegel. Most British Idealists adopted Absolute Idealism, which is derived from Hegelianism, although they did not agree to the dialectical method of Hegel’s. See for more information section 1.2 and chapters three and four.

The British Idealists were also active in social work and politics. Most can be seen as social liberals politically. Many of the British Idealists worked to gain access to social settings such as university for women and worked actively towards the inclusion of the poor, for example through university settlement programmes. Although opinions differred about whether philosophy could significantly contribute to society, most Idealists took a clear stand on social and political issues. See also sections 1.2, 2.2 and 5.1.

It must also be stated here, that the Idealists’ liberal stance also extended to some non-political domains in their philosophy, for example T.H. Green’s ideas on religion, opposing dogmatic creeds (see section 1.2).

The Idealists cannot that I know of be seen as active in the philosophy of the natural sciences, but they did apply a discovery within biology – that of evolution – to their social philosophy, because they compared the evolution of species to that of societies.

It can, therefore, be concluded that the Idealists held philosophically Idealist views, mostly derived from Hegel, and applied these viewpoints in philosophies on all sorts of topics – ranging from politics to religion and from ethics to history. Metaphysics and epistemology were of course also important, but they mostly are the grounds for the Idealist philosophy.