You're Here:
Home > Introduction
British Idealism established its roots in Scotland and Oxford in the late nineteenth century. It quickly, through the works of such philosophers as T.H. Green, Edward Caird and F.H. Bradley (see chapter 1) became a very influential movement, perhaps the most important British philosophy of its time. The ideas also spread to other countries within the English-speaking world.
The Idealists made original contributions to politics, philosophy of religion, ethics and other branches of philosophy. Central to their ideas is a philosophically Idealist view of the world, which, for them, firstly means that reality doesn’t exist independent of perception, and second, for many, that there was an underlying mental principle behind everything.
Upon the turn of the century, the Idealist views were challenged and British Idealism lost much of its influence. However, through the works of R.G. Collingwood and Michael Oakeshott, the movement remained important – although Collingwood’s and Oakeshott’s views are clearly different from those of the earlier Idealists – throughout the first half of the twentieth century.
Through this project, I hope to outline the British Idealist movement and its connections to philosophical and societal issues in history and of its own day. I also will analyse the idealism in British Idealism – as compared to philosophpcal and practical forms of idealism.
I however don’t intend to be comprehensive in my outline of the movement, because there are many philosophers related to the movement and they hold opinions on virtually any topic in philosophy – from ethics to metaphysics and from philosophy of religion to aesthetics. While I do intend to give an overview of the main ideas held by the philosophers of the British Idealist movement and how they relate to philosophical and societal issues, this is by far not a complete survey of the movement.
For my project, I’ll use primary sources by philosophers counted among the British Idealist movement as well as secondary works written about the philosophers and works by and about philosophers and philosophical movements that had an influence on British Idealism. I’ll also (in chapter five) analyse the British society of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, using both sources outlining these conditions and philosophical texts discussing them.
Summarising, in my project on British Idealism, I hope to outline some – though by far not all - of the important manifestations of the movement and how they relate to philosophical movements in British history and on the continent and to societal conditions in Britain.