Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T11:55:49.088Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Was Bosanquet a Hegelian?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

William Sweet
William Sweet*
Affiliation:
St Francis Xavier University
Get access

Abstract

It is generally held that 19th and early 20th century British Idealism was fundamentally Hegelian in character and the term ‘the British Hegelians’ has long been in common usage. Yet, particularly in recent years, it has been argued that some of the most influential British idealists were not Hegelians at all. T H Green may still be an idealist, and F H Bradley an ‘absolute idealist’ but, despite traces of Hegelian vocabulary or principles in their work, several scholars now hold that neither ought to be considered a disciple of Hegel. One might well wonder whether this is also true of Bernard Bosanquet, who has generally been regarded as the most Hegelian of the major idealists.

It is unlikely that Bosanquet would be offended in being called a Hegelian. In his metaphysics, his political philosophy and, particularly, his logic, Bosanquet draws on Hegel's insights and arguments. He saw his work as indebted to Hegel (specifically, to a tradition that traced its roots through Hegel, back to Kant, Rousseau and, ultimately, Plato) and, at the beginning of his philosophical career, Bosanquet criticised F H Bradley's logic for not having respected the principles laid out by Hegel beforehand. It is no surprise, then, that Bosanquet described Hegel as one of the two “great masters who 'sketched the plan’” (the other being Kant).

Still, it is hard to say what, precisely, is it that makes an author a ‘Hegelian’. Is it the use of Hegel's categories and terminology? Is it that the author is explicitly indebted to Hegel? Is it that the author's work shows an allegiance to Hegel's conclusions and that he sees himself as, at most, completing and extending what Hegel did? One might also ask, what type of Hegelian we have in mind – there are ‘left Hegelians’, ‘right Hegelians’ and so on. Of course, in attempting to trace such an intellectual debt, one must, as far as possible, try to distinguish what is distinctively Hegelian from what is to be found in earlier authors, but taken up by Hegel.

Type
Hegel and British Idealism
Information
Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 16 , Issue 1: number 31 , Spring/Summer 1995 , pp. 39 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For example, Peter Robbins uses the term as the title of his survey of British idealist political thought ( The British Hegelians, 1875-1925, New York, 1982)Google Scholar.

2 Mure, G R G, A Study of Hegel's Logic, Oxford: Clarendon, 1950, p 368 Google Scholar.

3 Copleston, F C, A History of Philosophy, Vol 8, Pt 1, Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1966, pp 215–216 Google Scholar.

4 It is increasingly accepted that Green is not a Hegelian (see Thomas, Geoffrey, The Moral Philosophy of T H Green, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987, pp 2, 6, 45–54)Google Scholar, and Peter Nicholson has argued at length that Bradley was not Hegelian – or, at least, not as Hegelian as usually held. See Nicholson, Peter P, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists: Selected Studies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990 Google Scholar.

5 Robinson, Jonathan, “Bradley and Bosanquet,” in Idealistic Studies, 10 (1980): 1–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Mure, G R G, An Introduction to Hegel, Oxford: Clarendon, 1940, pp 163–4Google Scholar.

6 Bosanquet also translated Hegel into English – sc, the Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art, London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co, 1866 Google Scholar.

7 Manser, Anthony, Bradley's Logic, Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1983, p 198 Google Scholar.

8 Muirhead, J H, Bernard Bosanquet and his Friends, London, 1935, p 21 Google Scholar.

9 In one of the standard studies of 19th-century idealism ( Neo-Hegelianism, London: Heath Cranton, Ltd., 1927)Google Scholar, Hiralal Haldar confesses that “I do not know whether Neo-Hegelianism is the right name to give to the movement.” But he insists that, “[w]hat must not be forgotten, however, is that the writers who may be said to belong to this school are in no sense disciples of Hegel. They have, no doubt, been strongly influenced by him, but each of them is a very independent thinker who has his own distinctive way of apprehending and expressing the central truths of idealism” (Preface, p v;). For further discussion of this term (concerning an earlier era), see Toews, John Edward, Hegelianism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980 Google Scholar.

10 See, for example, Chapters 9 and 10 of The Philosophical Theory of the State.

11 The main texts that will be referred to here are The Philosophical Theory of the State (PTS), London, 1899 Google Scholar; 4th ed, 1923; The Principle of Individuality and Value (PIV), London, 1912 Google Scholar; The Value and Destiny of the Individual (VDI), London, 1913 Google Scholar; “The Function of the State in Promoting the Unity of Mankind” (FS), (in Social and International Ideals: Being Studies in Patriotism, London, 1917, pp 270–301 Google Scholar), and Some Suggestions in Ethics (SS), London, 1918 Google Scholar.

12 See my Idealism and Rights: The Social Ontology of Human Rights in the Political Thought of Bernard Bosanquet, Lanham, MD: University of America Press (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

13 See my “L'individu et les droits de la personne selon Maritain et Bosanquet,” In Études Maritainiennes / Maritain Studies, No 6 (juin 1990): 141-166, esp. pp 157–158 Google Scholar.

14 In addition to the texts noted above, see also Bosanquet's Psychology of the Moral Self, London, 1897 Google Scholar.

15 Psychology, p 9.

16 See Bosanquet, , “Do Finite Individuals Possess a Substantive or Adjectival Mode of Being?”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, ns XVIII (1917–1918):479–506 Google Scholar; reprinted, with a response to his critics, A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, G F Stout and R B Haldane, in Life and Finite Individuality (LFI), (ed H Wildon Carr), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppvol 1 (1918): 75–102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 179-194.

17 See Psychology, pp 87-88, 94. The capacity of an individual to acquire and to use a moral language as depending on the social community was also noted by Bradley. (See David Crossley, “Bradley on the Absolute Rights of the State over the Individual”, in Éthique et droits fondamentaux/Ethics and Basic Rights, (ed Guy Lafrance), “Collection Philosophica”, Ottawa: Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa, 1989, pp 138–144, p 140)Google Scholar

18 As an illustration of how recognition works, Bosanquet provides the example of the relation between the pupils and teachers in a school (PTS 159-161). For the elaboration of his argument, see my “Liberalism, Bosanquet and the Theory of the State,” in Liberalism, Oppression and Empowerment, Hudson, Yeager and Peden, Creighton (eds), Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1994 Google Scholar.

19 Bosanquet's view seems to be that being a person by itself entails a position. Thus, he speaks of “the finite intelligent human being” as having “the duty and position… of coming to himself and awakening to his own nature and his unity… a greater mind and will” ( Bosanquet, , “The Meaning of Teleology,” in Proceedings of the British Academy, II (1905–1906): 235-245, at p 245)Google Scholar. See also PTS 191-2 and “The Kingdom of God on Earth” (KG), in Science and Philosophy and Other Essays by the late Bernard Bosanquet, (eds Muirhead, J H and Bosanquet, R C), London, 1927, at pp 342–4Google Scholar.

20 Pringle-Pattison, Andrew Seth, The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy, Oxford, 1920 Google Scholar, cited in Vincent, Andrew, “The Individual in Hegelian Thought,” in Idealistic Studies, 12 (1982):156–168, p 163CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 See Pringle-Pattison's contribution to the symposium on “Do Finite Individuals Possess a Substantive or an Adjectival Mode of Being?”, in Life and Finite Individuality, (ed. H. Wildon Carr), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp vol I, (1918): 103–126, p 109Google Scholar.

22 See Psychology, p. 51: “Self-consciousness… is for the most part social”.

23 See also Bradley, , Ethical Studies (ES), 2nd ed, Oxford, 1927, p 168 Google Scholar. The individual “into whose essence his community with others does not enter, who does not include relations to others in his very being is, we say, a fiction…”. Stefan Collini outlines the background and some of the difficulties of this position in “Sociology and Idealism in Britain: 1880-1920”, Archives européennes de sociologie, 19 (1978): 3–50, pp 11-12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Vincent, p 157.

25 See Vincent, p 166, on value.

26 Unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent references to Hegel, are to Hegel's Philosophy of Right, translated by Knox, T M, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945 Google Scholar.

27 Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by Miller, A V, Oxford, 1977 Google Scholar.

28 “[I]t becomes open to him, on the strength of his skill, to enter any class for which he is qualified…” (§308 zusatz, 201).

29 Hegel writes that “it is only as one of its [ie, the state's] members that the individual himself has objectivity, genuine individuality and an ethical life” (§258 zusatz, 156).

30 See §258 on the relation of the substantial will to the particular self-consciousness. See also Taylor, Charles, Hegel, Cambridge, 1975, pp 379–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoting Die Vernunft in die Geschichte, ed Hoffineister, J, Hamburg, 1955, p 112 Google Scholar. (This is very close to Bosanquet's own phrasing, though there is no evidence that Bosanquet had access to this text).

31 Still, the value of physical individuals by themselves may seem rather doubtful. Their contribution to world history is real, but they are “the unconscious tools and organs of the world mind at work within them” (§344) and, for this contribution, “they receive no honour or thanks either from their contemporaries or from public opinion in later ages” (§348).

32 Bosanquet says that, on Aristotle's view, the ‘end’ is both “the completion of a positive whole which is developing through a process, and the cessation of the process itself (PIV 124), though it is the former sense which is fundamental (PIV 129; see PIV 135).

33 Vincent, p 163.

34 Mure, , An Introduction to Hegel, pp 42–43 and 32-33Google Scholar.

35 A Companion to Plato's Republic for English Readers: Being a Commentary adapted to Davies and Vaughan's Translation, New York: Macmillan, 1895, pp 63, 82 Google Scholar. One finds this view also underlying Plato's account of the happiness of the guardians, discussed at the beginning of Book IV of the Republic.

36 For a discussion of the relation of the Aristotelian and Bradlean notions, see Crossley, David, “Self-Realization as Perfection in Bradley's Ethical Studies ”, Idealistic Studies, VII (1977): 199–220 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Republic 407e. See The Republic of Plato, translated by Cornford, F M, Oxford, 1941, p 97 Google Scholar.

38 One might add that there are, in fact, differences in each's account of the value of the individual. On Hegel's view (and, similarly, Bradley's [see Essays on Truth and Reality, Oxford, 1914, pp 243–4Google Scholar]), the biological individual appears to have little, if any, inherent value. For Bosanquet, however, “[t]he will or character which is the atmosphere of values and shares their quality is itself a value… [and has] a value of its own” (SS 132) and that “we have an undeniable human value of a distinct and universal type, in which there cannot be a human creature who is not a partaker in some mode or degree” (SS 77). Again, in his essay, “Unvisited Tombs,” (Some Suggestions in Ethics, chapter 4), Bosanquet reminds his reader of the value of the contribution of the ‘anonymous’ individual to the social good, and he repeats this view – that individuals characterise the world “as permanent qualifications” (LFI 101) – throughout his work.

39 For a similar view, see Bradley, ES 162, 173-174, n 1

40 Harris, Frederick Philip, The Neo-Idealist Political Theory: Its Continuity with the British Tradition. New York: King's Crown Press, 1944, p 40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See my discussion of this controversial notion in Idealism and Rights, op cit.

42 On this point, see Bradley's similar view (ES 174).

43 According to Bosanquet, “[i]f you start with a human being as he is in fact, and try to devise what will furnish him with… a stable purpose capable of doing justice to his capacities… you will be driven on by the necessity of the facts at least as far as the State” (PTS 140).

44 Thus, Bosanquet says that “…there is logic underneath the apparent accident…” (PTS 172), and this ‘logic’ is related to the “unity of communal experience” (FS 283). See also FS 275.

45 See SS 58, 148 and 159.

46 This, Bosanquet writes, is the “distinctive attribute” or work of the state (See PTS 174-175).

47 For Bosanquet's scepticism about the possibility of effective international political organizations, see “The Wisdom of Naaman's Servants,” in Social and International Ideals: Being Studies in Patriotism, London: Macmillan, 1917, pp 302-320, esp pp 314–315 Google Scholar, and FS. It was, interestingly, a scepticism shared by Bertrand Russell (FS 282, n. 1; FS 293). But, by 1919, Bosanquet does seem to hold out some hope for a ‘world-State’ (FS 294) or “League of Nations” (PTS lix). This question is discussed by Nicholson, Peter P in “Philosophical Idealism and International Politics: A Reply to Dr. Savigear,” British Journal of International Studies, 2 (1976): 76-83, pp 78–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Vincent, Andrew and Plant, Raymond, Philosophy, Politics and Citizenship: the Life and Thought of the British Idealists, Oxford, 1984, p 104 and footnote 50Google Scholar.

49 See PTS Chapter 3 and Nicholson, 1990, p. 214. Nicholson also notes that “[democracy is the political and social system best able to allow Bosanquet's social logic to work itself out and the General Will to emerge” (op cit, pp 217-218).

50 Bosanquet cites Kant (PTS 226; see Kant, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre [1797] in Die Metaphysik der Sitten, 2. Teil, 1. Abschnitt, ed. Benzion Kellermann, in Kant's, Werke, Band 7, ed Cassirer, Ernst, (Berlin, 1916), S 47, p 122)Google Scholar, noting that the “free mind” cannot exist “[e]xcept by expressing itself in relation to an ordered life” (PTS 236). By ‘liberty’, then, Bosanquet does not mean simply allowing individuals to do as they choose. “Liberty” means having the opportunity to be “the best that we have it in us to be”, that is, to realise ourselves (PTS 119). Thus, the freedom or self-realisation of an individual is something objective and distinct from what he or she may want; it is, Bosanquet would point out, rather what he or she needs.

51 But see Bosanquet's letter to MacIver, where he says that “the good for man… is not… the end of any [other?] [sic] social institution”. Still, Bosanquet is not thinking of ‘ethical ideas’ here, but specific social groups, such as the church, and he acknowledges that even “each of them” [have] a limited aim making for good life; none has for its aim good life as such” (quoted in Harris, p 68).

52 See also PIV 311 and the letters to MacIver cited in Harris, pp 68-70.

53 Stefan Collini, “Hobhouse, Bosanquet and the State: Philosophical Idealism and Political Argument in England: 1880-1918,” Past and Present, 72 (1976): 86-111, p 95.

54 See Bosanquet's, essay, “Hegel's Theory of the Political Organism”, in Mind, ns Vol VII, No 25 (1898): 1–14 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is largely a response to McTaggart, J M E, “The Conception of Society as an Organism,” in International Journal of Ethics, VII (1896–1897): 414–434 Google Scholar (reprinted, with minor revisions, as Chapter 7 of Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, Cambridge, 1901)Google Scholar.

55 See ES 184.

56 “The object of political philosophy is to understand what a State is, and it is not necessary for this purpose that the State which is analysed… be ‘ideal’…” (PTS 232).

57 For an argument that this was not merely fortuitous or unnecessary, but essential, to Hegel's project, see Brudner, Alan, “Constitutional Monarchy as the Divine Regime: Hegel's Theory of the Just State,” in History of Political Thought, II (1981): 119–140 Google Scholar.

58 Avinieri, Shlomo, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, p 183 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, referring to §258, addition.

59 Bosanquet notes in FS that he is “a good deal surprised that nearly all recent critics have stumbled… in this simple matter of interpretation”, and that Hegel himself pointed out the difference between talking about “states” and talking about “the state” (See Philosophy of Right, §258 zusatz, 156). Bosanquet asks whether his critics would “find the same difficulty in the title of a book on ‘the heart’ or “the steam engine’” (FS 274-275).

60 Hobhouse, Leonard T, The Metaphysical Theory of the State, London, 1918 Google Scholar.

61 Randall, p 97.

62 Though, according to G A Kelly, Hegel does hold that state and society are mutually supportive or reciprocal, and that “both rehearse a secularizing dialectic” ( Hegel's Retreat from Eleusis: studies in political thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, p 115 Google Scholar; see also pp 111-2).

63 Robbins refers to the British idealists’ “anaemic reciprocity” as replacing Hegel's dialectic (p 76).

64 Sabine, George, A History of Political Theory. 4th ed, Hinsdale, IL: The Dryden Press, 1973, p 585 Google Scholar.

65 Hegel criticised Rousseau's account of the “general will”, arguing that (i) while Rousseau formally distinguishes the “general will” from “the will of all”, in the end they are conflated, and (ii), that Rousseau fails to see that the universal will is identical to the will of the state in law and in actually existing institutions.

66 While he does not explicitly address this question, I am indebted here to von Trott's, Adam article, “B. Bosanquet und der Einfluß Hegels auf die englische Staatsphilosophie,” Zeitschrift für Deutsche Kulturphilosophie, (Tübingen), Vol 4, No 2 (1938): 193–199 Google Scholar.

67 See von Trott, p 198.

68 See Politics, Book I, Chapter 2, 1252b 30-33: “[f]or what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature…” (tr. Jowett, Benjamin, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed McKeon, Richard, New York: Random House, 1941)Google Scholar.

69 “It would then be easy to show… that the principles which will have been recognised as operative in the freest states known to history, are and have been, in various degrees, at the root of the common life of every state or community which has held together effectively enough to be treated as in any sense a political whole” (PTS 50, emphasis mine).

70 See Hegel's comments concerning the regimes of feudal times, noted above.

71 Robbins, p 75. Bosanquet has also been accused (eg, by A E Taylor) of Hegelianizing the Platonic tradition (Robbins, p 75 and note 17 and Taylor, , The Faith of a Moralist, London, 1930, series 1, pp 241–243 Google Scholar).

72 Robbins, p 76. See also Mure's comparison of Plato, and Hegel, in The Philosophy of Hegel, p 170 Google Scholar and Hegel at §262, addition, p 280. As Steven Smith writes (in Hegel's Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context, University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar, “the core of the modern state is, then, respect for the person, or ‘free personality', as such. This is very different… from the Greek world” (p 212).

73 In fact, von Trott says that Bosanquet depends less than Hegel on the Greco-Roman tradition and more on that arising from the Reformation - ie that of secular natural law and the moral/religious atmosphere of England (op cit, p 195).

74 “The Kingdom of God on Earth,” op cit.

75 RM MacIver has described Bosanquet's theory as “an applied hellenism” (“Society and the State,” in Philosophical Review, XX (1911): 30–45, p 34Google Scholar). Similarly, while acknowledging the “Hegelian” character of Bosanquet (p 305), a near contemporary, Murray, Robert, describes Bosanquet as a “Platonist” (Studies in the English Social and Political Thinkers of the 19th Century, Cambridge, 1929, p 311)Google Scholar.

76 See Bosanquet's A Companion to Plato's Republic for English Readers, op cit.

77 Randall, p 98.

78 Even when one turns to Bosanquet's major metaphysical works, there are more references to F E Bradley or T E Green than to Hegel.

79 The continuity of British idealism with Greek philosophy has been signalled by Muirhead, J H in The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy, London: Allen and Unwin, 1931 Google Scholar. The “revival of Plato” in 19th century Britain is also discussed in Turner's, Frank M. The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981 Google Scholar. (Turner's cursory account describes Bosanquet as a disciple of “Platonic regimentation” [op cit, p 440].)

80 See Muirhead, , Friends, p 21 Google Scholar.