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. 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.