McTaggart, John Ellis

McTaggart, John Ellis 

Born Sept. 3, 1866, in London; died there Jan. 18, 1925. English idealist philosopher. Taught at Cambridge University from 1897.

McTaggart interpreted Hegelian philosophy from the standpoint of radical personalism, combining it with Leibniz’ doctrine of monads. The Absolute Idea is not a subject-substance, as it is in Hegel, but a “spiritual community” of individuals. There is no supraindividual consciousness; instead, individual consciousness is the timeless substance of the world. McTaggart concluded that the soul is immortal, irrespective of the acceptance of the idea of God. It is characteristic of McTaggart that he upheld “some dogmas of religion” and declared that “true philosophy ought to be mystical.”

WORKS

Some Dogmas of Religion. London, 1906.
A Commentary on Hegel’s Logic. Cambridge, 1910.
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1918.
Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1922.
The Nature of Existence, vols. 1-2. Cambridge, 1968.

REFERENCES

Kissel’, M. A. “D. M.-Taggart i ego kontseptsiia dialektiki.” Vestnik LGU: Seriia ekonomiki, filosofii i prava, 1963, vol. 1, no. 5.
Broad, C. D. Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy, vols. 1-2. Cambridge, 1933-38.

M. A. KISSEL’