Bosanquet, Bernard

Bosanquet, Bernard (bō`zənkĭt), 1848–1923, English philosopher, educated at Oxford. He lectured there (1871–81) and at St. Andrews (1903–8). His major works include A History of Aesthetic (1892), The Philosophical Theory of the State (1899), and The Value and Destiny of the Individual (1913). They exemplify the idealists' discontent with British empiricism at the end of the 19th cent.

Bibliography

See biography by H. Bosanquet (1924); J. H. Muirhead, ed., Bernard Bosanquet and His Friends (1935).

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Bosanquet, Bernard

(born June 14, 1848, Alnwick, Northumberland, Eng.—died Feb. 8, 1923, London) British philosopher. He helped revive in Britain the absolute idealism of G.W.F. Hegel and sought to apply its principles to social and political problems. His debt to Hegel is most evident in his works on ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. His Some Suggestions in Ethics (1918) presents a view of reality as a synthesis in which traditional oppositions such as pleasure/duty and egoism/altruism are reconciled. His other works include Knowledge and Reality (1885), Logic (1888), and History of Aesthetic (1892). His idealism was attacked by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell.