Abstract
During the eighteenth century, British works on the history of philosophy were very limited and absolutely incomparable not only to the great German historiographical production, but even to the much more modest works produced in France or in Italy during the same period. In the field of the historiography of philosophy, no important original work in English appeared before the Dissertation: Exhibiting the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical and Political Philosophy since the Revival of Letters in Europe by the Scotsman Dugald Stewart, which was published in two parts, in 1815 and in 1821 respectively, in the form of an essay preliminary to the supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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Notes
- 1.
James Mackintosh, who in September 1816 reviewed the first part of Stewart’s dissertation, acknowledged with great honesty the poverty and the delay shown by British philosophical culture in this field: “In later times, the Germans have cultivated this department more successfully than any other nation. Tiedemann’s Spirit of Speculative Philosophy is a book of great value to inquirers into this subject. Fülleborn’s Contributions to the History of Philosophy, Buhle’s History of modern Philosophy, are useful publications. Tennemann’s History of Philosophy (not yet completed) is the best work on the subject which the Continent has produced […]. In other Continental countries, we know of no attempts worthy of particular notice, since the excellent fragments of Gassendi [i.e. De philosophia universe and De origine et varietate logicae liber unus in Gassendi, Opera Omnia (Lyon, 1658) vol. I, pp. 1–30 and 35–66; cf. Models, I, p. 138]. The first general history (only indeed of ancient) philosophy, on a large scale, in modern times, was that of Stanley, formed on the model of Gassendi […]. It is a work of uncommon merit for the time in which it was written, and continued during more than a century to be the standard book on this subject for all Europe, until it was succeeded by Brucker. Since Stanley, we [in Britain] have had no general work of this kind, but some abridgments of more or less perspicuity and convenience” (Edinburgh Review, XXVII, no. 53, Sept. 1816, pp. 190–191).
- 2.
Stanley’s History was first published in 1655–1662, subsequent editions appeared in 1687 and in 1701; the fourth edition appeared in 1743; a Latin translation, first published at Leipzig in 1711 and edited by the German theologian and erudite scholar Gottfried Olearius, brought Stanley’s work fame and diffusion throughout Europe; on the editions of Stanley’s work, see Models, I, pp. 176–179.
- 3.
J.-H.-S. Formey, A Concise History of Philosophy and Philosophers (London: F. Newbery, 1766; another edition: Glasgow: R. Urie, 1767); Formey’s compendium had first appeared in French in Amsterdam in 1760 (German translation: Berlin, 1763). On Formey’s manual, cf. Models, III, pp. 477–482.
- 4.
W. Enfield, The History of Philosophy from the Earliest Times to the Beginnings of the Present Century, drawn up from Brucker’s Historia Critica Philosophiae (London: Joseph Johnson, 1791; successive editions: 1792, 1819, 1837, 1840). On Enfield’s historiographical work, cf. Models, III, pp. 438–443.
- 5.
On the organisation of the Humanities in English universities and in the Academies for dissenters in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, cf. I. Parker, Dissenting Academies in England: their Rise and Progress and their Place among the Educational System of the Country (Cambridge, 1914); G. Haines, German Influence upon English Education and Science, 1800–1866 (New London, 1957), in particular pp. 1–16; A.P.F. Sell, Philosophy, Dissent, and Nonconformity, 1689–1920 (Cambridge, 2004). Until 1854 an intending Oxford undergraduate could not matriculate without first subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles; a Cambridge graduand had to profess himself a member of the Church of England, failing this he could not take a degree.
- 6.
For example, it appears that in August 1797 R. Southey and S.T. Coleridge borrowed Brucker’s volumes from the Bristol Library, and previously, in October 1793 and again in March 1795, they had borrowed Enfield’s volumes. Cf. G. Whalley, ‘The Bristol Library Borrowings of Southey and Coleridge, 1793–98’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, September 1949, pp. 114–132; see also Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Oxford, 1956), I, pp. 321, 323, 324, and 554.
- 7.
On “philosophical history” and the Scottish Enlightenment, cf. Models, III, pp. 383–472.
- 8.
W. Anderson, The Philosophy of Ancient Greece, Edinburgh: Smellie, 1791; cf. Models, III, pp. 397–400.
- 9.
On 5th May 1796, referring to his future journey to Germany, Coleridge wrote to Thomas Poole: “[…] I should there study Chemistry and Anatomy, and bring over with me all the works of Semler and Michaelis, the German Theologians, and of Kant, the great German Metaphysician […]” (Coleridge, Collected Letters, I, p. 209). Three years later, on 21st May 1799, on the eve of his return home, evaluating the results of his stay in Göttingen, he wrote to Josiah Wedgwood: “What have I done in Germany? I have learnt the language […]. I have attended the lectures on Physiology, Anatomy, and Natural History with regularity, and have endeavoured to understand these subjects. I have read and made collections for a history of the Belles Lettres in Germany before the time of Lessing and […] very large collections for a Life of Lessing […]. My main business at Göttingen has been to read all the numerous Controversies in which L[essing] was engaged and the works of all those German Poets before the time of Lessing, which I could not, or could not afford to buy […]” (pp. 518–19). See also R. Ashton, The German Idea. Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought, 1800–1860 (Cambridge, 1980) pp. 1–34; M. van Woudenberg, Coleridge and Cosmopolitan Intellectualism. The Legacy of Göttingen University (London and New York, 2018).
- 10.
Cf. M. Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany: 1768–1800 (Kingston and Montreal, 1987), in particular pp. 70–85.
- 11.
Just two examples: Goethe’s Werther was translated into English for the first time in 1779; twenty years later, in 1799, at the end of this exceptional season, the editions of Werther amounted at least to 24; in no more than two years (1798–1799) there appeared about a hundred editions of Kotzebue’s plays in English (cf. B.Q. Morgan, A Critical Bibliography of German Literature in English Translation: 1481–1927, 2nd ed., Stanford, 1938, pp. 156–159 [Goethe] and 280–289 [Kotzebue]).
- 12.
On German literature in Great Britain, cf. German Literature in British magazines 1750–1860, ed. by B.Q. Morgan, A.R. Hohlfeld, and M. Nicolai (Madison, 1949) pp. 37–42.
- 13.
In the famous speech he held on 4th November 1789 before the ‘Society for the Commemoration of the Glorious Revolution’, Richard Price observed that “though the [English] Revolution was a great work, it was by no means a perfect work” (R. Price, A Discourse on the Love of our Country, London: T. Cadell, 1789, p. 35). He invited everyone to reflect on “the favourableness of the present times to all exertions of the cause of public liberty”, and concluded: “what an eventful period is this! […] After sharing in the benefits of one Revolution, I have been spared to be a witness to two other Revolutions [the American and the French], both glorious. And now, methinks, I see the ardour for liberty catching and spreading; a general amendment beginning in human affairs; the domination of kings changed for the domination of laws, and the domination of priests giving way to the domination of reason and conscience” (pp. 49–50).
- 14.
In Scotland, the philosophy of ‘common sense’ had become solidly established; in England, Locke’s empiricism was prevailing at the time, although in the version represented by Hartley’s associationist sensationalism, which had become widespread thanks to Joseph Priestley’s writing Hartley’s Theory of Human Mind, on the Principle of Association of Ideas (London: Joseph Johnson, 1775, 2nd ed. 1790, 3rd ed. 1794), whereas in the field of ethics William Paley’s and Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism was dominant.
- 15.
The Netherlands had become a centre of considerable importance for the study of Kant’s philosophy, with Paulus van Hemert (from 1792 onwards) first and then with Hans Kinker (cf. M.R. Wielema, ‘Die erste niederländische Kant-Rezeption: 1786–1850’, Kant-Studien, LXXIX, 1988, pp. 450–466); on the connections between the English dissenters and Dutch universities, cf. G. Haines, German Influence upon English Education and Science, 1800–1866, pp. 5–6.
- 16.
In 1789, Johann Benjamin Jachman, a pupil of Kant and the brother of Reinhold Bernhard, who was to become Kant’s biographer, held a series of lectures on the first Critique in Edinburgh (cf. Kant, Briefe, in Gesammelte Schriften, Akademie Ausgabe, Berlin, 1902-, vol. XI, pp. 21–22). Again in Edinburgh, from 1792 to 1797, Anthony Willich, a German physician who had attended Kant’s lessons between 1778 and 1781 and who was shortly to publish in London a volume on Kant’s philosophy, taught German to some youth men among whom Walter Scott; in the same period, Franz von Baader, who was then studying in Scotland, wrote a memoir in English to explain Kant’s philosophy to his Scottish friends; shortly afterwards, between autumn 1798 and summer 1799, another German, the future historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, who was studying chemistry, physics, and mathematics in Edinburgh, discussed on Kant’s philosophy with some circles of friends (cf. R. Wellek, Immanuel Kant in England: 1793–1838, Princeton, 1931, pp. 28–32).
- 17.
As for England, between 1790 and the French occupation of the Netherlands in January 1795, two Presbyterian ministers of the English congregation of Amsterdam, namely the physician Thomas Cogan and the chemist Benjamin Sowden, sent several articles and reviews concerning Kant’s philosophy to the most influential and widespread English literary magazine, namely the Monthly Review, which at the time showed clearly liberal leanings (cf. Monthly Review, III, 1790, p. 484; X, 1793, pp. 523–531; XIV, 1794, pp. 541–545; XV, 1794, pp. 539–544). However, the first Englishman who read the original German version of Kant’s most important works (the three Critiques, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace) was Thomas Beddoes. He received his education at Pembroke College Oxford, then studied medicine and chemistry in London and Edinburgh; like many chemists and physicians of the time, he had a good knowledge of German literature, especially in the scientific field. From 1787 onwards he was chemistry Reader in Oxford, but at the end of 1792 he was required to abandon teaching and the town under the accusation of Jacobinism (cf. T.H. Levere, ‘Dr. Th. Beddoes at Oxford: Radical Politics and the Fate of the Regius Chair in Chemistry’, Ambix, XXVIII, 1981, pp. 61–69). On a political plane, he adopted definitely radical positions, while from the point of view of religion he inclined towards the dissenters; in Bristol he founded an intellectual circle, which was decisive for the diffusion of German literature in England; Coleridge and Southey had personal relations with him. On Beddoes, see G. Micheli, ‘Beddoes, Thomas’, in DECBPh, pp. 67–72. On the early reception of Kant in Great Britain, besides the monograph by Wellek, see: G. Micheli, ‘The Early Reception of Kant’s Thought in England’, in Kant and His Influence, ed. by G. MacDonald Ross and T. McWalter (Bristol, 1990), pp. 202–314; Id., ‘The First English Translations of Kant’, in Ideengeschichte und Wissenschaftsphilosophie, ed. by R. Dodel, E. Siedel, and L. Steindler (Köln, 1997), pp. 77–104; M. Class, Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England: 1796–1817 (London, 2012), pp. 17–91. On the Bristol circle, Thomas Beddoes, and German culture, cf. C.A. Weber, ‘Bristols Bedeutung für die Englische Romantik und die deutsch-englischen Beziehungen’, in Studien zur englischen Philologie, ed. by L. Morsbach and H. Hecht, Heft LXXXIX (Halle, 1935), pp. 92–115.
- 18.
Radical circles, like that of Thomas Beddoes (cf. Monthly Magazine, I, 1796, pp. 265–267), were also interested in the Kantian idea of an epochal change in the fields of metaphysics, ethics, religion, and law, which fundamentally corresponded to the image of Kant’s philosophy which had been spread in Germany by Reinhold’s Briefe, namely, the Kant that was taught at Jena, the idea of critical philosophy provided by the magazine which had become the most important means of diffusion of Kantianism on German soil, i.e. the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung of Jena, whose reviews from 1788 onwards had been reproduced, more or less in full, in a radical London periodical, the Analytical Review, which was obliged to close down in June 1798, when the publisher, Joseph Johnson, was condemned and imprisoned for having contravened the laws regulating the press (cf. S. Oliver, ‘Silencing Joseph Johnson and the Analytical Review’, The Wordsworth Circle, XL, no. 2/3, 2009, pp. 96–102). Reinhold’s Versuch einer neuen Theorie der menschlischen Vermögen (1789) also inspired Friedrich August Nitsch, a pupil of Kant (cf. Kant, Briefe, XI, p. 518; see also G. Baum and R. Malter, ‘Kant in England. Ein neuer Brief: Kant an Friedrich August Nitsch’, Kant-Studien, LXXXII, 1991, pp. 456–468), who came to London and in May 1796 published an exposition of Kant’s system (A General and Introductory View of Professor Kant’s Principles, London: Downes, 1796; cf. G. Micheli, ‘Nitsch, Friedrich August’, in DECGPh, pp. 858–859; on Nitsch’s work and his dependence on Reinhold, cf. Micheli, ‘The Early Reception of Kant’s Thought in England’, pp. 259–273; Class, Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England, in particular pp. 32–36).
- 19.
The journal, financially supported by Pitt’s government, began publication in July 1798 following a brief very successful experiment, between 1797 and 1798, as a weekly journal of political satire (The Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner). The journal, which consisted mostly of reviews, but also had articles, engravings and caricatures, made a forceful entrance into British culture of the time. Cf. D. Roper, Reviewing before the Edinburgh (London, 1978), pp. 181–182; A. Sullivan (ed.), British Literary Magazines, vol. II (Westport and London, 1983); E. L. de Montluzin, The Anti-Jacobin 1798–1800. The Early Contributors to the Anti-Jacobin Review (Basingstoke, 1988).
- 20.
Someone who paid for this sudden change in the cultural atmosphere was Coleridge, and this negative experience forever affected his public attitude towards German culture. In the mid 1790s, Coleridge felt a sincere, albeit confused, enthusiasm for the revolution and the democracy carried out in France; he was greatly interested in German literature, particularly in Schiller but also in Goethe. However, when, in the second half of 1798, he decided to undertake a study tour in Germany, his libertarian enthusiasm had already deadened, and his purpose was just to study “Physiology, Anatomy, and Natural History”, to collect materials to write a life of Lessing, and to find books on metaphysics (see above, note 9). But precisely in that period the attitude of the British public towards German literature changed radically: accused of immorality and irreligiousness, it was pilloried in the press for its excesses both from a political and an artistic point of view. Even Coleridge’s journey to Germany gave cause for a bitter attack aiming at denigrating the radical intellectuals in the sight of the public, among whom Coleridge; together with his friend and fellow traveller Wordsworth, he was held up by the conservative press as an example of a young man who had yielded to the charm of Germany: he was judged immoral, Jacobin and, finally, a follower of German philosophy (cf. Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner, 9th July 1798, no. 36, p. 636; Anti-Jacobin Review, IV, 1799, p. xiii, and VI, 1800, p. 574). At the end of July 1799, Coleridge returned to England and translated Schiller’s Wallenstein, but it was a complete failure, and the reviews were all negative: according to the reviewers of the main literary magazines, who strongly influenced the taste of the public, Coleridge was “a partizan of German theatre” and of “German philosophy”, and, despite his efforts to cover up his past, his name long remained associated with Jacobinism and German literature (cf. Ashton, The German Idea, pp. 3–10 and 27–35; Micheli, ‘The Early Reception of Kant’s Thought in England’, pp. 292–295; Class, Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England, in particular pp. 123–133; see also William Hazlitt’s review of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria that appeared in August 1817 in the Edinburgh Review, now included in W. Hazlitt, The Complete Works, ed. by P.P. Howe (London and Toronto, 1930–1934), vol. XVI, pp. 115–138, in particular pp. 123–125 on Coleridge and Kant). This judgement on German literature was destined to last for a long time in British culture, so much so that in 1820 a radical like Hazlitt wrote: “The Goethes, the Lessings, the Schillers, the Kotzebues [...] have made the only incorrigible Jacobins, and their school of poetry is the only real school of Radical Reform” (Lectures chiefly on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elisabeth [1820], in Hazlitt, Complete Works, vol. VI, p. 362).
- 21.
Cf. J. von Müller, Briefwechsel mit Johann Gottfried Herder und Caroline v. Herder, ed. by. K. E. Hoffmann (Schaffhausen, 1952), p. 289. As it is known, at the end of August 1799, Kant himself felt compelled to intervene, publicly disavowing Fichte’s interpretation of critical philosophy; however, Kant’s intervention, which appeared in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, was not such as to make an impression on the ordinary reader (cf. Kant, Briefe, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. XII, pp. 370–371).
- 22.
See, for example, the two letters, published respectively in April and August 1800 under the title ‘The literati and literature of Germany’ (Anti-Jacobin Review, V, 1800 [April], pp. 568–580, and VI, 1800 [August], pp. 562–580; see also V, 1800, pp. 339–347, 348–350; VI, 1800, pp. 342–349; VII, 1800, pp. 504–508); the two articles in letter form were apparently sent in by James Walker, an outstanding representative of the Episcopal Church of Scotland who was then staying in Weimar; they take up some points typical of Herder’s polemic against Kant’s philosophy. The same arguments are taken up in the item ‘Critical Philosophy’, written by the French expatriate Jean Joseph Mounier (for the first, more explanatory part) and James Walker (for the second part), published in the Supplements to the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica [1801], II, pp. 353–359, where, referring to Kant’s ethics and theology, Walker speaks of the “tendency of the system toward atheism”; and concludes (with a clear reference to ‘Atheismus Streit’ and Fichte): “This being the case, the reader cannot be much surprised, when he is informed that several of Kant’s disciples on the continent have avowed themselves Atheists or Spinosists” (p. 359). On this subject see Micheli, ‘The Early Reception of Kant’s Thought in England’, pp. 289–296.
- 23.
The Metakritik and the other texts relating to Herder’s polemic against Kant were reviewed (Monthly Magazine, IX, 1800, p. 671, and X, 1800, p. 617; British Critic, XVI, 1800, pp. 460–461; Anti-Jacobin Review, XVIII, 1804, pp. 488–490); Herder’s Ideen were translated into English in 1800 (Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, transl. by T. Churchill, London: J. Johnson) and came out in a second edition in 1803 (cf. Critical Review [London], XXX, 1800, pp. 1–10, 169–175; Scots Magazine, LXII, 1800, p. 114; British Critic, XXI, 1803, pp. 154–159; Monthly Review, XLI, 1803, pp. 403–420; Anti-Jacobin Review, XVIII, 1804, pp. 402–416, and XIX, 1804, pp. 82–96, 491–524). In 1801, a section of Herder’s work Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie was translated into English with the title Oriental Dialogues: containing the Conversations of Eugenius and Alciphron on the spirit and beauties of the sacred poetry of the Hebrews, London: T. Cadell (cf. Anti-Jacobin Review, XIV, 1803, pp. 353–363); this text exercised a certain influence on several British as well as American theologians. On the reception of Herder in Britain see C. Angerson, ‘“A friend to rational piety”: The early reception of Herder by Protestant dissenters in Britain’, German Life and Letters, LXIX (2016), pp. 1–21.
- 24.
T. Beddoes, Observations on the Nature of Demonstrative Evidence (London: J. Johnson, 1793), pp. 89–105, in particular pp. 95–96; Beddoes quotes (in English) Kant, KrV B 3–5, in connection with Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, I, 1792, p. 73. On Beddoes see above note 17.
- 25.
Cf. Monthly Magazine, IV, Dec. 1797, pp. 533–536 [H.J. Richter]; VII, Jun. 1799, pp. 375–378 [H. Crabb Robinson]. A few months later, in May 1800, Crabb Robinson moved to Germany, where he stayed for over five years, until September 1805; here his intellectual education came to a turning point; at Jena, where he enrolled in 1802, he had the opportunity to hear Schelling and make friends with Jakob F. Fries, and from there he sent a series of letters concerning Kant’s philosophy, some of which appeared in a London magazine (Monthly Register, I, 1802, pp. 411–416; II, 1803, pp. 6–12; pp. 485–488 [now in Robinson, Essays on Kant, Schelling, and German Aesthetics, ed. by J. Vigus (London, 2010) from which we quote here]; cf. Wellek, Kant in England, pp. 139–159; D.I. Behler, ‘Henry Crabb Robinson as a Mediator of Early German Romanticism to England’, Arcadia, XII, 1977, pp. 117–155; E. Behler, ‘Henry Crabb Robinson und Kant’, Kant-Studien, LXXVII, 1986, pp. 289–315; G. Maertz, ‘Reviewing Kant’s Early Reception in Britain. The Leading Role of Henry Crabb Robinson’, in Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age, ed. by G. Maertz, Albany, 1998, pp. 209–226). Robinson abandons Hartley’s necessarianism and associationist sensationalism and ‘converts’ to Kantianism: “the mind of man is essentially active, not a mere recipient of impressions; the basis of truth must be sought in the essential laws of mind; whence arise the conceptions a priori, not in physics, but in metaphysics” (Monthly Register, Nov. 1802 [ed. Fagus, p. 38]). Nevertheless, just as before, he keeps on linking Kant’s doctrine, which he now supports, with that of the Scots: “When a translation appears of Kant, I doubt not the first disciples will be of the Scotch school; their alliance with the Kantian principles will be more out of love to the result than out of a genuine and adequate perception of the abstract truth of the system; and it is possible that that school, which has hitherto most distinguished itself for boldness of investigation, will be among the last to accede to the new doctrine” (Monthly Register, I, Aug. 1802 [ed. Fagus, p. 31]). In January 1804 Robinson met M.me de Staël in Weimar and apparently tried to introduce her to Kant’s philosophy (cf. J. Fagus, ‘Zwischen Kantianismus und Schellingianismus: Henry Crabb Robisons Privatvorlesungen über Philosophie für Madame de Staël 1804 in Weimar’, in Germaine de Staël und ihr erstes deutsches Publikum, ed. by G. R. Kaiser and O. Müller (Heidelberg, 2008), pp. 355–391); in 1813 he met her again in London, where he could revise the chapters concerning German philosophy contained in the third part of De l’Allemagne, which seem indeed to reflect many of Robinson’s judgements, characterised by a generic evaluation of Kant’s a priori in terms of innate notions and above all by a positive appreciation of Kant’s ethics. Cf. A.-L.-G. De Staël, De l’Allemagne [1813] (Paris, 1968), II, in particular pp. 127–140 and 195–200); on the immediate success enjoyed in Great Britain by M.me de Staël’s text, which was translated at once into English (Germany, London: Murray, 1813), see Wellek, Kant in England, pp. 156–158 and 289, note 46; at any rate, M.me de Staël’s text is one of the sources Stewart used for his exposition of German thought from Kant to Schelling (cf. Stewart, Dissertation, pp. 392, 395, and 419).
- 26.
Monthly Magazine, VII, no. 42, Mar 1799, pp. 152–153 (reprinted with several changes in the New London Review, I, no. 5, May 1799, pp. 519–520).
- 27.
In January 1803, Thomas Brown, one of the most influential exponents of the new generation of the Scottish school, in his review of Charles Villers’ essay (Philosophie de Kant, ou principes fondamentaux de la philosophie transcendentale, Metz: Collignon, 1801) formulated the following observations on Kant’s philosophy: “The egoism of Berkeley and Hume is largely incorporated in [Kant’s] system, and combined with the opposing tenets of the school of Dr. Reid. If, to the common sense of that school, we add the innate susceptibilities of Leibnitz, and the denial by Hume of necessary connexion in causation, and of the reality of external perception, we bring before us the theory of cognition of Kant. But the force of common sense, and of the distinction of innate ideas, is invalidated by the denial of the reality of our external knowledge; and the denial of the reality of our perception of objects in space, is invalidated by the adoption of the principle of common sense” (Brown, ‘Review of Villers’ Philosophie de Kant’, Edinburgh Review, I, 1803, pp. 279–280). This is fundamentally the same accusation of inconsistency that Jacobi aimed at Kant’s affirmation that objects produce impressions on our senses: “This”, Jacobi observed, “cannot be affirmed either of phenomena, since they are supposed to be simple ideas, or of things in themselves, for we know absolutely nothing about them since they depend upon the purely subjective form of our thought, i.e. the form that belongs exclusively to our particular sensitivity” (Jacobi, David Hume [1787, 17952], in Werke, Leipzig, 1812–1825, vol. II, pp. 291–310).
- 28.
J.G. Schweighäuser, ‘On the Present State of Philosophy in Germany’, Monthly Magazine, XVIII, no. 120, Oct. 1804, pp. 204–208; on Johann Gottfried Schweighäuser (1776–1844), a philologist and archaeologist who taught at Strasbourg, cf. ADB, XXXIII, pp. 351–357.
- 29.
Cf. Stewart, Dissertation, p. 420.
- 30.
Schweighäuser, ‘On the Present State’, pp. 204–205.
- 31.
Ibid., pp. 205–206.
- 32.
Ibid., pp. 206–207; besides Schelling, the author also mentions Hegel, who is defined as the most renowned of his followers; this is perhaps the first time Hegel’s name appears in a British periodical.
- 33.
Ibid., pp. 207–208. Jacobi frequently quotes in his writings this passage by Blaise Pascal (Pensées […], Amsterdam, 1758, vol. II, art. xxi, pp. 127 and 131); cf. Über die Lehre des Spinoza, in Jacobi, Werke (Hamburg, 1998), vol. 1/1, pp. 54, 129–130, and 346, and David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus, in Werke, vol. 2/1, p. 8.
- 34.
D. Wu, ‘Hazlitt’s Unpublished History of English Philosophy: The Larger Context’, The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, VII (2006), 1, pp. 25–64; see also S. Burley, Hazlitt the Dissenter. Religion, Philosophy, and Politics, 1766–1816 (Basingstoke, 2014) pp. 91–123; H. Baker, William Hazlitt (Cambridge, MA, 1962) pp. 181–190; P. Hunnekuhl, ‘Hazlitt, Crabb Robinson, and Kant: 1806 and beyond’, The Hazlitt Review, X (2017), pp. 45–62. In February 1809 a letter by Hazlitt appeared in the Monthly Magazine (XXVII, pp. 15–19) with the title Proposal for the Basis of a New System of Metaphysical Philosophy (now in New Writings of William Hazlitt, ed. by D. Wu, Oxford, 2007, vol. I, pp. 3–13). In the same period an eight-page pamphlet was printed with the following title: Proposals for Publishing, in One Large Volume, Quarto (Price 1 l. 10s. to Subscribers), A History of English philosophy, by the Author of An Essay on the Principles of Human Action, and An Abridgement of the Light of Nature Pursued (now entitled Prospectus of a History of English Philosophy, included in The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. by P.P. Howe, London 1930–1934, II, pp. 112–119 and 288–289). These two texts – the letter dated February 1809 and the Prospectus – are, as far as the content is concerned, exactly the same; the Prospectus also includes a table of contents that summarises the ten chapters into which the work is subdivided (pp. 288–289; see also Wu, ‘Hazlitt’s Unpublished History’, p. 43). The invitation to subscribe for the work was renewed a few years later, in 1812–13, on the occasion of a course of lectures on the history of philosophy Hazlitt held in London from January to April 1812, and then again in 1818–19; only the contents of some of these lectures are preserved and were published posthumously by his son (Literary Remains of the late William Hazlitt, ed. by. W. Hazlitt Jr. (London, 1836).
- 35.
Prospectus, p. 113; cf. New Writings, I, p. 4.
- 36.
Prospectus, pp. 114–116, 288–289; cf. New Writing, I, pp. 4–8.
- 37.
Prospectus, pp. 113, 115–116, 289; cf. New Writing, I, pp. 9–12.
- 38.
As we have already noted, the Dissertation was published as a supplement to the editions IV-VI of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; it was then reprinted – with annotations and additions, and comprising an outline of the third part, which concerned moral philosophy and had remained hitherto unpublished – in the edition of Stewart’s works edited by Hamilton, in which it occupies the first volume (The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, ed. by W. Hamilton, vol. 1, Edinburgh, 1854 [18772], from which we quote here); on Stewart as a historian of modern philosophy, cf. Models, III, pp. 443–472. The methodological principles and historiographical theses which inspired Stewart’s dissertation are also to be found, to a large extent, in the history of moral doctrines by James Mackintosh (1765–1832), who was a disciple of Stewart. The text was written by Mackintosh for the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, where it was published in the first volume together with the preliminary historical dissertations by Stewart (on metaphysics), John Playfair and John Leslie (on mathematics and physical sciences); however, the text was also published autonomously and in the course of the century saw several other editions (A Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, chiefly during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, [privately printed] Edinburgh, 1830; another edition appeared with a preface by W. Whewell, Edinburgh, 1836, 18623, 18724). Mackintosh’s Dissertation, which briefly mentions the moral doctrines of the ancient and medieval world, distinguishes between two lines of development in the history of modern ethical doctrines, from Grotius to Paley and Bentham up to the Scotsman Stewart: on one side, utilitarianism, in its various versions, and on the other side, the doctrines founded on the universal sentiment of duty, such as for example that of the Scottish school. The distinction of moral systems into two large groups – on one hand utilitarian ethics and on the other the ethics of duty, or deontology – is taken up by Whewell in the preface to Mackintosh’s Dissertation, and later on, taking Kantian tones, in Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England (London: J.W. Parker, 1852).
- 39.
Stewart, Dissertation, pp. 398–406. It is from Born’s Latin translation that Stewart quotes the passage from the preface to Kant’s Prolegomena (Akademie Ausgabe, III, pp. 257–261) that contains Kant’s famous reference to Hume and his Scottish critics; Stewart compares it with passages written by Ralph Cudworth, and Richard Price, and then remarks: “It is difficult to discover anything in the foregoing passage on which Kant could found a claim to the slightest originality. A variety of English writers had, long before this work [i.e. Prol.] appeared, replied to Mr. Hume, by observing that the understanding is itself a source of new ideas, and that it is from this source that our notions of cause and effect are derived […]. In the works of Dr. Reid, many remarks of the same nature are to be found” (Dissertation, p. 405). This theory is reiterated a little further on, when he presents the doctrine of the Scottish school: “On comparing the opposition which Mr. Hume’s scepticism encountered from his own countrymen, with the account formerly given of the attempts of some German philosophers to refute his Theory of Causation, it is impossible not to be struck with the coincidence between the leading views of his most eminent antagonists. This coincidence one would have been disposed to consider as purely accidental, if Kant, by his petulant sneers at Reid, Beattie, and Oswald, had not expressly acknowledged, that he was not unacquainted with their writings. As for the great discovery, which he seems to claim as his own – that the ideas of Cause and Effect, as well as many others, are derived from the pure understanding without any aid from experience, it is nothing more than a repetition, in very nearly the same terms, of what was advanced a century before by Cudworth, in reply to Hobbes and Gassendi; and borrowed avowedly by Cudworth from the reasonings of Socrates, as reported by Plato, in answer to the scepticism of Protagoras” (Dissertation, pp. 460–461). This evidently constitutes a prejudiced interpretation of the Kantian a priori: according to these interpreters, the category intervenes, just like the a priori principles of the Scottish philosophers, during experience, hence after experience has developed in some way, almost as though the a priori, i.e. the category, was an innate idea, a content, and not, on the contrary, as though that which is a priori was the form of judgement. This was a widely held interpretation of Kant, however; it is also found in Antonio Rosmini, who in his Nuovo saggio sull’origine delle idee (I, sect. IV, ch. iii, nos 325–326) interprets the Kantian categories by explicitly referring to Thomas Reid (cf. G. Santinello, Le prime traduzioni italiane dell’opera di Kant, in La tradizione kantiana in Italia, Messina, 1981, pp. 318–323).
- 40.
Cf. Wellek, Kant in England, p. 62.
- 41.
W. Hamilton, ‘On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned; in reference to Cousin’s Doctrine of the Infinito-Absolute’, Edinburgh Review, L, no. 99, Oct. 1829, pp. 194–221 (repr. in Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform, 2nd ed., London, 1853, pp. 1–38, from which we quote here): this is an extensive review of V. Cousin’s Cours de philosophie. Introduction à l’histoire de la philosophie (Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1828). On Hamilton’s ‘philosophy of conditioned’ see G. Graham, ‘A Re-examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy’, in Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. by G. Graham (Oxford, 2015), pp. 47–66.
- 42.
Cf. note A in the edition of Reid’s works edited by Hamilton (The Works of Thomas Reid, Preface, notes and supplementary Dissertations, by W. Hamilton, 6th ed., Edinburgh, 1863, II, pp. 742–803, in particular pp. 770–802) and the scheme of the general history of philosophy in Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, ed. by H.L. Mansel and J. Veitch (Edinburgh, London, 1859–60) vol. I, pp. 104–109.
- 43.
“To explain the nature of the problem itself […] it is necessary to premise a statement of the opinions which may be entertained regarding the Unconditioned (Absolute and Infinite), as an immediate object of knowledge and of thought. These opinions may be reduced to four: - 1. The Unconditioned is incognisable and inconceivable; its notion being only negative of the Conditioned, which last can alone be positively known or conceived; − 2. It is not an object of knowledge; but its notion, as a regulative principle of the mind itself, is more than a mere negation of the Conditioned. – 3. It is cognisable, but not conceivable; it can be known by a sinking back into identity with the Infinito-Absolute, but it is incomprehensible by consciousness and reflection, which are only of the relative and the different. – 4. It is cognisable and conceivable by consciousness and reflection, under relation, difference, and plurality. The first of these opinions we regard as true; the second is held by Kant; the third by Schelling; and the last by our author [i.e. Cousin]” (Hamilton, Discussions, p. 12). Here Hamilton uses the term ‘inconceivable’ in the sense of ‘inexplicable’, that is to say not deducible from something else; this is pointed out by John Stuart Mill, who, referring to this text, observes: “The first meaning of Inconceivable is, that of which the mind cannot form to itself any representation; either (as in the case of Noumena) because no attributes are given, out of which a representation could be framed, or because the attributes given are incompatible with one another – are such as the mind cannot put together in a single image [...]. But there is another meaning [...]. It is often said, that we are unable to conceive as possible that which, in itself, we are perfectly well able to conceive: we are able, it is admitted, to conceive it as an imaginary object, but unable to conceive it realized. This extends the term inconceivable to every combination of facts which to the mind simply contemplating it, appears incredible. [...] He [Hamilton] gives to the term a third sense [...]. ‘We think, we conceive, we comprehend a thing, only as we think it as within or under something else’ [...]. The inconceivable, in this third sense, is simply the inexplicable” (An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, in J.S. Mill, Collected Works, IX, Toronto, 1979, pp. 69–76).
- 44.
Hamilton, Discussions, pp. 14–15.
- 45.
Cf. note D in the edition of Reid’s works edited by Hamilton (The Works of Thomas Reid [1858], p. 845); see also Hamilton, Discussions, pp. 5–6, 15–16, 18; Id., Lectures, vol. II, pp. 113–114.
- 46.
Hamilton, Discussions, pp. 16–18; on the antinomies, see also Id., Lectures, vol. I, p. 402: “[…] Kant did not stop here. He endeavoured to evince that pure Reason, that Intelligence is naturally, is necessarily, repugnant with itself, and that speculation ends in a series of insoluble antilogies. In its highest potence, in its very essence, thought is thus infected with contradiction; and the worst and most pervading scepticism is the melancholy result”.
- 47.
“If I have done anything meritorious in philosophy, it is in the attempt to explain the phaenomena of these contradictions [i.e. Kant’s antinomies]; in showing that they arise only when intelligence transcends the limits to which its legitimate exercise is restricted; and that within those bounds, (the Conditioned), natural thought is neither fallible nor mendacious [...]. If this view be correct, Kant’s antinomies, with their consequent scepticism, are solved; and the human mind, however weak, is shown not to be the work of a treacherous Creator. Reid, on the contrary, did not subvert the trustworthiness of the one witness, on whose absolute veracity he relied. In his hands natural, (and, therefore, necessary), thought, − Consciousness, − Common Sense, − are always held out as entitled to our implicit and thorough-going confidence” (Hamilton, Lectures, vol. I, p. 402); for the references to Hemsterhuis and Jacobi, see also the notes in the edition of Reid’s works edited by Hamilton (The Works of Reid, vol. II, pp. 792–793; see also vol. I, p. 129).
- 48.
Cf. Hamilton, Discussions, pp. 19–23.
- 49.
Cf. ibid., pp. 7–12 and 23–31.
- 50.
“Hegel’s whole philosophy is indeed founded on two errors; − on a mistake in logic, and on a violation of logic. In his dream of disproving the law of Excluded Middle (between two Contradictories), he [Hegel] inconceivably mistakes Contraries for Contradictories; and in positing pure or absolute existence as a mental datum, immediate, intuitive, and above proof (though, in truth, this be palpably a mere relative gained by a process of abstraction), he not only mistakes the fact, but violates the logical law which prohibits us to assume the principle which it behoves us to prove. On these two fundamental errors rests Hegel’s Dialectic; and Hegel’s Dialectic is the ladder by which he attempts to scale the Absolute” (Hamilton, Discussions, pp. 24–25 note).
- 51.
Cf. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, Scottish Philosophy: a Comparison of the Scottish and German Answer to Hume (Edinburgh, 1885 [19074]), p. 4–6.
- 52.
In the summer of 1818 Coleridge obtained a copy (now in the British Museum) of Wissenschaft der Logik (Nürnberg, 1812–16); he made annotations to it, which, however, are not present after page 91; and as the leaves after this are often uncut, it seems likely that he read no further (cf. Coleridge, Marginalia, II, p. 988); as far as we know, Coleridge did not read any other texts by Hegel; on Coleridge and Hegel’s philosophy see also A. Roy, ‘The Specter of Hegel in Coleridge’s Biographia literaria’, Journal of the History of Ideas, LXVIII (2007), no. 2, pp. 279–304.
- 53.
Coleridge’s works of a philosophical nature, or containing extensive references to philosophy, are: Biographia Literaria (1817), Lay Sermons (1818), The Friend (1818), and Aids to Reflection (1825); but his influence was also considerable on the level of personal contacts. The first to recognise Coleridge’s role in the English philosophical culture of the time was John Stuart Mill, who spoke of “Germano-Coleridgian doctrine”, as an expression of the “revolt of the human mind against the philosophy of the eighteenth century. It is ontological, because that was experimental; conservative, because that was innovative; religious, because so much of that was infidel; concrete and historical, because that was abstract and metaphysical; poetical, because that was matter-of-fact and prosaic” ([London and] Westminster Review, XXXIII, no. 65, Mar, 1840, p. 2; now in J.S. Mill, Collected Works, Toronto, 1969, vol. X, p. 125). On Coleridge and German philosophy, in addition to Muirhead’s classical monograph Coleridge as Philosopher (London, 1930) see E. Winkelmann, Coleridge und die kantische Philosophie: erste Einwirkungen des deutschen Idealismus in England (Leipzig, 1933); G.N. Orsini, Coleridge and German Idealism (Carbondale, 1969); D.M. MacKinnon, ‘Coleridge and Kant’, in Coleridge’s Variety. Bicentenary Studies, ed. by J. Beer (London, 1974), pp. 183–203; R. Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature (Tallahassee, 1985) [on Schelling]; E. Shaffer, ‘Coleridge and Kant’s Giant Hand’, in Anglo-German Affinities and Antipathies, ed. by R. Görner (München, 2004) pp. 39–56; P. Hamilton, Coleridge and German Philosophy: The Poet in the Land of Logic (London and New York, 2007); M. Class, Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England, 1796–1817 (London, 2012); P. Cheyne, Coleridge’s Contemplative Philosophy (Oxford, 2020), in part. pp. 222–225; 342–350.
- 54.
“[…] Vis rationalis (the Reason or rationalized understanding) comprehends […]. Reason, therefore, in this secondary sense, and used not as a spiritual Organ but as a Faculty (namely, the Understanding or Soul enlightened by that organ) – Reason, I say, or the scientific Faculty, is the Intellection of the possibility or essential properties of things by means of the Laws that constitute them” (The Friend [1818], in Coleridge, Collected Works, IV, 1, pp. 157–158; see Cheyne, Coleridge’s Contemplative Philosophy, pp. 170–175).
- 55.
Cf. S.T. Coleridge, Logic, ed. by J.R. de J. Jackson, in Coleridge, Collected Works, XIII, Princeton, 1981, pp. 150–271.
- 56.
“I should have no objection to define Reason with Jacobi, and with his friend Hemsterhuis, as an organ bearing the same relation to spiritual objects, the Universal, the Eternal, and the Necessary, as the eye bears to material and contingent phaenomena. But then it must be added, that it is an organ identical with its appropriate objects. Thus, God, the Soul, eternal Truth, etc., are the objects of Reason; but they are themselves reason […]; in this sense it [i.e. Reason] may be safely defined the organ of the Super-sensuous” (The Friend, in Coleridge, Collected Works, IV, 1, pp. 155–156). A similar position is expressed by Hamilton: “I now enter upon the last of the Cognitive Faculties, − the faculty which I denominated the Regulative [...], the power the mind has of being the native source of certain necessary or a priori cognitions [...]. The Regulative Faculty is […] the locus principiorum. It thus corresponds to what was known in the Greek philosophy under the name of noûs, when that term was rigorously used. To this faculty has been latterly applied the name of Reason, but this term is so vague and ambiguous, that it is almost unfitted to convey any definite meaning. The term Common Sense has likewise been applied to designate the place of principles. This word is also ambiguous […] I may notice that Pascal and Hemsterhuis have applied Intuition and Sentiment in this sense; and Jacobi originally employed Glaube (Belief or Faith) in the same way, though he latterly superseded this expression by that of Vernunft (Reason)” (Hamilton, Lectures, vol. II, pp. 347–349).
- 57.
Cf. above, note 6.
- 58.
In September 1815, he wrote to John May: “[…] This work will be entitled Logosophia: or on the Logos, divine and human, in six Treatises. The first, or preliminary treatise contains a philosophical History of Philosophy and its revolutions from Pythagoras to Plato and to Aristotle – from Aristotle to Lord Bacon, including the scholastic metaphysicians of what are called the dark ages – from Bacon to Des Cartes and Locke – and from Locke to the revival of the eldest Philosophy, which I call dynamic or constructive as opposed to the material and mechanical systems still predominant” (Collected Letters of S.T. Coleridge, ed. by E.L. Griggs, Oxford, 1956–1971, vol. IV, p. 589).
- 59.
Cf. On Coleridge’s efforts to make sure that his lectures were regularly publicised every Saturday in London newspapers see: Coleridge, Lectures 1818–1819, pp. xxxv-xl. In a report of the first lecture we read: “The Lecture of Monday [Dec., 14, 1818], if it did not satisfy us on all the doctrinal points involved, furnished much curious information, and suggested many important reflections. It was rich in materials for serious meditation: food for the mind-matter of deliberate digestion; and we know not where so much information, upon subject so erudite and abstract, could have been so easily, or so agreeably obtained. The company [the audience] was numerous and respectable” (Champion, no. 311, Dec. 20, 1818, p. 809 [Lectures 1818–1819, p. 45]).
- 60.
The manuscript, published for the first time in 1949 by Kathleen Coburn, is now available in a critical edition (Lectures 1818–1819. On the History of Philosophy, ed. by J.R. de Jackson, in Coleridge, Collected Works, VIII). The text is interesting, but the character of these lessons (fourteen lectures covering the whole historical development of philosophy) and the heterogeneity of the public did not allow any in-depth analysis. The intention of publishing these lectures is confirmed by a letter written to Robert Southey on 31st January 1819: “[…] first, because a History of Philosophy […] is a desideratum in Literature – and secondly, because it is almost a necessary Introduction to my magnum opus” (Collected Letters, IV, p. 917); on this series of lectures, cf. J. Vigus, Platonic Coleridge (London, 2009), in particular pp. 93–124.
- 61.
Tennemann’s volumes (preserved in the British Museum) contain numerous notes written in the margins or on the flyleaves, which have recently been published (Coleridge, Collected Works, XII: Marginalia, V, pp. 691–816).
- 62.
In the Prospectus, where he announced the series of London lectures, Coleridge declared: “[…] a work like the present, in which the accidental influences of particular periods and individual genius are by no means overlooked, but which yet does in the main consider Philosophy historically, as an essential part of the history of man, and as if it were the striving of a single mind, under very different circumstances indeed, and at different periods of its own growth and development; but so that each change and every new direction should have its cause and its explanation in the errors, insufficiency, or prematurity of the preceding, while all by reference to a common object is reduced to harmony of impression and total result” (Prospectus, in Coleridge, Lectures 1818–1819, p. 5).
- 63.
Ibid., pp. 608–609. The same theory is also present in one of the initial lessons: “He [i.e. Pythagoras] began that position, the carrying on of which by Plato and the division or schism from which by Aristotle constituted the two classes of philosophers or rather of philosophy which remain to this day, and if we were to live a thousand or ten thousand years ever would remain, for in this it consists” (Ibid. p. 75). In a marginal note to Tennemann, Geschichte, VIII, p. 130, we find the following passage: “Divide Mankind into two very disproportionate parts, the Few who have and who have cultivated, the faculty of thinking speculatively, i.e. by reduction to Principles, and the Many who either from original defect or deficience, or from want of cultivation, do not, in this sense, think at all: and you may then, according to my belief, subdivide the former Class, the illustrious Minority, into two Species, scarcely less disproportionate in the comparative number of Individuals contained in each, viz. the born Conceptionists, the spiritual Children of Aristotle, and the born Ideists [i.e. Idealists] or Ideatae, the spiritual Children of Plato” (Coleridge, Marginalia, vol. V, p. 770). The division of philosophers into “Platonic sheep” and “Aristotelian goats” also appears in the published works (see in particular Table Talk, in Coleridge, Collected Works, XIV, 1, pp. 172–174; see also the letter to James Gooden dated 14th January 1820, in Collected Letters, vol. V, pp. 13–15).
- 64.
J.W. Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, ed. by M. Wenzel, in Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 23/1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), pp. 618–619: “Plato verhält sich zu der Welt, wie ein seliger Geist, dem es beliebt, einige Zeit auf ihr zu herbergen. […] Aristoteles hingegen steht zu der Welt wie ein Mann, ein baumeisterlicher. […] Wenn ein Paar solcher Männer, die sich gewissermaßen in die Menschheit teilten, als getrennte Repräsentanten herrlicher nicht leicht zu vereinender Eigenschaften auftraten; […] so folgt natürlich, daß die Welt, insofern sie als empfindend und denkend anzusehen ist, genötigt war, sich einem oder dem andern hinzugeben, einen oder den andern, als Meister, Lehrer, Führer anzuerkennen”.
- 65.
“Whether Ideas are regulative only, according to Aristotle and Kant, or likewise constitutive, and one with the power and Life of Nature according to Plato and Plotinus […] is the highest problem of Philosophy, and not part of its nomenclature” (Statesman’s Manual, in Coleridge, Collected Works, VI, p. 114); see also the annotations written in the margins of Tennemann, I, p. 107 (Marginalia, vol. 5, p. 698): “[…] a profounder [than that of Tennemann] View would have delighted in observing, at how early a period the great fundamental Question of all Philosophy was started, & divided men according to the solution into the two genera generalissima [i.e. most general genera] of Philosophizing, even unto this day. As Aristotle: Plato = Kant: Schelling”.
- 66.
“[…] The Locke of Antiquity, Anaxagoras” (Coleridge, Lectures 1818–1819, p. 152; see also ibid., pp. 198 and 673); “I should find him [i.e. Schelling] in the writings of Plotinus and still more of Proclus” (ibid., p. 588); see also the letter to J.H. Green dated 29th September 1818, Coleridge, Collected Letters, IV, pp. 873–876); on the parallelism between Pyrrho and Hume, see Id., Lectures 1818–1819, pp. 258–259.
- 67.
On medieval philosophy, see the account in Coleridge, Lectures 1818–1819, pp. 373–395, 402–414, 422, and 498. While he admits some mistakes and excesses, Coleridge acknowledges that “the object [of Scholastic philosophy] was to prove that what faith and the Church had declared to be true was coincident with reason and therefore that truths already known were rational truths. […] The mode in which they put it was naturally, first of all, by bringing together the opinions of wise men on such and such subjects; but yet so many and so discordant were the doctrines to be proved that nothing could be effected but by fine distinctions”; the means for attaining this end was philosophy understood as a tool for clarifying language: “The next step was […] philosophy that employed itself in desynonymising words, in giving them sometimes perfectly just and distinct meanings, often but apparent ones, but which, whether true or false, laid the foundation of our modern languages” (pp. 386–387).
- 68.
This theory has been taken up in more recent times by an epigone of Coleridge’s Platonizing idealism, John Henry Muirhead (1855–1940), who identifies a certain unilateralism in the usual image of British idealism as the result of foreign influence which represented an abrupt and external interruption to the traditional empiricist orientation characterising British philosophy; according to Muirhead, the ideas from Germany found a terrain that had already been prepared by an autochthonous idealistic tradition traceable to Scotus Eriugena and had been picked up vigorously by the Cambridge Platonists, reaching – through the Berkeley and other eighteenth-century English thinkers, and then, during the nineteenth century, through Coleridge, Carlyle, Ferrier, and Jowett – his contemporaries, whereas he believed that naturalism and sensationalism, which resulted, rather, from Cartesian mechanism, were foreign to the English tradition (Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy. Studies in the History of Idealism in England and America, London, 1931, pp. 13–16 and passim).
- 69.
On Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–1872) cf. The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, chiefly told in his own letters, ed. by his son F. Maurice, 2nd ed. (London, 1884); S. Schroeder, ‘Maurice, Frederick Denison’, in DNCBPh, pp. 766–770; C.R. Sanders, ‘Maurice as a Commentator on Coleridge’, Pubblications of the Modern Language Association of America, LIII (1938), pp. 230–245; A. Gerolin, Coscienza dell’ordine e ordine della coscienza. Il pensiero di Frederick Denison Maurice (Milano, 2010) [bibliography, pp. 301–319].
- 70.
The Encyclopaedia Metropolitana adopted the ‘methodical’ principle of the French Encyclopédie Méthodique (see Models, III, pp. 35–42) while intensifying some of its features; here the material was spread over four sections, as against the 48 sections of the French model; the first two sections were devoted to pure and applied sciences, each discipline was treated separately and each treatment corresponded to a monograph written by an expert; the third section gathered together the historical and biographical material, which was also presented in monographs arranged in chronological order; only the fourth section, devoted to lexicons, was structured alphabetically. The Encyclopaedia fulfilled in some measure a project which had been conceived by Coleridge, who wrote an introductory essay published in January 1818 in a text which, however, was heavily reworked and changed by the publisher (on this complicated matter, cf. A.D. Snyder, ‘Introduction’ to S.T. Coleridge, Treatise on Method, as published in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, London, 1934, pp. vii-xxviii). The project of the Encyclopaedia, which had started with much difficulty, changed its orientation several times during its execution and was only brought to an end in 1845. Maurice’s historical essay, entitled Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, was completed in April 1840; the article was immediately published and then included in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana; or Universal Dictionary of Knowledge […] (London, 1845), vol. II, pp. 545–674; on the date of composition of this essay, cf. The Life of F.D. Maurice, I, p. 280. A considerable part of the material of the encyclopaedia was recovered and republished in separate volumes by new publishers, who considered the encyclopaedia “as a mere quarry of valuable material” (T. Watts, ‘The English Cyclopaedias’, Quarterly Review, CXIII, no. 226, Apr. 1863, p. 379); Maurice’s essay, together with Coleridge’s treatise on method and with the essays on logic, rhetoric, law, and theology, were reprinted unchanged in Encyclopaedia of Mental Philosophy (London: J.J. Griffith and Co., 1847), 2 vols.
- 71.
F.D. Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, Part I: Ancient Philosophy (London: John Joseph Griffin and Co., 1850 [18614]), pp. vii-xi, 237; Id., Philosophy of the First Six Centuries (London and Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Co., 1854), pp. v-viii, 157; Id., Mediaeval Philosophy; or, a Treatise of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century (London and Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Co., 1857, [18592, 1870]), pp. v-xi, 253; Id., Modern Philosophy; or, a Treatise of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy from the Fourteenth Century to the French Revolution, with a Glimpse into the Nineteenth Century (London: Griffin, Bohn, and Co., 1862), pp. vii-xvii, 676. The whole work was later published in two volumes (Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, new edition with a new preface [pp. xiii-xlii] in the form of a dialogue between the author and an undergraduate, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1872; subsequent reprints: 1873, 1882, 1890).
- 72.
H.J. Rose, ‘Preface’ to the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, vol. I, p. xvii.
- 73.
“Mr. Rose expressed his wish, that the form of the treatise should be historical and not didactic. […] The reasons which Mr. Rose gave for objecting to a dogmatical treatise seemed to me very weighty” (Maurice, Ancient Philosophy, p. vii).
- 74.
“I believed that I should be acting in conformity with the wishes of the […] Editor, who had, I knew, a very hearty dislike to mere historical abridgments, if, leaving the student to seek for a formal and regular account of systems in the many French or German works which profess to furnish one, I contented myself with offering him a few hints which might help him in examining the purpose of the most conspicuous teachers; in reading their books, when they had left any; in connecting them with the country or the age wherein they flourished” (Maurice, Ancient Philosophy, p. vii).
- 75.
Maurice, Modern Philosophy, pp. vii-viii; see also Id., Philosophy of the First Six Centuries, pp. v-vi.
- 76.
“In the study of any past time I have endeavoured to place myself in that time – to live as much as possible with those who were living in it – not to anticipate what might be the interests and engagements of the subsequent age – not to impute to any the habits and opinions of our own. So far I have been able to do this I have become more aware of the permanence of all great principles and questions; more convinced that only the accidents of them can ever become obsolete; more earnest to derive lessons for ourselves from the experience of our forefathers […]. The questions which interested the ancient world, the first Christian age, the Middle Age, and which were supposed in the eighteenth century to have become extinct and worthless, are those which have most forced themselves upon the attention of the nineteenth century; which we cannot escape from if we wish it ever so much; which work themselves into our practical life; for which the man demands a solution even more than the professional philosopher” (Maurice, Modern Philosophy, p. viii); cf. also Id., Ancient Philosophy, p. 3: “[…] not a history of opinions and systems, but of investigations. […] To trace the thoughts which were working in the minds of those who founded Schools, to discover how they were affected by their characters, teachers, disciples, opponents, personal and political conflicts, to watch the processes by which they were expanded, completed, narrowed, is a far more interesting work, and one which falls far more properly within the province of the historian of philosophy”.
- 77.
Cf. Maurice, Encyclopaedia, II, p. 545; Id., Ancient Philosophy, pp. 1–2.
- 78.
Maurice, Modern Philosophy, p. ix; see also Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy [1872], vol. I, pp. xiii-xlii.
- 79.
“A writer with this temper of mind, it may be thought, may not be unjust to the first thirteen centuries after the Christian era. Most philosophers were then, in some sense or other, theologians; possibly those may understand them best who despise them least. But how, having this prepossession […] can I speak fairly of Giordano Bruno, Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Gothold Ephraim Lessing? Whether I have spoken fairly of them I must leave others to judge. If I have not, […] I at once declare that not my theology, but the atheism which fights in me against my theology, is answerable for that wrong. So far as I confess the God who is revealed in Christ I dare not misrepresent any one; I dare not refuse to see the good, and the struggle after good, which is in him; I dare not pass judgment upon him. […] In a thousand instances the reader may discover that I have failed of the standard which I thus set before me. He may think often that I have committed that which I confess to be sin in the sight of God. Still I trust that what I have written may help him to set that standard before himself; to keep it more stedfastly in sight than I have done; to repent whenever he departs from it; to be sure that no other will be found safe in the last day” (Maurice, Modern Philosophy, pp. ix–x).
- 80.
On the world of ideas, which Maurice interprets, from an Augustinian perspective, as the content of the divine mind, and on the connection between dialectic (or metaphysics) and ethics in Plato, cf. Maurice, Encyclopaedia, II, pp. 590–592, 603. On the different role and weight attributed to theology in the Platonic system and in the Aristotelian system, Maurice writes: “We think it cannot be denied that the recognition of an absolute being, of an absolute good, was that which gave life to the whole doctrine of Plato, and without which it is unmeaning; that on the contrary, it is merely the crowning result, or at least, the necessary postulate of Aristotle’s Philosophy. In strict consistency with this difference, it was a Being to satisfy the wants of man which Plato sighet for; it was a first cause of things to which Aristotle did homage” (ibid., p. 616). On the opposition between Platonism and Aristotelianism, see also the following passage: “They [the Platonic school] were students of the infinite. […] They were […] primarily theological. Hence, if they did not accept Christianity, they must come into a direct polemic with it. The Aristotelian laid down his data on Logic, applied these to the physical universe, admitted a metaphysical world beyond that, believed in a certain divine region which the theoretic man might behold and dwell in. But these last were the mere complements of a system which could exist without them, unless some great moral necessity, which neither Aristotle nor Porphyry, nor for a long time Boethius, seems to have felt, should force them first into the thoughts of ordinary men, and thence into the schools” (Id., Mediaeval Philosophy, p. 16).
- 81.
Cf. Maurice, Encyclopaedia, II, pp. 545–67; Id., Ancient Philosophy, pp. 5–28.
- 82.
Cf. Maurice, Ancient Philosophy, pp. 29–74.
- 83.
“[…] We believe it was given to Philo to bring out into clearness, by help of the Jewish Scriptures, some principles of the Platonic philosophy which Plato himself could but partially apprehend. That which was a wish in Plato’s mind – a wish and a kind of moral necessity – to connect the absolute being […] with personality, was involved in the very principles of the Jew’s mind. […] But on what ground do we affirm that with all his advantages he [i.e. Philo] was a less true man, and therefore a less safe guide, than his Grecian master? The apparent contradiction may be explained in this way: Plato, we have seen, in all his loftiest discourses respecting the dignity of the philosopher […] never loses altogether sight of the truth that the philosopher is not of another race from his fellows-creatures, but only the one who is seeking to realize the humanity which belongs to all […]. Now this feeling ought surely to have been far more present to the mind of Philo. Every thing in the records which had been familiar to him from his childhood, should have taught him that his privilege was to belong to a race. […] Of this Philo seems to have had but very indistinct glimpses. […] Hence results, we believe, that feeling of displeasure, and even disgust, with which honest minds turn away from Philo’s commentaries upon the characters of the Old Testament. For this is the real cause of his disposition to allegorize. He cannot endure any thing so vulgar as sheep and oxen, as men fighting battles with actual swords and spears. He cannot see a meaning in these things, and therefore he must find a meaning for them. He cannot see God working in the actual affairs of earth, and therefore instead of seeing any thing as it is glorified and translated into the signification of something higher, he must separate essences from forms, till the first become vapours and the second husks. [...] Nothing could have been such a shock to the disciples of the Alexandrian school, as the announcement that a peasant of Galilee was He whom, in so many mysterious passages of their nation’s records, they had been tracing as the source and spring of all the light which had been in the hearts of faithful men in the chosen nation, or even which had diffused itself through the world. […] The Alexandrian […] will hardly have ventured to ask himself, even for a moment, whether any one Old Testament vision, whether any one Platonical aspiration, could have had its fulfilment unless the absolute Being revealed himself to his creatures in the likeness of a man, […] unless the Word could take flesh and dwell among men. […] Through another entrance than that of Alexandrian wisdom, this faith was to find its way into the hearts of men, because it was emphatically a faith for men, and not for those who sought to separate themselves from men. In spite of that wisdom, and of all other powers and influences, it did establish itself in the world. The Christian church has become a fact which may be reasoned about as we will, but which remains a fact still. Whoso overlooks it in a record of philosophical inquiries, proclaims thereby that they have no connection with humanity; obliges himself to treat the deepest and most earnest speculations of men in the ancient world as dreams of which there is no interpretation, and leaves himself without a clue with which to trace the progress of thought in modern Europe” (Maurice, Encyclopaedia, II, pp. 630–631; see also Id., Ancient Philosophy, pp. 234–237).
- 84.
Cf. Maurice, Philosophy of the First Six Centuries, p. v.
- 85.
Maurice, Philosophy of the First Six Centuries, p. 1; on the aspects characterising the late ancient epoch, see ibid., pp. 1–4. Maurice does not admit, at least as concerns philosophy, that it is possible to consider the fall of the Western Empire as the event that corresponds to the end of the ancient world: at the beginning of the Christian era “we […] find a set of new actors”, who concerned themselves with problems certainly related to those which had been addressed until then, “but in many important respects different from them. A new element […] has been infused into the minds of Pagans and Jews, as well as of Christians” (Maurice, Ancient Philosophy, p. 237).
- 86.
They all share a connection with the tradition of Platonism: Clement avoided the materialism of the Ionians by discovering Plato (Maurice, Philosophy of the First Six Centuries, pp. 44–54); among the Neoplatonists, Plotinus was he who could be reconciled the most with the Christian religion (ibid., pp. 54–68); Iamblichus, with whom “Platonism [became] mythological” (ibid., pp. 71–82); Augustine recovered the truths of Platonism from a Christian point of view (ibid., pp. 96–115); Proclus, with whom Neoplatonism faded into mere abstractions (ibid., pp. 115–138).
- 87.
Maurice, Philosophy of the First Six Centuries, p. 139. Maurice’s judgement on Justinian is extremely negative: he submitted himself to papal authority; in Africa he exterminated the Arian Vandals and in Italy the Ostrogoths, who were Arian too, but the “victories of the Trinitarian over the Arian faith” represented the triumph of an enforced orthodoxy rather than of a faith: “the Trinity with him was not a belief, but an opinion. Men were to hold right opinions upon it and upon other subjects. If they did not, they were to be coerced. But, like everything else in Justinian’s mind, this doctrine belonged to the region of decrees”; and in Africa “the victory of the Cross, as it appeared to that generation, prepared the way for the triumph of the Crescent a little more than a century afterwards”, which was to bring about the dissolution of the unity of the Mediterranean area; with the closure of the school of Athens, with the banishment of the Neoplatonic philosophers, but also with the abolition of the consulate, only the “symbols” of the greatness of Rome in politics and of Greece in the domain of thought were swept away, “the reality of them having long disappeared” (ibid., pp. 140–148). More positive was his judgement on Gregory the Great: he was no man of letters but, nevertheless, was “a great instrument in promoting education”; a man of faith, not of doctrine; imbued with missionary zeal, an organiser of forms of cult for the whole Christian West, he created the preconditions of the process of secularisation of the Church which characterised the European Middle Ages (ibid., pp. 148–157).
- 88.
Cf. Maurice, Encyclopaedia, II, pp. 639–647.
- 89.
Maurice, Mediaeval Philosophy, pp. 1–28; cf. Id., Philosophy of the First Six Centuries, pp. 138–139; on the contrary, Boethius’ name is not present in the article written for the Encyclopaedia.
- 90.
Maurice, Mediaeval Philosophy, p. 28.
- 91.
Ibid., pp. 7–8. Here Maurice takes up some theses which had already been formulated by Coleridge (cf. above, note 67), by Hamilton, who also expresses his appreciation for the contribution made by the Scholastics to the clarification of language (“[…] to the schoolmen the vulgar languages are principally indebted for what precision and analytic subtilty they possess”, Hamilton, Discussions, p. 5, note), and by John Stuart Mill, whose admiration for the logic of the Scholastics is well-known (cf. Mill, A System of Logic, in Collected Works, vol. VII, p. 29, and vol. VIII, p. 1013).
- 92.
Maurice, Mediaeval Philosophy, pp. 25–26.
- 93.
“[…] And now came forth our Lully, to avouch that a divine art [...] will conquer the Saracens better than the hosts of the West. It is a great change – the sign that other changes have taken place – or are at hand. […] There was another far grander spirit than Raymond’s which was passing at the same time through a very similar crisis. Dante Alighieri was changed from a Guelph into a Ghibelline. Dante Alighieri, the most earnest Theologian of his time, found the persecuted Manfred in Purgatory, and some Popes in one of the hopeless circles of the world below. Yet no one more thoroughly honoured the founders of the Mendicant Orders. The Dominican Aquinas in the Paradiso, celebrates the praises of St. Francis. He himself proved his claim to be the Angelic Doctor by untying, there as here, the most complicated knots of the intellect. But the poet who listened with delight to these solutions is the poet of Florence and of Italy; the transcendental Metaphysician never for an instant forgets the sorrows of the actual world in which he is living; the student sustains the patriot. Drenched in the school lore, it is still the vulgar eloquence – the speech of the people that is dear to him. Virgil is his Master, because Virgil was a Mantuan, and sang of Italy. And neither Theology, Politics, nor the study of ancient Song, crushes the life of the individual man. Fervent human love was the commencement to the poet of a new life. […] Wise men of our own day have said that Dante embodies the spirit of the Mediaeval time, and is a prophet of the time which followed. We testify our assent to that remark by accepting his poem, coeval as it is with the great judgment of the Papacy under Boniface, with the practical termination of the religious wars [between the Christians and the Saracens, i.e. the Crusades] and with the rise of a native literature, not only in the South but in the North – as a better epoch from which to commence the new age of European thought, than the German Reformation of the sixteenth century” (Maurice, Mediaeval Philosophy, pp. 251–253; see also Id., Encyclopaedia, II, pp. 646–647).
- 94.
Cf. Maurice, Modern Philosophy, pp. 6–17; Id., Encyclopaedia, II, p. 647.
- 95.
See, for example, the judgement Maurice expresses on the figure of Edmund Burke, whose denunciation of eighteenth-century flat rationalism and empiricism (“the Locke age is over”) he admires, but whom he reproaches for his incapability of gras** the movement of history and “the signs of a new time” which, albeit contradictorily, began to appear through the events of the French Revolution (Maurice, Modern Philosophy, in particular pp. 595–596).
- 96.
Maurice, Encyclopaedia, II, p. 666; see also Id., Modern Philosophy, pp. 630–633. These are, according to Maurice, the conclusions reached by Kant, before him by Plato and the Platonic tradition, and during the modern age by Pascal, and after Kant, with even greater strength and rigour, by Jacobi. Theories quite similar to these can be found in the most important metaphysical work written by Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, published in 1825: metaphysical ideas are truths whose complete knowledge can only be attained by man in his entirety, that is, by free will as well as the understanding, and which therefore are neither speculative nor practical, but are speculative and practical at the same time; speculative reason can go beyond experience, but it is then unable to guarantee this world with objective reality, unless by moving from a purely speculative plane to a practical plane; only moral experience effects the conversion of the “entia rationalia”, i.e. the ideas of reason, into “entia realia” (Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, ed. by J. Beer, in Collected Works, IX, pp. 195 and 210–213); cf. C.R. Sanders, ‘Coleridge, F. D. Maurice, and the Distinction between the Reason and the Understanding’, Publications of Modern Language Association of America, LI (1936), pp. 459–465.
- 97.
Cf. Maurice, Modern Philosophy, pp. 644–648.
- 98.
“Chronology can never be forgotten with impunity in any record of human thoughts. Not merely the mind of the thinker, but the mind of the age over which he exercised an influence, is misinterpreted, if, through any dream of classifying men according to their opinions, or the subjects upon which they wrote, or the number of their disciples, we overlook the circumstances in which they were educated, those by whom they were surrounded in their early years, the questions which were then most occupying their country” (Maurice, Modern Philosophy, p. 602).
- 99.
Maurice, Modern Philosophy, p. 649; cf. Jacobi, David Hume, in Werke, vol. II/1, p. 234.
- 100.
Maurice, Encyclopaedia, II p. 587; Id, Ancient Philosophy, pp. 129–130.
- 101.
The first version, published in the form of an article, was praised by John Stuart Mill who, in a letter to R. Barclay Fox dated 9th September 1842, wrote: “Maurice’s […] Moral Philosophy in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana […] is rather a history of ethical ideas. It is very interesting especially the analysis of Judaic life and society and of Plato and Aristotle” (J.S. Mill, The Early Letters 1812 to 1848, in Collected Works, XIII, p. 544); similar concepts are also expressed in Stuart Mill’s letter to Maurice dated 9th September 1842 (Id., The Later Letters 1849 to 1873, in Collected Works, XVII, pp. 1997–1998).
- 102.
W. Whewell, History of Inductive Sciences, from the earliest times to the present (London: W. Parker, 1837), 3 vols; new ed., revised and continued, 1847; 3rd ed., 1857; the work was immediately translated into German: Geschichte der induktiven Wissenschaften, der Astronomie, Physik, Mechanick, Chemie &c: von der frühesten Zeiten bis zu unserer Zeit, […] mit Anmerkungen von J.J. von Littrow (Stuttgart, 1840–41), 3 vols; W. Whewell, The Philosophy of Inductive Science (London: W. Parker, 1840); on Whewell see G.N. Cantor, ‘Between rationalism and romanticism: Whewell’s historiography of the inductive science’, in William Whewell, a composite portrait, ed. by M. Fisch and S. Schaffer (Oxford, 1991), pp. 67–86; S. Marcucci, ‘William Whewell e le kantiano-platoniche “idee” nello sviluppo storico della scienza’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, LXI, 2006 (pp. 103–116)
- 103.
Goethe, Faustus (London: Boosey & Sons, 1821), pp. vii-viii: “[…] Some parts are omitted which, it was thought, would be offensive to English readers, from the free, and occasionally immoral tendency of the allusions which they contain […]. The prologue has also been passed over: it carries the scene to heaven, whither Mephistopheles ascends for the purpose of obtaining permission to tempt Faustus; and, both in conception and execution, is repugnant to notions of propriety such as are entertained in this country”.
- 104.
On the translations of Goethe’s Faust cf. Morgan, A Critical Bibliography of German Literature in English Translation, pp. 160–167.
- 105.
Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysic, transl. by J. Richardson (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1819); Logic, with a life, transl. by J. Richardson (London: Simpkin and Marshall 1819); only few mentions as works being printed, (see New Monthly Magazine, XI, no. 66, pp. 538 [Logic] e 539 [Prolegomena] and Quarterly Review, XXI, no. 42, Apr. 1819, p. 559 [Logic]). Most of the copies must have remained unsold, since 17 years later, in 1836, the two volumes were once again put on sale with the same title page giving the date of publication as 1819 but bound together with a third book entitled An Enquiry into the Grounds of Proof for the Existence of God, which was followed by the indication “printed in 1819, but now first published”; the volume had a new title page which bore the new title common to the whole collection, that is Metaphysical Works of […] Immanuel Kant [no indication of publisher] (London, 1836); on the first English translations of Kant, cf. Micheli, The First English Translations of Kant, pp. 77–104, and Id., ‘Richardson, John’, in DNCBPh, pp. 949–950.
- 106.
J.G. Buhle, Histoire de la philosophie moderne depuis la renaissance des lettres jusqu’à Kant, précédé d’un abrégé de la philosophie ancienne depuis Thalès jusqu’au XIV siècle, traduit […] par A.-J.-L. Jourdan (Paris: Fournier, 1816); on the translation of Jourdan, which greatly contributed to the spread of Buhle’s work outside the German areas, cf. Models, vol. III, pp. 833–835.
- 107.
Cf. Edinburgh Review, XXVII, no. 54, Dec. 1816, p. 542; Quarterly Review, XVI, no. 31, Oct. 1816, p. 286.
- 108.
Rev. Buhle, Histoire de la Philosophie Moderne, transl. by A.-J.-L. Jourdan (Paris, 1816), Monthly Review, LXXXIII, 1817, pp. 449–465.
- 109.
On William Taylor of Norwich see D. Roper, Reviewing before the Edinburgh: 1788–1802, pp. 258–260; see also A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the late William Taylor of Norwich, ed. by J.W. Robberds (London,1843), 2 vols. Two decades earlier Taylor had reviewed Tiedemann’s Geist (Monthly Review, XX, ser. 2, Aug. 1796, pp. 573–580; XXI, Dec. 1796, pp. 504–511; XXIV, Dec. 1797, pp. 521–527.
- 110.
H.J. Rose, The State of Protestantism in Germany [Cambridge, 1825], 2nd edition, enlarged, with an appendix (London, 1829).
- 111.
As for the reception in Great Britain of German studies in the field of theology and especially Biblical criticism, cf. J. Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany (London, 1984). On the theological and religious resistance to the introduction of Hegel, cf. P. Robbins, British Hegelians: 1875–1925 (New York and London, 1982), pp. 26–37.
- 112.
Between 1833 and 1843, at least eight different translations of Goethe’s Faust came out (cf. Morgan, A Critical Bibliography of German Literature in English Translation, pp. 161–168). At the same time, a certain interest in German philosophy manifested itself: as regards Kant’s works, in 1836, in addition to the new circulation of the texts mentioned above (see above, note 105), translations of his works on ethics appeared (The Metaphysic of Ethics by Immanuel Kant, transl. by J.W. Semple, Edinburgh, 1836, which included the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Ethics, the chapters I and III of the second Critique, and the Doctrine of Virtue), then, in 1838, the Religion within the Boundary of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant was published (transl. by J.W. Semple, Edinburgh, 1838), and finally the first Critique appeared (Critick of Pure Reason, translated from the original of Immanuel Kant [the translation came out anonymously, but in fact it was carried out by Francis Haywood], London, 1838); as for the translators, cf. Micheli, ‘Haywood, Francis’ and ‘Semple, John William’, in DNCBPh, pp. 508–509 and 997–998: in the prefaces to the texts, both translators establish a parallel between the Kantian search for the a priori first principles of knowledge, the Scottish philosophy of the ‘common sense’, and French eclecticism. The changing attitude perceptible in Great Britain towards German culture is also confirmed by the fact that at the end of the 1820s, and then during the 1830s, there appeared new literary reviews which were particularly attentive to the literary production from the Continent, in particular from France and Germany; the most important of them were The Foreign Quarterly Review (London, 1827–1846); The Athenaeum. London Literary and Critical Journal [then: The Athenaeum] (London, 1828–1921); The Foreign Review, and continental miscellany (London, 1828–1830); The British and Foreign Review; or, European Quarterly Journal (London, 1835–1844).
- 113.
Manuel de l’histoire de la philosophie, traduit de l’allemand de Tennemann par V. Cousin (Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1829), 2 vols; cf. Athenaeum, no. 137, June 12, 1830, pp. 354–356; no. 139, June 26, 1830, pp. 386–388; the work was cited in the main literary journals in England, Scotland, and the United States; on the French translation of the Grundriss see also Models, III, pp. 921–922.
- 114.
W.G. Tennemann, A Manual of the History of Philosophy, translated […] by the Rev. Arthur Johnson (Oxford: Talboys, 1832); the translation was made from the 1829 German edition and took into account Cousin’s French translation as well; indeed, like the latter, it abridges the description of German philosophy after Schelling, limiting itself to providing bio-bibliographical information; moreover, the translator takes care to inform the reader that he omitted some passages which, in his eyes, were critical of the Christian religion.
- 115.
Edinburgh Review, LVI, no. 111, Oct.1832, pp. 160–177 (now in Hamilton, Discussions, I, pp. 100–117).
- 116.
A.H. Ritter, History of Ancient Philosophy, transl. by A.J.W. Morrison, vols 1–3, Oxford: Talboys, 1838–1839; vol. 4, London: Henry G. Bohn, 1846; the fourth volume, devoted to the “History of the decline of ancient philosophy” in the Roman and Christian age, was published in London in 1846. The translation was cited (see Athenaeum, no. 531, Dec. 1837, pp. 938–939) and reviewed [Philip Pusey], Dublin University Magazine, XII, no. 67, Aug. 1838, pp. 157–167.
- 117.
Reprints of Stanley’s and Enfield’s works were available; see above note 4.
- 118.
Morrison, Translator’s Preface, in Ritter, History, I, no page numbers.
- 119.
A.-T.-H. Barchou de Penhoën, Histoire de la philosophie allemande depuis Leibnitz jusqu’à Hegel, 2 vols, (Paris: Charpentier, 1836). Willm’s essay on Hegel’s philosophy was first published between 1835 and 1837 in the form of articles in the Revue Germanique, which was also widely read in Great Britain, and was then integrated into a vast historical treatise published in Paris in four volumes: Histoire de la philosophie allemande depuis Kant jusq’à Hegel (Paris: Ladrange, 1846–1849).
- 120.
V. Cousin, Introduction to the History of Philosophy […], transl. by H.G. Linberg (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1832). The translation was signalled and reviewed favourably in British and above all American periodicals; a second translation, made from the French edition of 1841 (which included the lessons he held in 1828 and 1829) came out in 1852 in New York (Course of the History of Modern Philosophy, transl. by O.W. Wight, New York: Appleton & Co., 1852, 2 vols; repr. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1852).
- 121.
V. Cousin, Elements of Psychology, included in a critical examination of Locke’s Essay on the human understanding, Hartford, 1834 [New York, 18382; 18423; 18564]. On C.S. Henry cf. W. Riley, ‘La philosophie française en Amérique’, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, LXXXIV, 1917, pp. 409–414, and R.V. Wells, Three Christian Transcendentalists: James Marsh, Caleb Sprague Henry, Frederich Henry Hedge (New York, 1943), pp. 49–95, 193–201, and 218–219.
- 122.
Précis de l’histoire de la philosophie, publié par les directeurs [i.e. Louis-Antoine de Salinis and Bruno-Dominique de Scorbiac] du Collége de Juilly (Paris: Hachette, 1834); cf. above, pp. 360–363.
- 123.
An Epitome of the History of Philosophy. Being the work adopted by the University of France for instruction in the colleges and high schools. Translated from the French, with additions, and a continuation of the history from the time of Reid to the present day, by C.S. Henry, 2 vols. (New York: Harper, 1841); subsequent reprints: 1842, 1846, 1855, 1856, 1859, 1869, and 1874 (another edition: Aberdeen: Brown & Co., 1849; 1865).
- 124.
Th. Morell, Studies in History, containing [vol.1] the History of Greece, from the earliest period to its final subjugation by the Romans, in a series of essays, accompanied with references to original authorities, moral and religious reflections, and historical exercises for youth, and a correct map of ancient Greece (printed for the author, St Neots, 1813; Philadelphia: B. Johnson, 1819; London: B.J. Holdsworth, 18276); Id., Studies in History, containing [vol. 2] the History of Rome […] (printed for the author, St. Neots, 1814; London 18275); Id., Studies in History, containing the History of England, from its earliest record to the death of Georg III […], 2 vols (London: B.J. Holdsworth, 18275). The volumes, conceived as school text books, also contained brief chapters on the history of philosophy. The Morell family were French Huguenots who had found refuge in England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; many of them became ministers in English Calvinist Congregations and teachers in Academies and colleges responsible for the education of the nonconformist clergy; cf. Micheli, ‘Morell, Thomas’, DNCBPh, pp. 822–823.
- 125.
Th. Morell, Elements of the History of Philosophy and Science, from the earliest authentic records to the commencement of the eighteenth century (London: B.J. Holdsworth, 1827).
- 126.
Morell, Elements, pp. 11–12; cf. D. Stewart, Dissertation First, in Supplement to fourth, fifth, and sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, I, pp. 3–17.
- 127.
“Though a very dry, and here and there intolerably meagre, this is not a useless compilation”, Monthly Magazine, IV, no. 24, Dec. 1827, p. 641; cf. also Literary Chronicle, no. 421, June, 9, 1827, pp. 353–355, and no. 422, June, 16, 1827, pp. 373–75; New Monthly Magazine, XXI, Sept. 1, 1827, p. 373; Monthly Review, VI (3rd s.), no. 26, Oct. 1827, pp. 197–201; Eclectic Review, XXIX, 1828, pp. 545–551.
- 128.
R. Blakey, History of Moral Science (London: James Duncan, 1833; 18362), 2 vols. On Robert Blakey, radically-oriented political journalist, historian of philosophy, and, for a brief period (1849–1851), professor at Queen’s College Belfast, cf. S. Mathieson, ‘Charlemagne, Common Sense, and Chartism: how Robert Blakey wrote his History of Political Literature’, History of European Ideas, XLV (2019), pp. 866–883; cf. also Memoirs of Dr. Robert Blakey: Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Queen’s College, Belfast, ed. by Rev. Henry Miller (London, 1879); R. Hawkins, The Life of Blakey Robert: 1795–1878 (Morpeth, 2010).
- 129.
Blakey, History of Moral Science, I, pp. vi-vii: “In entering on the examination of the various systems which I have noticed, two courses seemed to present themselves for me to follow. The one, to criticise each theory as it came under review, in order to show how it either agreed or differed from some theory of my own; the other, to give the arguments on each side for any system, fairly and candidly, and allow the reader to draw his own conclusion respecting them. I have in general followed the latter plan. I have endeavoured to give the scope and bearing of every author’s system in as full a manner as the importance of the subject or the plan of this work justify; reserving to myself the privilege of stating, in the last chapter but one, to what particular theory I am inclined to give the preference”.
- 130.
Ibid., II, pp. 299–300: “Among several of our English moralists, it is true, this inclination to consult the imagination rather than the judgment, had been partially indulged in; but then the speculations of these writers have always been greatly influenced and tempered by principles of natural and revealed religion, so generally diffused among the great bulk of the nation. And even in those solitary cases where these principles might seem to have been but lightly esteemed in an author’s judgement, he has had to shape his course with a reference to their influence on those around him. But on the continent a different state of things has commonly prevailed. Here [i.e. on the Continent] the mass of the people have been sunk into a state of mental lethargy by the stupifying influence of a degrading superstition; while the learned, on the other hand, cherishing a deep-rooted contempt for the credulity of the multitude, have run into the opposite extreme, and ridiculed and set at nought every sound religious principle. In considering the nature of man, they have looked upon him as a mere insulated being, without any reference to the relations in which he stand to the Great Author of his existence; and hence it is, in the majority of cases, that the continental philosophy of human nature presents to a well-constituted mind such a repulsive aspect, and is so profusely saturated with every thing that is impure, ridiculous, profane, whimsical, and pernicious”.
- 131.
Cf. F. von Schlegel, Lectures on the History of Literature, ancient and modern (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1818), II, p. 244.
- 132.
cf. Literary Gazette, no. 853, May 25, 1833, pp. 328–329: “To meet a desideratum which not only the general and intelligent, but the learned and philosophical reader must feel, Mr. Blakey has here produced a work of great utility” (p. 328); Eclectic Review, XI, Feb. 1834, pp. 136–149: “A correct and condensed view of the principal theories in moral science, has long been felt to be a desideratum by those who have been engaged in prosecuting such inquiries […]. In English literature, we know no other historians of philosophy than Enfield and Stanley” (pp. 136–137).
- 133.
[J. Stuart Mill], Monthly Repository, VII, n.s., Oct. 1833, pp. 661–669 (now in Essays, in J.S. Mill, Collected Works, X, pp. 21–29). Even more disapproving is the judgment expressed by Stuart Mill (“a foolish book by a man named Blakey […] for writing which is utterly unfit, being a man who […] has no eyes, only a pair of glasses and, I will add, almost opake ones”) in a letter to Thomas Carlyle dated 5 October 1833 (Letters, in J.S. Mill, Collected Works, XII, p. 181).
- 134.
R. Blakey, History of Philosophy of Mind: Embracing the Opinions of all Writers on Mental Sciences from the Earliest period to the Present Time (London: Saunders, 1848), 4 vols. (2nd ed., London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850).
- 135.
He was dismissed in October 1851, officially for health reason; as to the real reasons for his dismissal (probably absenteeism), see Mathieson, p. 879.
- 136.
“My sojourn on the Continent”, he writes, “opened up to me a world of interest. It was an intellectual new birth. Every day and hour imparted fresh mental topics for thought and reflection. My own narrowness of mind and confined literary sympathies were ever before my eyes, and while they depressed they yet stimulated me to overcome, if possible, my shortcomings and prejudices. I shall never forget the lively sentiments of delight I felt in this new struggle; and I laboured almost night and day without experiencing the slightest symptoms of weariness or exhaustion. I gave a methodical arrangement to my reading and study. I had note-books for separate topics, chiefly mental philosophy, moral philosophy, logic, and politics. To read for mere amusement seemed, in my case, a decided waste of time” (Memoirs, p. 137); “I cultivated an acquaintance with the German and Italian languages. The French I could read tolerably well when I left England” (p. 118); “[…] all the public libraries I had visited in France, in Belgium, and even in Germany” (p. 120).
- 137.
In vol. IV, for example, devoted to the history of the philosophy of the mind “from the commencement of the nineteenth century to the present day [1848]”, chapter 1, devoted to the “Metaphysical writers of Great Britain from the year 1800 to the present day”, is subdivided into 44 paragraphs, each of which deals with one thinker; chapter 2 (German area) is subdivided into 31 paragraphs, chapter 3 (France) into 41, chapter 4 (Italy) into 42, chapter 5 (Belgium and Holland) into 50, chapter 7 (United States) into 23, to give a total of 231 thinkers; chapter 6 is devoted to metaphysics in Spain, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, and here the paragraphs are devoted to each of the 5 countries, over a longer period of time; the final two chapters are devoted, respectively, to “Physiognomy and Mesmerism” (chapter 8) and “Phrenology” (chapter 9). The four volumes include a total of 630 thinkers, who each have a paragraph of variable length devoted to them.
- 138.
cf. History of the Philosophy of Mind, II, pp. 468–476 and 482–485; IV, pp. 5–8. Indeed, the same concern was also shared by Stewart, according to whom Locke, both in regard to the origin of ideas and to the nature of moral sense, “has been very grossly misapprehended or misrepresented by a large portion of his professed followers, as well as of his avowed antagonists” (Dissertation, pt. 2, pp. 223–239); cf. Models, II, pp. 603–604; E. Levi Mortera, Dugald Stewart. Scienza della mente, metodo e senso comune (Firenze, 2018), pp. 143–146.
- 139.
“[…] It is quite apparent to every attentive and candid reader, that he [Locke] speaks of reflection, not as a passive instrument, but an active and creative power. […] The French philosopher [Cousin] has entirely misconceived Locke’s theory on that matter” (ibid., II, pp. 475–476); “the same inattention to Locke’s meaning – continues Blakey a little further on – has induced a well known British philosopher, Dr. Whewell, to suppose that the author of the Essay on the Human Understanding has no correct conceptions of the nature of abstract propositions and axioms, but referred them to operations of sense as their cause” (ibid., II, pp. 478–479); on Locke in the British historiography of the time see H. Aarsleff, ‘Locke’s Reputation in Nineteenth Century England’, The Monist, LV, no. 3, Jul. 1971, pp. 392–422.
- 140.
cf. Memoirs, pp. 238–240; Morning Post, Nov. 25, 1848; Literary Gazette, no. 1662, Nov. 25, 1848, pp. 769–70; Athenaeum, no. 1113, Feb. 24, 1849, pp. 189–90; Massachusetts Quarterly, no. 6, March 1849, pp. 253–55; Eclectic Review, XXVIII, Jul. 1850, pp. 27–46.
- 141.
R. Blakey, Historical Sketch of Logic, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (Edinburgh: J. Nichol, 1851); cf. Eclectic Review, IV, no. 1113, Sep 1852, pp. 316–333 [in part. 321–329]; Methodist Quarterly [New York], XXXVIII, Oct. 1856, pp. 505–508); Id., The History of Political Literature (London: R. Bentley, 1855), 2 vols. In the two published works, the treatment gets as far as the year 1700; the third and fourth volume were not published, even though they were ready for printing (cf. Memoirs, p. 242).
- 142.
J.D. Morell, An Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century (London: Johnstone, 1846), 2 vols [I, pp. xxiv, 486; II, pp. 536]; 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, ibid. 1847 (from which we quote here), 2 vols [I, pp. xxii, 591; II, pp. 666]. This work enjoyed a considerable popularity (cf. Athenaeum, 1846, pp. 751–753); the complete text of the second London edition was reprinted (in one volume, pp. xviii, [19], 752) several times in the United States (New York: R. Carter & Brothers, 1848; 1849; 1851; 1853; 1856; 1858; 1862; 1872; 1878). Cf. also Morell, On the Philosophical Tendencies of the Age; being four lectures delivered at Edinburgh and Glasgow in January 1848 (London: Johnstone, 1848). In the same period Morell also published an extensive essay on the meaning of the religious experience (The Philosophy of Religion, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1849; New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1849), which aroused heated debate because of its rationalistic approach and its explicit reference to Schleiermacher. Of a more theoretical nature was his last major work concerning philosophical issues, the Elements of Psychology, Part i (London: W. Pickering, 1853), which was preceded, however, by a vast and interesting picture of the historical development of psychology as a science, where the author acknowledges his debts to Fries, Herbart, and especially Immanuel H. Fichte (pp. 3–38). Morell also edited the English edition of a work by I. H. Fichte (Contributions to Mental Philosophy, transl. and ed. by J.D. Morell, London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860). A few years before his death, Morell also published a collection of essays on Leibniz, Kant, and nineteenth-century German philosophy (Philosophical Fragments: written during intervals of business, London: Longmans and Co., 1878) and a Manual of History of Philosophy; with numerous examination papers in mental science which have been set in the London University (London: Stewart, 1884), pp. 595. The latter work is of a modest level; as concerns Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the author limits himself to quoting in full or summarizing passages from two manuals published over 30 years before by the Lutheran theologian Ludwig Noack (Buch der Weltweisheit oder die Lehren der bedeutendsten Philosophen aller Zeiten, vol. I: Alterthum und Mittelalter, Leipzig, 1851; Geschichte der Philosophie in gedrängter Uebersicht, Weimar, 1853), whereas as concerns modern philosophy he simply condenses his major work; however, the manual enjoyed a certain diffusion and was reprinted in 1886, 1888, and 1905.
- 143.
John Daniel Morell (1816–1891) was the son of a minister of the Congregational church, and nephew of Thomas Morell mentioned above; from 1833 to 1838 he studied at Homerton Academy (then located in London and affiliated to the University of London), one of the main colleges responsible for the education of the nonconformist clergy; from 1838 to 1841 he attended the University of Glasgow, where he completed his studies; subsequently he spent 1 year in Germany studying philosophy and theology in Bonn, where he attended the lessons held by C. A. Brandis and Immanuel Hermann Fichte; once back to England, he was ordained as a minister, and between 1846 and 1853 he published his major works on the history of philosophy; he was also charged with tutorial tasks at University College; in 1848 he was the first of the nonconformists to be appointed Inspector of Schools, a position in which he was active until 1876; he was the author of several school textbooks. On J.D. Morell, see R.M. Theobald, Memorials of John Daniel Morell, Her Majesty Inspector of Schools (London, 1891), and S. Brown, ‘Morell, John Daniel’, in DNCBPh, pp. 818–822. On another Morell, John Reynell, a cousin of John Daniel, who was a historian of philosophy too, see below note 153.
- 144.
Morell, Historical and Critical View, I, pp. vi-ix.
- 145.
Ibid., I, pp. 63–72; on Jacobi, see II, pp. 400–456.
- 146.
Ibid., I, p. 71 note: “The reader who wishes to see these four tendencies [sensationalism, idealism, scepticism, mysticism] of the philosophic spirit more fully explained and proved by an appeal to the testimony of the universal history of philosophy, will find the whole question admirably treated in Victor Cousin’s Cours de l’Histoire de la Philosophie, Lectures iv. to xii”. But Morell also aims criticisms Cousin: “he has represented the four tendencies too much as four distinct philosophies existing in every age, rather than as so many prevailing influences or predispositions” (I, p. 71). He also speaks of “tendencies”, or “predispositions”, in the cycle of lessons held in 1848, in which the terminology partly changes: besides scepticism, we find “positivism” (cf. Morell, On the Philosophical Tendencies of the Age, pp. 9–48), replacing empiricism and sensationalism, “individualism” (pp.49–87), partly replacing idealism, “traditionalism” (pp. 98–144), replacing mysticism, and the “philosophy of common sense” (pp. 145–93), which embraces eclecticism and spiritualistic idealism.
- 147.
I.H. Fichte, Beiträge zur Charakteristik der neueren Philosophie, oder kritische Geschichte derselben von Descartes und Locke bis auf Hegel (Sulzbach, 18412); H.M. Chalybäus, Historische Entwickelung der spekulativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel (Dresden and Lepizig, 18392): on I.H. Fichte and Chalybäus cf. Models, III, pp. 784–785. In the mid 1840s, probably as a result of the edition prepared by Fichte son, but above all of the spiritualistic and religious interpretation he had provided, William Smith translated into English a series of works by Fichte father, which were first published separately between 1844 and 1847, and then in a collection entitled The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (London: J. Chapman, 1848–49), 2 vols; other editions: 1873, 1877, 1889.
- 148.
cf. I.H. Fichte, Beiträge zur Charakteristik [1841], pp. iv-vi; cf. Models, III, pp. 784–785.
- 149.
See the testimony of J.M.D. Meiklejohn, Dr. Morell as a Philosopher, in Theobald, Memorials, pp. 55–58. Morell’s most important work was greatly appreciated by Mansel too, who in a letter to Morell himself dated 1862 wrote: “I owe you a debt of gratitude in many ways […]. Your History of Modern Philosophy was the book that, more than any other, gave me a taste for philosophical study many years ago. And now, some 16 years after its publication, it remains, as far as I know, the best book on the subject that we have in English” (Theobald, Memorials, pp. 23–24). A strongly critical review appeared anonymously in the Fraser’s Magazine (XXXIV, no. 202, Oct. 1846, pp. 407–415; no. 203, Nov. 1846, p. 630); the review, which is to be ascribed to G.H. Lewes, contains indeed a criticism of Cousin, of whom Morell professed to be a disciple: “Except the English writers, and Cousin and Jouffroy - we read in the review - there is no evidence whatever of [Morell’s] having any direct acquaintance with the works of the philosophers treated in his pages”; Morell, observes the reviewer –takes all of his information, including quotations, from K.L. Michelet’s Geschichte [1837–38], as concerns the German authors, and from the Essai [1828] by J. Ph. Damiron (a disciple of Cousin), as concerns the French authors; Morell, however, “never directly quotes these his authorities”; Morell is therefore accused of plagiarism (pp. 407–411). But the review contains a further remark which is of greater significance from the speculative point of view: taking up Cousin, Morell speaks of “five possible systems of philosophy – sensationalism, idealism, scepticism, mysticism, eclecticism”, and, mindless of chronology, distributes philosophers within these five classes: “such a pellmell of dates and systems – such a violation of all historical order, was never seen before […]. No man can escape the influences of his age. He inherits a vast amount of that which the labour of generations has stored up. But Mr. Morell writes as if a man were wholly isolated from such influences, as if, so long as he belonged to one class of thinkers, according to an arbitrary classification, he was only to be considered as a sensationalist absolute, and not the heir of time” (pp. 411–412); and, in support of his thesis the reviewer criticises the interpretation of Locke provided by Cousin, which Morell adopts and reproposes (pp. 413–415); cf. C. König-Pralong, ‘Une French Theory au XIXe Siècle. L’éclectisme de Cousin en Grand-Bretagne et aux États-Unis d’Amérique’, in Une arme philosophique: l’éclectisme de Victor Cousin, ed. by D. Antoine-Mahut and D. Whistler (Paris, 2019), pp. 111–124, in part. 119–123.
- 150.
Cf. R. Metz, A Hundred Years of British Philosophy, ed. by J.H. Muirhead (London, 1938), pp. 40–41; see also Robbins, British Hegelians, pp. 20–22.
- 151.
H.M. Chalybäus, Historical Survey of Speculative Philosophy, from Kant to Hegel […], translated from the fourth edition of the German, by A. Tulk (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1854); Id., Historical Development of Speculative Philosophy, from Kant to Hegel, from the German […] by the Rev. A. Edersheim, (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1854).
- 152.
H.M. Chalybäus, Historische Entwickelung [18392], p. 149.
- 153.
W. G. Tennemann, A Manual of the History of Philosophy, translated […] by the Rev. A. Johnson, revised, enlarged, and continued by J[ohn] R[eynell] Morell (London: H.G. Bohn, 1852), and completed with all the parts of the 1829 edition missing from it; in addition, the editor added some paragraphs, taken from various sources, concerning the developments of philosophy in Germany (Schopenhauer, Strauss, Feuerbach), in England (Whewell, Hamilton, Coleridge), in France (Cousin, Comte, Fourier, Proudhon), in Italy (Mamiani, Gioberti, Rosmini), in Denmark (Oersted), in Holland (Wyttenbach, Hemsterhuis), and in America (Emerson, Parker); the work was reprinted several times (London: Bell & Daldy, 1867, 1870, 1873; London: Bell & Sons, 1878); cf. Micheli, ‘Morell, John Reynell’, in DNCBPh, p. 822.
- 154.
E. Belfort Bax, A Handbook of the History of Philosophy for the use of students (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1886, 19084); see Mind, XI (1886), pp. 433–436; Contemporary Review, L, Jul. 1886, pp. 604–605 (by Andrew Seth); British Quarterly, LXXXIII, no. 166, Apr. 1886, pp. 507–508; Saturday Review, LXI, no. 1589, Apr 10, 1886, p. 520; Westminster Review, CXXVI, no. 251, Jul. 1886, pp. 244–245; on Belfort Bax cf. S. Pierson, ‘Ernest Belfort Bax: 1854–1926. The Encounter of Marxism and Late Victorian Culture’, Journal of British Studies, XII (Nov. 1972), pp. 39–70; M. Bevir, ‘Ernest Belfort Bax: Marxist, Idealist, and Positivist’, Journal of the History of Ideas LIV, (1993), 1, pp. 119–135.
- 155.
W. A. Butler, Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, ed. from the Author’s MSS. with Notes, by W. Hepworth Thompson (Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1856), 2 vols. On William Archer Butler (c. 1814–1848), see T. Duddy, in DNCBPh, pp. 173–174.
- 156.
Butler, Lectures, I, pp. 240–42.
- 157.
Ibid., I, pp. 185–216.
- 158.
On Ferrier (1808–1864), see W.R. Sorley, A History of English Philosophy (Cambridge, 1920), pp. 283–286; Robbins, The British Hegelians, pp. 24–25; J. Keefe, ‘James Frederick Ferrier: The Return of Idealism and the Rejection of Common Sense’, in Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. by G. Graham (Oxford, 2015), pp. 67–94; P. Ferreira, in DNCBPh, pp. 382–386. As regards the judgment formulated by the British idealists on Ferrier, see E.S. Haldane, James Frederick Ferrier (Edinburgh & London,1899).
- 159.
J.F. Ferrier, Lectures on Greek Philosophy, and other Philosophical Remains, ed. by A. Grant and E.L. Lushington (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood and Sons, 1866), 2 vols; the history of Greek philosophy takes up volume 1; it was later reprinted, becoming the second volume of Ferrier’s Philosophical Works (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood and Sons, 1875), from which we quote here.
- 160.
Ferrier, Philosophical Works, II, pp. 1–2.
- 161.
Ibid., II, pp. 2–3.
- 162.
Ibid., II, pp. 4–5.
- 163.
Cf. F.C.A. Schwegler, Handbook of the History of Philosophy, transl. and annotated by J.H. Stirling, 2nd edition (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1868), p. 346.
- 164.
G.H. Lewes, ‘The Philosophy of Art: Hegel’s Aesthetics’, British and Foreign Review, XIII, no. 25. Jan. 1842, pp. 1–49. On the early reception of Hegel in Great Britain, see J. Bradley, ‘Hegel in Britain: A Brief History of British Commentary and Attitude’, Heythrop Journal, XX, (1979), 1–2, in particular pp. 1–24, and the well-documented essay by K. Wills, ‘The Introduction and Critical Reception of Hegelian Thought in Britain: 1830–1900,’ Victorian Studies, XXXII (1988–1989), pp. 85–111.
- 165.
J.S. Mill’s letter to Lewes dated 24th April 1841, in J.S. Mill, The Early Letters 1812 to 1848, in Collected Works, XIII, p. 470; on Lewes’ article cf. Ashton, The German Idea, pp. 112–126, and Id., G.H. Lewes: A Life (Oxford, 1991) pp. 37–40; cf. also E.S. Reed, From Soul to Mind (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 145–157.
- 166.
D. F. Strauss, The Life of Jesus critically examined (London, 1846; 18822: 18983), 3 vols; the translation is made on the basis of the fourth German edition. The translation of Spinoza’s Tractatus, which had perhaps been started even before that of Strauss’ text, was probably not concluded, whereas in 1854 she completed the translation of the Ethica, which, however, she did not succeed in publishing.
- 167.
L. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. From the 2nd ed., by M. Evans (London: Chapman, 1854; 18812; 18933; repr. New York: C. Blancard, 1855).
- 168.
In Britain, during the 1840s and in the early 1850s, the more cultivated public did not encounter Hegel’s thought, so to speak, ‘in a raw state’, but within an intricate context of connections with other aspects of German culture, which were perhaps of even greater significance for the average reader, such as literature, aesthetic theories, philology and linguistics, the historical sciences, and especially theology and Biblical criticism; in the period in which it came into contact with Hegel’s philosophy, British culture was itself going through deep changes to the religious field – as a result of the crisis of the eighteenth-century Anglican tradition and of the conflict between ‘Tractarianism’, the Evangelical current, and the liberalism of the so-called ‘Broad Church’ – as well as to the political field, with the establishment and consolidation of liberalism, and, finally, to the field of the educational institutions themselves, with a gradual process of reform of university teaching, which was in part the result of a comparison with German universities, in particular the Prussian ones, which were taken as models for professionalization also in the domain of the humanities and for the leading position assigned to scientific research (cf. G. Haines, Essays on German Influence upon English Education and Science: 1850–1919, pp. 21–46).
- 169.
“The foundation of a comprehensive Method is the great achievement of Comte, as it was of Bacon, and the influence he has exercised, and must continue to exercise, will be almost exclusively in that direction. Over his subsequent efforts to found a social doctrine, and to become the founder of a new religion, let us draw the veil” (G.H. Lewes, The Biographical History, London, 1857, p. 662); on the relationship between Lewes and Comte, cf. G. Lanaro, ‘George Henry Lewes fra Comte e Mill: un episodio nella storia del positivismo britannico’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, XCIII (1988), pp. 77–102.
- 170.
On George Henry Lewes (1817–1878), see R. Ashton, G.H. Lewes. A Life (Oxford, 1991); Id., The German Idea, pp. 105–146. During a later period of his life, Lewes devoted himself to studies on the philosophy of the mind, psychology, and psychobiology and published several works, among which The Physiology of Common Life (Edinburgh and London, 1859–1860, 2 vols), which influenced Pavlov and his discovery of conditioning, and The Problems of Life and Mind (London, 1874–1879, 5 vols). Concerning his contributions to the field of the philosophy of the mind, cf. J. Kaminsky, ‘The Empirical Metaphysics of George Henry Lewes’, Journal of the History of Ideas XIII (1952), pp. 314–332; with reference Lewes’ intense and lifelong activity as a literary journalist, see A.R. Kaminsky, George Lewes as a Literary Critic (Syracuse, NY, 1968).
- 171.
G.H. Lewes, A Biographical History of Philosophy (London: C. Knight & Co., 1845–1846, 4 vols [pp. 239, 256, 232, 264], from which we quote here; repr. London: Cox, 1851, 4 vols; new edition entitled The Biographical History of Philosophy, from its origins in Greece down to the present day […], Library edition, much enlarged, and thoroughly revised (London: John W. Parker and Son, 1857), pp. v-xxxv, 675 [another edition, identical to the London edition but with a different numbering of pages: New York: A. Appleton, 1857, pp. iii-xxxiv, 801]. In the third edition, which does not differ much from that of 1857, the title has changed: The History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1867), 2 vols [pp. v-cxv, 407; pp. 663]. The following edition (the fourth) was published, in two volumes, by the same publisher in London in 1871. The fifth edition (from which we quote here) was published in London (Longmans, Green, and Co.) in 1880, 2 vols, [pp. v-cxiv, 410; v-x, 773]. In the text of the third edition, the History was also translated into German (Leipzig, 1871; 1873–18762) and into Hungarian (Pest, 1876–1878). But the first edition, preserving the original title, proceeded autonomously and was reprinted several times: 1867, 1868, 1871, 1872, 1880, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1900, 1902. In the early 1860s Lewes undertakes a vast history of science; he begins with the study on Aristotle’s scientific works and in 1864 publishes Aristotle, a Chapter from the History of Science, including analyses of Aristotle’s scientific writings (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1864; German transl. by Julius Victor Carus, Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1865): “The origin and development of Science are questions of high interest […]. I have been for many years preparing myself to attempt a sketch of the Embryology of Science, so to speak – an exposition of the great momenta in scientific development; and the present volume is the first portion of such an exposition, which I publish separately because in itself it forms a monograph, and because I may never live to complete the larger scheme. As a monograph it has not, I believe, been forestalled. Numerous and exhaustive as are the works devoted to Aristotle’s moral and metaphysical writings, there is not one which attempts to display, with any fullness, his scientific researches” (Ibid., p. viii).
- 172.
Lewes, Biographical History, I, p. 3.
- 173.
Ibid., I, p. 6.
- 174.
Ibid., I, p. 12. The use of the term ‘philosophy’ to designate ‘metaphysics’ alone, which refers explicitly to Hegel’s polemic against the use of the term ‘philosophy’ in English (cf. Lewes, Biographical History, III, p. 6 note), immediately provoked bitter controversy: “[…] Mr. Lewes still persists, on continental authorities, in using the word ‘Philosophy’ as designating metaphysics only, and ridicules the English notion that the instruments employed in the laboratory and observatory are philosophical, and Newton a philosopher. He never permits himself to suspect that the English may, after all, be right in using the word ‘philosophy’ as expressive of the antecedent unity of which physics and metaphysics are the dual developments, and which may both be properly, as well as popularly, called sciences: the one a science of principles and the other a science of facts. To suppose otherwise, indeed, is clearly an assumption” (Athenaeum, no. 965, Apr. 25, 1846, p. 422; see also ibid., no. 925, July 19, 1845, p. 715).
- 175.
Lewes, Biographical History, I, pp. 12–19 (see also Athenaeum, no. 926, July 26, 1845, p. 745).
- 176.
Lewes, Biographical History, I, p. 22.
- 177.
Ibid., I, pp. 12–13.
- 178.
Ibid., II, p. 220.
- 179.
Ibid., II, pp. 222–223 (cf. also Id., The History, I, pp. 407–409). And he adds: “Philosophy may be occupied about the same problems as Religion: but it employs altogether different Methods, and depends on altogether different principles. Religion may, and should, call in Philosophy to its aid; but, in so doing, it assigns to Philosophy only the subordinate office of illustrating, reconciling, or applying its dogmas. This is not a Religious Philosophy: it is Religion and Philosophy; the latter stripped of its boasted prerogative of deciding for itself, and allowed only to employ itself in reconciling the decisions of Religion and of Reason. From these remarks it is obvious that our History, being a narrative of the progress of Philosophy only, will not include any account of the so-called Christian Philosophy, because that is a subject strictly belonging to the History of Religion” (Lewes, Biographical History, II, pp. 223–224; cf. also The History, I, pp. 409–410). From the fourth edition (1871) onwards, Lewes added a part devoted to medieval philosophy (Lewes, The History, II, pp. 1–89) where he concentrated with particular attention, however, on those thinkers, or schools, who had contributed to direct speculation toward a distinction between philosophy and theology, as in the case of Abelard (pp. 13–32), or to the spread of scientific culture, as in the cases of Arabic philosophy (pp. 33–70) and Roger Bacon (pp. 77–87).
- 180.
Lewes, Biographical History, II, p. 224; cf. also III, p. 87. On the divorce between theology and philosophy carried out by Descartes, he writes: “Descartes […] was not less [than Bacon] emphatically opposed to the theological spirit. He disengaged Philosophy from Theology by treating it as an independent topic, and by treating it on a Method which was in its essence destructive of all Theology, for it proceeded on a basis of absolute Doubt. The reign of Authority was proclaimed at an end. All the notions, all the hypotheses, all the beliefs which had filled the perplexed soul were to be ejected, and a new beginning was to be made from absolute Doubt, nothing accepted till it was proved, nothing proved by authorities, but all by reason. The clearance here was more than a clearance from scholastic argumentation and Aristotelian tradition, it was a swee** away of all Authority whatever, succeeded by installation of Reason as supreme arbiter” (Id., The History, II, pp. 117–118).
- 181.
Lewes, Biographical History, III, pp. 5–7; cf. also Id., The History, II, pp. 115–119.
- 182.
Lewes, Biographical History, IV, p. 97; as regards his final judgement on Kant seen as a cause of scepticism, see IV, pp. 134–135: “Kant was not a sceptic, but he deceived himself in supposing that his system was any safeguard from Scepticism. The veracity of Consciousness, which he had so laboriously striven to establish, and on which his Practical Reason was based, is only a relative, subjective veracity. Experience is the only basis of knowledge; and Experience, we know, leads to Scepticism”; see also Id., The History, II, pp. 469–470, 517–518.
- 183.
Lewes, The History, I, pp. xxvi-xxvii: “Metaphysical Philosophy has been ever in movement, but the movement has been circular; and this fact is thrown into stronger relief by contrast with the linear progress of Science. Instead of perpetually finding itself, after years of gigantic endeavour, returned to the precise spot from which is started, Science finds itself, year by year, and almost day by day, advancing step by step, each accumulation of power adding to the momentum of its progress […]. While the first principles of Metaphysical Philosophy are to this day as much a matter of dispute as they were 2000 years ago, the first principles of Science are securely established, and form the guiding lights of European progress”.
- 184.
Lewes, Biographical History, IV, pp. 263–264.
- 185.
Ibid., IV, p. 263. On the parallel between ancient Stoicism and the Scottish school of ‘common sense’, and between the Stoic criterion of evidence, as opposed to the ancient Sceptics, and the unbeatable power of common sense, which the Scottish philosophers contrasted with Hume: “[…] the Stoics, combating the Scepticism of their age, were reduced to the same strait as Reid, Beattie, and Hutcheson, combating the Scepticism of Hume: reduced to give up Philosophy, and to find refuge in Common Sense. The battle fought by the Stoics is very analogous to the battle fought by the Scotch philosophers, in the ground occupied, in the instruments employed, and in the enemy attacked, and the object to be gained. They both fought for Morality, which they thought endangered” (ibid., II, p. 159).
- 186.
Ibid., IV, pp. 263–264.
- 187.
Ibid., I, p. 28. This observation refers to Thales, whose doctrine (“the principle of all things was water”) should not at all be considered a “mere extravagance”; indeed, according to Lewes, this applies to all systems of the past.
- 188.
On method, see in particular Lewes, The History, I, pp. xxxi-lx; on the progress made in this field, see Biographical History, II, p. 221.
- 189.
Cf. Lewes, Biographical History, II, p. 222.
- 190.
See above, note 171; on the reception of the work cf. Ashton, G.H. Lewes: a Life, pp. 49–50, 172–173, 265–266, and 279.
- 191.
Lewes, The History, I, pp. vi-vii.
- 192.
Cf. Lewes, Biographical History, III, p. 3.
- 193.
“I have insisted especially on the importance of Mr. Lewes’ last three volumes [i.e. on psychobiology] because far too much attention has been given to his early and popular works, which, however fit to found a great reputation in literature, cannot be compared in power, ripeness, and depth to his latest works. Even the History of Philosophy, which has acted on the mind of this generation almost more than any single book except Mr. Mill’s Logic, is a work of literature rather than of philosophy, being an admirable piece of synthetic criticism and exposition, not a system of constructive doctrine” (F. Harrison, ‘Obituary: G.H. Lewes’, Academy, XIV, no. 344 [n.s.], Dec. 7, 1878, p. 543).
- 194.
“A more important result, however, was that I read [Lewes’] Biographical History of Philosophy, then existing in its original four-volumed form, in the series of shilling volumes published by Knight, who was one of the pioneers of cheap literature […]. Up to that time questions in philosophy had not attracted my attention […]. I doubt not that the reading of Lewes’s book, while it made me acquainted with the general course of philosophical thought, and with the doctrines which throughout the ages have been the subjects of dispute, gave me an increased interest in psychology, and an interest, not before manifest, in philosophy at large; at the same time that it served, probably, to give more coherence to my own thoughts, previously but loose” (H. Spencer, Autobiography, London, 1904, I, pp. 378–379).
- 195.
H. Sidgwick, Review of: Lewes, The History of Philosophy (4th edition), Academy, II, no. 14, Nov. 15, 1871, pp. 519–521 (now in The Works of Henry Sidgwick, vol. XV: Reviews 1871–1899, London, 1996, pp. 1–9).
- 196.
On the origins of the neo-Hegelian movement in Great Britain and on Jowett’s role, see the testimony of an epigone of Oxonian idealism, John Alexander Smith, ‘The Influence of Hegel on the Philosophy of Great Britain’, in Verhandlungen des ersten Hegelkongresses vom 22. bis 25. April, 1930 im Haag (Tübingen and Haarlem, 1931), pp. 61–62: “The seat, or at least the first seat, of this movement [i.e. the British ‘neo-Hegelian’ movement] was the University of Oxford, and the conduct of it, so far as it was a concerted or cooperative movement, was in the hands of a small group of teachers there. They were all students who came up in the late fifties or early sixties, and remained as teachers. Almost all of them were pupils of Benjamin Jowett, the well-known translator of Plato. […] At first he [Jowett] found great help in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy [by Hegel], but could not be satisfied that what he found in them was genuinely history because it ‘saw Hegelianism everywhere’. Still he persevered: ‘One must go on’, he wrote, ‘or give up metaphysics altogether’. […] He also occupied his mind with works on New Testament Criticism, and engaged in much theological and ecclesiastical controversy. Here, as in ancient Philosophy, he was evidently guided by Hegel and the Hegelians. He continued to lay great stress on Hegel’s services to the history of Philosophy, and reiterated his conviction that Hegel ‘had done more to explain Greek thought than all other writers together’ […]”. A careful reconstruction of the Oxford academic world and of the use of Hegel made by Jowett as a historian of ancient philosophy, is also contained in D. Brown, Hopkins’ Idealism. Philosophy, Physics, Poetry (Oxford, 1997), pp. 146–155, 167–168, and 189–190. As for J.H. Stirling, to whose work The Secret of Hegel: being the Hegelian System in Origin, Principle, Form and Matter, 2 vols (London 1865, 18972), the beginnings of British idealism are commonly traced back (cf. for example Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition, pp. 164–171; Id., ‘How Hegel came to England’, Mind, XXXVI, 1927, pp. 423–447), his role should not be overrated (cf. Metz, A Hundred Years of British Philosophy, pp. 259–268); in fact, the British idealists never accepted him as one of themselves, and he never succeeded in holding a university chair. Between 1852 and 1859, Augusto Vera was also active in London, where he had moved from Paris: Vera certainly performed an important role in the European circulation of Hegelianism; but, as for the early knowledge of Hegel in Great Britain, his influence seems to have been limited. His Introduction à la philosophie de Hegel (Paris, 1855) and his translation of the first part of the Encyclopaedia (Logique de Hegel, Paris, 1859; the translation of the remaining parts ensued his stay in London) appeared in French in Paris. Vera, however, also published a philosophical essay in London in which he established a connection between certain debates within the Scottish school and Hegel’s philosophy (An Inquiry into Speculative and Experimental Science, with special reference to Mr. Calderwood and Professor Ferrier’s recent publications, and to Hegel’s doctrine, London, 1856). In 1855 an English translation was published (The Subjective Logic of Hegel, transl. by H. Sloman and J. Wallon, revised by a Graduate of Oxford, London: Chapman, 1855) of a work which had come out in France a year earlier (La logique subjective de Hegel, traduite par H. Sloman et J. Wallon, suivie de quelques remarques par H.S[loman], Paris: Ladrange, 1854); more than a translation, it was a simple and not always faithful compendium of the first section of the third book of the Wissenschaft der Logik (cf. G. Jarczyk and P.-J. Labarrière, De Kojève à Hegel, Paris, 1996, p. 21; A. Bellantone, Hegel en France, Paris, 2011, vol. I, pp. 325–326). But the first of Hegel’s works to be translated into English were the Vorlesungen on the philosophy of history, which was certainly able to illustrate the breadth of Hegel’s conception of history (Lectures on the Philosophy of History, transl. by J. Sibree, London: H.G. Bohn, 1857, 1861; 18812). As for Hegel’s system, it was only in 1874 that William Wallace, a pupil of Jowett, translated the first part of the Encyclopaedia (The Logic of Hegel, transl. from the Encyclopaedia […], with prolegomena, by W. Wallace, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874; 18922), to which, 20 years later, he added the translation of the third part of the Encyclopaedia (Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, transl. From the Encyclopaedia […], with five introductory essays, by W. Wallace, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894).
- 197.
In April 1845 Jowett came into possession of a copy of the 1840 edition of the first part of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia (Enzyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, Erster Theil: Die Logik, ed. by L. von Henning, Berlin, 1840), which is preserved at Balliol College, Jowett Collection, with marginalia by Benjamin Jowett. Jowett immediately started the translation, with the collaboration of Frederick Temple; the translation, which is almost complete, was interrupted a couple of years later; the manuscript is preserved at Balliol College, Oxford (Jowett Papers, Group I: A3, D48, H6–11; Group II: G1).
- 198.
The manuscript material is preserved at Balliol College (Jowett Papers, Group I: A29–35, B2–37, C28–35, C41–45, D43–51, E1–2). On Jowett’s role in introducing Hegel, see also Robbins, British Hegelians, pp. 29–32, 43–45; Metz, A Hundred Years of British Philosophy, pp. 250–253.
- 199.
The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English, with Analyses and Introductions, by B. Jowett, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), IV, pp. 326–327.
- 200.
Ibid., IV, pp. 329–330.
- 201.
Ibid., IV, pp. 334–335.
- 202.
Ibid., IV, pp. 336–337.
- 203.
Jowett Papers, Group 1 B 11, 1–3.
- 204.
In the field of the history of philosophy – Stirling acknowledges in the notes he added to his English translation of Schwegler’s manual – “the Germans, indeed, are so exhaustive and complete, whether as regards intelligence or research, that they have left the English absolutely nothing to do but translate their text and copy their erudition into notes” (F.C.A. Schwegler, Handbook of the History of Philosophy, 2nd ed., Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1868, p. 346). One of the rare exceptions is represented by John Daniel Morell’s manual (Manual of History of Philosophy, with numerous examination papers in mental science which have been set in the London University, London: Stewart, 1884); in addition, Lewes’ manual was published several times (cf. above note 139); Maurice’s volumes were also reprinted without variations (cf. above, note 71).
- 205.
F.C.A. Schwegler, A History of Philosophy in epitome […], transl. by J.H. Seelye, New York: D. Appleton, 1856, 18562; revised from the 9th German ed., with an Appendix by B.E. Smith, 1880, 1899 (23 reprints between 1856 and 1899; cfr. A Vanzo, ‘Empiricism and Rationalism in Nineteenth-Century Histories of Philosophy, Journal for the History of Ideas, LXXVII, 2016, pp. 267–268).
- 206.
F.C.A. Schwegler, Handbook of the History of Philosophy, transl. and annotated by J.H. Stirling, Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1867, 1890s14 (13 reprints between 1867 and 1899).
- 207.
J.E. Erdmann, A History of Philosophy, English translation ed. by W.S. Hough (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1890), 3 vols (other editions: 18912, 18923, 1897, 1913–1915).
- 208.
F. Ueberweg, A History of Philosophy, from Thales to the present time, transl. by G.S. Morris, with additions by N. Porter (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1872–1874), 2 vols (2nd ed. 1875).
- 209.
E. Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, transl. by O. J. Reichel (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1868; 18772; 18853); Id., The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, transl. by O. J. Reichel (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1870; 18802; 18923); Id., Plato and the older Academy, transl. by S. F. Alleyne and A. Goodwin (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1876; 18882); Id., A History of Greek Philosophy, from the earliest period to the time of Socrates, with a general introduction, transl. by S. F. Alleyne (London: Longmans & Co., 1881); Id., A History of Eclecticism, transl. by S. F. Alleyne (London: Longmans & Co., 1883); Id., Aristotle and the earlier Peripatetics, transl. by B.F.C. Costelloe and J. H. Muirhead (London: Longmans and Green, 1897); Id., Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, transl. by S. F. Alleyne and E. Abbott (London: Longmans & Green, 1886 [1885]; 18922; 3rd revised ed. 1896; 1901). Alfred William Benn (1843–1914) owes much to the work of Zeller in his vast reconstruction of Greek thought from the origins to Neoplatonism, which he published in 1882, and which has a final chapter on the ancient tradition in the modern age: The Greek Philosophers (London: Kegan, Pauls & Co., 1882), 2 vols; 2nd ed., corrected and partly re-written (London: Smith, Edler & Co., 1914).
- 210.
K. Fischer, Francis Bacon of Verulam. Realistic Philosophy and its Age, transl. by J. Oxenford (London: Longman, 1857); Id., A Commentary on Kant’s Critick of the Pure Reason, translated from the History of Modern Philosophy, by K.F., with an introduction, explanatory notes, and appendices, by J. P. Mahaffy (London and Dublin: Longmans, Green, 1866); Id., History of Modern Philosophy. Descartes and his School, transl. by J.P. Gordy, edited by N. Porter (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887).
- 211.
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, transl. by E.S. Haldane [and F.H. Simson] (London: K. Paul. Trench, Trübner, 1892–1896), 3 vols. But the translation did not arouse much interest; the first volume was reviewed by the historian of ancient philosophy Alfred W. Benn, who observed: “[…] the work made an epoch in the history of philosophy, and probably nothing has since been published on the subject that does not bear traces of its influence. But, owing to this very fact, all that was valuable in Hegel’s ideas has been absorbed into subsequent teaching, with the result that he has been far surpassed in this direction by writers more or less closely connected with his own school, such as Schwegler, Erdmann, Zeller, and Kuno Fischer. Although, however, even a Hegelian would hardly go to Hegel for accurate information about the older philosophies, it might have been expected that the master’s lectures would be useful as an introduction to the system which professed to sum up in itself all previous systems by interpreting them as successive stages in the evolution of a single comprehensive conception. Unfortunately, such is not the case. Hegel never is obscurer than when he uses the categories of his own logic as a clue to the speculations of his predecessors, while the latter are racked and distorted out of recognition by the treatment to which they are subjected. The uninitiated will find it pleasanter and more profitable to begin their study of the dialectic method with the Philosophy of History, the Aesthetics, or the Philosophy of Religion. It may then be doubted whether the laborious task of translating the lectures into English was worth undertaking at all. None but persons who want to go rather deeply into the literature of the history of philosophy or into Hegel’s own philosophy will care to open them, and on neither of these studies should one who is not a German scholar attempt to embark” (Academy, Dec. 23, no. 1127, 1893, p. 559). In the same period the English translation of the Vorlesungen on the philosophy of religion was published (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God, transl. by E.B. Speirs and J. Burdon Sanderson, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co., 1895).
- 212.
Cf. the important and popular works by E. Caird on Kant and Hegel (A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant, Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1877; The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons, 1889, 2 vols; 19092; Hegel, Edinburgh and London: Blackwood & Sons,1883; 1886; 1891; 1903; 1907), by R. Adamson on Kant and Fichte (On the Philosophy of Kant, Edinburgh: Douglas, 1879, translated into German in Leipzig in 1880; Fichte, Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1881; 1893; 1901; 1908), and by H. Jones on Lotze (A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Lotze, Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1895).
- 213.
On Lotze’s influence on Anglo-American philosophy, cf. P. Devaux, Lotze et son influence sur la philosophie anglo-saxonne (Brussels, 1932), pp. 23–48, and P. Grimley Kuntz, Introduction to G. Santayana, Lotze’s System of Philosophy (Bloomington and London, 1971), pp. 48–68. Many of the young representatives of early British idealism had attended Lotze’s lessons in Göttingen; from its very first issue, the magazine Mind, founded in 1876 and for some decades the organ of British spiritualistic idealism, published numerous articles and reviews on Lotze; between 1880 and 1885, Lotze’s major works – the System and the Mikrokosmus – were translated into English thanks to outstanding exponents of Oxonian idealism, such as T.H. Green and B. Bosanquet.
- 214.
The debate started with the publication by Andrew Seth Pringle Pattison, of the miscellaneous volume Hegelianism and Personality (London, 1887; 18932); cf. Metz, A Hundred Years of British Philosophy, pp. 380–398, who speaks of “personal Idealists”; E.Th. Long, ‘The Gifford Lectures and the Scottish Personal Idealists’, Review of Metaphysics, XLIX, no. 2, Dec. 1995, pp. 365–395; W.J. Mander, ‘Life and Finite Individuality: the Bosanquet/Pringle-Pattison Debate’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, XIII, no. 1 (2005), pp. 111–130
- 215.
R. Adamson, Roger Bacon: the Philosophy of Science in the XIII Century (Manchester: J.E. Cornish, 1876); Id., The Development of Modern Philosophy (Edinburgh & London: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1903), 2 vols; Id., The Development of Greek Philosophy (ibid., 1908); Id., A Short History of Logic (ibid., 1911) [the work gathers together the items published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, whose philosophical section was directed by Adamson]; W.R. Sorley, A History of English Philosophy (Cambridge: The University Press, 1920); J.T. Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh & London: W. Blackwood, 1896–1914), 4 vols; reprinted, with a new introduction by G. Micheli (Bristol, 1999); see also Micheli, ‘Merz, John Theodor’, in DNCBPh, pp. 782–786).
- 216.
G. Grote, History of Greece (London: John Murray, 1846–1856), 12 vols; published several times; translated into French 1864–1867, into Italian 1855–1858, into German 1850–1855. Cf. A. Momigliano, George Grote and the Study of Greek History (London, 1952); L. Catana, ‘Grote’s analysis of Ancient Greek political thought: its significance to J.S. Mill’s idea about ‘active character’ in a liberal democracy’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, XXVIII, no. 3 (2020), pp. 553–572.
- 217.
G. Grote, Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates (London: John Murray, 1865; 1867; 1875; 1885; 1888), 3 vols; on Grote’s interpretation of Plato K.N. Demetriou, George Grote on Plato and Athenian Democracy. A Study in Classical Reception (Frankfurt a. M., 1999); Id., ‘Grote’, in DNCBPh, pp. 460–464.
- 218.
G. Grote, Aristotle, 2 vols (London: Murray, 1872; 18802; 18833).
- 219.
H. Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers (London & New York: Macmillan, 1886; 18923;18964; 19065; 1919, based on an article contributed to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica).
- 220.
L. Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1876, [repr. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1876]; 18812; 19023; Id., The English Utilitarians, 3 vols. (London: Duckworth, 1900). On Stephen’s historiographical work, cf. von Arx, Progress and Pessimism: Religion, Politics, and History in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 11–64; J. Bicknell, ‘Leslie Stephen’s English Thought in the Eighteenth Century: A Tract for the Time’, Victorian Studies, VI (1962), pp. 103–120; Id., ‘Stephen, Leslie’ in DNCBPh, pp. 1065–1072.
- 221.
Stephen, History of English Thought [18812], I, p. 3.
- 222.
Ibid., I, p. 10.
- 223.
Ibid., I, pp. 12–13.
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Micheli, G. (2022). The British Historiography of Philosophy in the Nineteenth-Century. In: Piaia, G., Micheli, G., Santinello, G. (eds) Models of the History of Philosophy. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 235. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84490-5_8
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