BOSANQUET, BERNARD. — Philosopher, born in Northumberland on 14 June 1848, died on 8 February 1923 in London, where he lived continuously from 1881 onward, except for the brief interval (1903–1908) during which he taught philosophy at St. Andrews. In 1867 he entered Balliol College (Oxford), at the time when Green’s influence was particularly strong. Besides that of Plato and Hegel, he also experienced the influence of Lotze (whom he translated into English) and of his contemporary Bradley, with whom B. represents the finest expression of English absolute idealism.
Open-minded, B. readily sympathizes with all spiritual movements and is attracted by almost every speculative problem: logical (Logic, Oxford 1888; The essential of Logic, London 1895); aesthetic (History of Aesthetic, there 1892; Three Lectures on Aesthetic, there 1905); moral (Psychology of the Moral Self, there 1897; Principle of Individuality and Value, there 1912; Value and Destiny of the Individual, there 1913; Some suggestion in Ethics, there 1918); political and social (Aspects of the Social Problems, there 1895; Philosophical Theory of the State, there 1899; Social and International Ideals, there 1917); religious (What Religion is, there 1920).
B. (as, moreover, do Bradley and Baillie) insists upon the dualistic motifs of experience and upon the transcendence of the Absolute. His is an idealism of Hegelian origin, but not properly Hegelian. The Platonic dualism of the two worlds should not be understood as a clear-cut separation, but as a unity that does not exclude their distinction and the transcendence of the intelligible with respect to the sensible, in which it is present. The presence of the intelligible in the sensible is art, whose essence is very close to that of religious experience: both, in fact, grasp reality in its concrete unity, without ever expressing it perfectly and totally. No form of experience (not even thought, which is the self-revela-
tion of reality), however elevated, can ever adequately comprehend the Absolute, which is therefore always transcendent.