STIRLING, JAMES HUTCHESON. – English philosopher, b. Jan. 22, 1820, in Glasgow, d. Mar. 19, 1909, in Edinburgh, where he had been professor of moral philosophy at the University.
A thinker of limited originality, he holds a certain historical importance in that with him the beginning of Anglo-American neo-Hegelian idealism can be dated. Besides minor writings (among which: *Sir W. Hamilton, being the philosophy of perception*, 1865; *What is Thought*, 1900), the essay *The Secret of Hegel* (1865; 2nd ed., Edinburgh 1898) is to be noted, in which he expounds and defends the system of the German philosopher. According to Stirling, there is a close connection between Kant and Hegel, whose philosophy is a necessary consequence of criticism (v.). This is the “secret of Hegel.”