The Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid (1710 1796) first published Essays on Active Powers of Man in 1788 while he was Professor of Philosophy at King's College, Aberdeen. The work contains a set of essays on active power, the will, principles of action, the liberty of moral agents, and morals. Reid was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment and one of the founders of the 'common sense' school of philosophy. In Active Powers Reid gives his fullest exploration of sensus communis as the basis of all philosophical inquiry. He uses common sense realism to argue for the existence of a stable...

Thomas Reid (1710 1796) was a philosopher who founded the Scottish school of 'common sense'. Much of Reid's work is a critique of his contemporary, David Hume (1711 1776), whose empiricism he rejects. In this work, written after Reid's appointment to a professorship at the university of Glasgow, and published in 1785, he turns his attention to ideas about perception, memory, conception, abstraction, judgement, reasoning and taste. He examines the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, arguing that 'when we find philosophers maintaining that there is no heat in the fire, nor colour in...

John McTaggart (1866 1925) was a Cambridge philosopher, famous for his metaphysical theory that time is not real and that temporal order is an illusion. Although best known for his contributions to the philosophy of time, McTaggart also spent a large part of his career expounding Hegel's work. In this book, first published in 1901, he discusses which views on a range of topics in metaphysics and ethics are compatible with Hegel's logic and idea of 'the Absolute'. Some early work on theories for which McTaggart later became well known can be found in this work, such as his beliefs that humans...

After more than a decade teaching ancient Greek history and philosophy at University College, Oxford, British philosopher and political theorist Bernard Bosanquet (1848 1923) resigned from his post to spend more time writing. He was particularly interested in contemporary social theory, and was involved with the Charity Organisation Society and the London Ethical Society. He wrote numerous articles before beginning this book, which was his first and was published in 1885 as a response to the Principles of Logic, published in 1883, by his contemporary F. H. Bradley (1846 1924). Bosanquet, who...

After more than a decade teaching ancient Greek history and philosophy at University College, Oxford, British philosopher and political theorist Bernard Bosanquet (1848 1923) resigned from his post to spend more time writing. He was particularly interested in contemporary social theory, and was involved with the Charity Organisation Society and the London Ethical Society. Much of his work focused on the place of logic in philosophy, especially its role in metaphysical thought the area where he is considered to have made his most important intellectual contributions. In 1888 he published this...

After more than a decade teaching ancient Greek history and philosophy at University College, Oxford, British philosopher and political theorist Bernard Bosanquet (1848 1923) resigned from his post to spend more time writing. He was particularly interested in contemporary social theory, and was involved with the Charity Organisation Society and the London Ethical Society. Much of his work focused on the place of logic in philosophy, especially its role in metaphysical thought the area where he is considered to have made his most important intellectual contributions. In 1888 he published this...

After more than ten years teaching ancient Greek history and philosophy at University College, Oxford, the British philosopher and political theorist Bernard Bosanquet (1848 1923) resigned from his post to spend more time writing. He was particularly interested in contemporary social theory, but he was also concerned with philosophical questions about art and aesthetics. In this area, Bosanquet had been influenced by William Morris (1834 96) and John Ruskin (1819 1900), as well as the German philosopher Hegel (1770 1831), and their ideas underlie this book, published in 1892. Bosanquet...

After more than a decade teaching ancient Greek history and philosophy at University College, Oxford, British philosopher and political theorist Bernard Bosanquet (1848 1923) resigned from his post to spend more time writing. He was particularly interested in contemporary social theory, and was involved with the Charity Organisation Society and the London Ethical Society. He saw himself as a radical in the Liberal Party, and at a theoretical level he was a 'collectivist', considering the individual to be a part of a larger social organism. He thought the state should be in harmony with the...

F.H. Bradley (1846 1924) was the foremost philosopher of the British Idealist school, which came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bradley, who was a life fellow of Merton College, Oxford, was influenced by Hegel, and also reacted against utilitarianism. He was recognised during his lifetime as one of the greatest intellectuals of his generation and was the first philosopher to receive the Order of Merit, in 1924. His work is considered to have been important to the formation of analytic philosophy. In metaphysics, he rejected pluralism and realism, and believed that...

British Idealist F. H. Bradley (1846 1924) was one of the most distinguished and influential philosophers of his time. He made contributions to metaphysics, moral philosophy and the philosophy of logic. The author of Appearance and Reality (1893), a classic in metaphysics (also reissued in this series), he rejected pluralism and realism. In this polemic, first published in 1876, Bradley argues against the dominant ethical theories of his time. Essays in this book entitled 'Pleasure for Pleasure's Sake' and 'Duty for Duty's Sake' examine and criticise hedonistic utilitarianism and Kantian...