Shadworth Hollway Hodgson and William Kingdon Clifford

Following on from a brief consideration of the Metaphysical Society, this chapter considers two highly original empiricist thinkers who used their membership as an opportunity to develop bold new metaphysical schemes. The chapter begins by outlining Hodgson’s unique methodology of descriptive empiricism, whose consequences are then explored via his theory of causality (or ‘real conditions’), his construction of external material reality, and his position about things-in-themselves. Lastly it is considered how his strict empiricism nonetheless leads him to embrace the curious notion of a ‘unseen universe’ of significance for both immortality and religion. The discussion of Clifford examines his empiricism, his phenomenalism, and his views about causation and religion, before examining in detail his paper ‘On the Nature of Things-in-themselves’, which (it is argued) brings him to another form of unseen reality.

John Stuart Mill

This chapter begins with a discussion of Mill’s empiricism and his attitude towards the unknowable which considers in detail the nature of his disagreement with Hamilton and which discusses the various senses in which his position might be described as one of ‘radical empiricism’. Moving on to more specific points, the chapter then discusses Mill’s views regarding space and time, his phenomenalism, his failed attempt to explain our idea of the self, his centre-staging the puzzle of other minds, and his positions respecting causation, free will, and natural law. The chapter concludes with a discussion of his posthumously published views about religion.

James Frederick Ferrier

Following a general discussion of how idealism relates to both agnosticism and empiricism, its origin in nineteenth-century British philosophy are explored through consideration of how Ferrier reacted to the philosophy of William Hamilton. Insisting that the minimal epistemic unit is always subject-plus-some-object, Ferrier challenged agnosticism by claiming that we could only be ignorant of what we might at some point know, and this challenge is examined by means of a detailed exploration of his conceptions of knowledge, ignorance and the contradictory, before it is explained how this stance leads to a form of absolute idealism and belief in the existence of God. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Ferrier’s influence on the British Idealists.

Henry Longueville Mansel

Henry Longueville Mansel is today almost as neglected as William Hamilton as a thinker. He was a great supporter of Hamilton, whose work he both defended and edited, and whose basic law of the conditioned he was happy to endorse. This chapter presents an examination of the central principles of the Mansel’s metaphysics which begins by considering his relation to Kant and then explores his reasons for thinking that God or the infinite is beyond Human conceivability. Against this are set his reasons for believing in the existence of God and his positive attitude towards revelation, which famously drew the hostility of Mill. The chapter concludes with consideration of his views on space and time, substance, mind and matter, causality and freedom.

Alexander Bain and George Croom Robertson

This chapter highlights the empiricist school whose chief inspiration was John Stuart Mill, focusing on the once important but now neglected figures of Alexander Bain and George Croom Robertson. After examining Bain’s debt to Mill’s empiricism and his physiologically grounded developments of associationist psychology, the chapter explores his views about time and space, external material reality, causation, force, the mind–body relation, and human free will. A final consideration of Bain’s assertions about thing-in-themselves shows his position to be more subtle than might be thought. The consideration of Croom Robertson focuses on his attempts to define philosophy and to distinguish it from psychology, before briefly conserving his own metaphysical positions.

Sir William Hamilton

William Hamilton epitomizes very clearly the challenge that contemporary philosophers face in studying their nineteenth-century predecessors. There can be few thinkers who have been the subject of such a massive reversal of reputational fortune as Hamilton, from being heralded in his day as a philosophical genius to being ignored by subsequent generations as a pompous blunderer. The chapter examines the central principles of Hamilton’s metaphysics, with special reference to his assertion of the relativity of knowledge and the law of the conditioned. The chapter considers how his metaphysical system relates both to that of Kant’s Critical philosophy and the Scottish common sense school, and examines its application to the specific concepts of substance and adjective, space and time, causality, free will and God.

Introduction

The following work presents a history of nineteenth-century metaphysics in Britain, providing close textual readings of the key contributions to First Philosophy made by the dozen or so chief thinkers of the Victorian era. To the uninitiated, Victorian philosophy in general, and Victorian metaphysics even more so, can seem an impenetrably obscure and complex domain, a massive dusty labyrinth of worn out and overblown verbiage. The secret to successfully opening up this forbidding field, however, is to find an appropriate path through it, and in this book I argue that such a key is to be found in William Hamilton’s concept of ...

F. H. Bradley

Earlier discussions of the development of agnosticism and of empiricism demonstrated how an initially quite clear and straightforward position, evolving through dialogue with its rivals, gradually developed into an orientation so complex and multiform that at times it might seem to be pointing in almost the exact opposite direction to that in which it first set out. The final chapter of this book uses an examination of the philosophy of F. H. Bradley to show that exactly the same process of contradictory and complex development holds true of Idealism also. After general consideration of his objections to empiricism and to unknowability, special attention is paid to an early discussion of his on the relativity of knowledge and to Collingwood’s thesis that his philosophy is best understood as polemic against Mansel. The chapter concludes with a consideration of his unorthodox belief that, idealism notwithstanding, reality must be understood transcending thought—a form of realism that which seem to bring his thought back round again to a position not so different from the agnosticism of Hamilton and Mansel from which our story started.

John Grote and James Hutchison Stirling

This chapter considers the work of two less well-known idealists, John Grote and James Hutchinson Stirling. The discussion of Grote begins by uncovering his unique and curious methodology—which is the key to understanding his philosophy—before going on to detail his views about the self, about idealism, and about what he terms the ‘scale of sensations’. In order to appreciate his attitude towards the knowability of thing-in-themselves, it is necessary to explore his distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, which was both made famous and misunderstood by Bertrand Russell. James Hutchinson Stirling’s role in ushering in the British Idealist movement has often been noted, but his own views themselves have been but rarely discussed. This chapter rectifies that by considering his position respecting the infinite, the external world, materialism, agnosticism, causality, and free will.

G. H. Lewes and Karl Pearson

Examining the cases of two further nineteenth-century empiricists, this chapter begins by considering how G. H. Lewes moved from an early position of neo-Comtean positivism which was avowedly anti-metaphysical to the advocacy of what he described as ‘empirical metaphysics’. An examination is made of five different ways in which Lewes moves beyond simple sensualism to a more sophisticated understanding of ‘the empirical’, before considering in detail three examples of his empirical metaphysics, respecting physical reality, mind, and causation. The discussion of Lewes concludes by reflecting upon the sense in which he remains hostile to what he describes as ‘metempirics’ including the notion of the unknowable thing-in-itself. The chapter concludes with a consideration of Karl Pearson’s philosophy which centre stages sense-impressions and champions both reductionism and scientism. But it is noted that even with Pearson we find willingness to engage in a degree of metaphysical speculation.