The Principle of Individuality and Value; the Gifford Lectures for 1911, Delivered in Edinburgh University

by Bernard Bosanquet

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Genres: Philosophy

458 pages, Hardcover

First published August 8, 2015

About the author

Bernard Bosanquet (/ˈboʊzənˌkɛt, -kɪt/; 14 June[1] 1848 – 8 February 1923) was an English philosopher and political theorist, and an influential figure on matters of political and social policy in late 19th and early 20th century Britain. His work influenced – but was later subject to criticism by – many thinkers, notably Bertrand Russell, John Dewey and William James. Bernard was the husband of Charity Organisation Society leader Helen Bosanquet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard...

Reviews

[Omar Ghanem]

I will not rate this book, because I have not read all of it, or even much of it. I will just give my opinion on a very small part, which seem to me not to have been good philosophy. But first a quotation:

The principal thing that matters is the level and fulness of mind attained. The destiny and separate conservation of particular minds is of inferior importance and merely instrumental to the former.

This conviction we shall later attempt to draw out in argument. But I am sure that it is deeply rooted in the every-day mind at its best, though liable to be overridden by conventions which have nothing like the same reality. What a man really cares about-- so it seems to me-- may be described as making the most of the trust he has received. He does not value himself as a detached and purely self-identical subject. He values himself as the inheritor of the gifts and surroundings which are focused in him, and which it is his business to raise to their highest power. The attitude of a true noble, one in whom noblesse oblige, is a simple example of what mutatis mutandis all men feel. The man is a representative, a trustee for the world, of certain powers and circumstances. And this cannot fail to be so. For suffering and privation are also opportunities. The question for him is how much he can make of them. This is the simple and primary point of view, and also, in the main, the true and fundamental one. It is not the bare personality or the separate destiny that occupies a healthy mind. It is the thing to be done, known, and felt; in a word, the completeness of experience, his contribution to it, and his participation in it.

Here Bosanquet describes what he believes to be the general attitude of human beings towards their lives, towards their existence, let's say. Is any part of it true? I wouldn't have argued with him, if he said that is how people should view their existence, but here he claims that is how they view it. If I have not misunderstood him, then I suspect Bosanquet had never spoken to anybody who wasn't a philosopher; or even to anybody who wasn't a Hegelian.

For these are simply Hegel's beliefs, and even he didn't grant the "every-day mind" any awareness of them. What "every-day mind" does Bosanquet speak of, exactly? I would very much like to know. Philosophy must start from the immediacy of experience, but someone whose experience of the world is very narrow-- such as Bosanquet-- is liable to think his experience is all there is, and that there is nothing more to the world than it-- and so the whole edifice of his philosophy is built on shallow, rotten foundations.

Such a person would then think of absolutely preposterous propositions (and that's fine; I have no problem with preposterous propositions) and claim as evidence of their validity the beliefs of the "every-day mind" (and that I have a problem with).

I think my opinion about this book is very obvious. I don't recommend it. But I haven't read much of it, as I said before, so my opinion is just that, an opinion. Perhaps if I read further I will be pleasantly surprised by Bosanquet. Sadly, I will never do that.