Idealism became the dominant philosophical school of thought in late 19th-century Britain. In this study, the text examines its roots in Greek and German thinking and locates it among the prevalent methodologies and theories of the period: empiricism and positivism, naturalism, evolution, and utilitarianism. In particular, the book sets it in the context of the late 19th- and early 20th-century debate about a science of society and the contemporary preoccupation with ‘community’. The new discipline of sociology was closely tied to the study of and search for community, and the book shows how t ... More

Idealism became the dominant philosophical school of thought in late 19th-century Britain. In this study, the text examines its roots in Greek and German thinking and locates it among the prevalent methodologies and theories of the period: empiricism and positivism, naturalism, evolution, and utilitarianism. In particular, the book sets it in the context of the late 19th- and early 20th-century debate about a science of society and the contemporary preoccupation with ‘community’. The new discipline of sociology was closely tied to the study of and search for community, and the book shows how the idealists offered a philosophy of community to a generation particularly concerned by this notion. It investigates the idealist construction — by thinkers such as Bosanquet, MacKenzie, and Ritchie — of an interpretive social philosophy which none the less adopted various strands of empiricist, positivist, and even naturalist thought in its attempt to frame a social theory suited to the dilemmas of an industrialized and urbanized Britain. This study of a multifarious movement of ideas and their interaction with pioneering social groups interweaves philosophical and sociological concerns in history.