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British Idealism and Social Explanation: A Study in Late Victorian Thought, by Sandra M. den Otter; pp. xii + 250. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, 35.00, $65.00.
Idealism, deeply influenced by Kant and Hegel, was dominant in British philosophy during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and first quarter of the twentieth. As Sandra den Otter observes, it is usually seen as an untypical and alien interlude, out of step with English empiricism. In particular, on this view idealism's approach to social explanation appears remote from the growing enthusiasm in the period for a positive science of society. It is the central theme of her original and admirable study that such a contrast has been exaggerated and is too crude. Idealist philosophers did indeed attack the naturalistic foundations of contemporary social science and substitute an interpretative social theory; nonetheless, they also incorporated various empiricist and positivist strands. This conclusion is soundly established. I think there will be some debate over whether she may have pressed her point too far occasionally, but disagreement will be over matters of minor detail and over emphasis: in its essentials her findings will stand firm.
Den Otter begins by arguing, plausibly and assembling a mass of evidence, that due to the internal development of philosophy in Britain in the nineteenth century, and to the manner of teaching philosophy at Oxford, the idealists' Hegelianism was heavily and critically selected, was adapted to British purposes, and was transmuted by Aristote-- lianism and native empiricism. In the second chapter, she contends...