Abstract

The nature of man in the philosophy of absolute idealism is usually treated as consisting simply of the doctrine that the self is a microcosm. Part-whole identity is thus held to be an exhaustive formulation of the principal elements of man's nature and situation, and, since man is in every respect a representative of a thoroughly rational universe, the idealistic view of man is ordinarily characterized as an excessively rationalistic one. This dissertation undertakes to show, however, that idealism regards man more as a self than as a mind, and it seeks to establish a conception of self-Other relationship as being equally as essential to idealism's understanding of man's nature and situation as the notion of part-whole or microcosmic-macrocosmic identity. The absolute idealistic view of man is most adequately expressed as the doctrine of his "finite-infinite" nature, a term of Bosanquet's employed throughout this study, and one which includes both the part-whole and the self-Other relations. No prejudgment between these two equally important elements of idealistic anthropology is implied. Idealism is approached from the point of view of its analysis of human nature, and the idealistic doctrine of man is evaluated by an exposition and an examination of its own concrete account of human experience. The finite-infinite nature of man is found to be the anthropological foundation of idealistic discussions of human freedom, the central problems of ethics and of social philosophy, moral evil, salvation, progress, and immortality. Certain abstract and metaphysical doctrines of idealism are reinterpreted in terms of its view of man. Philosophical anthropology, thus, provides a new approach to an understanding of absolute idealism. Moreover, the part-whole aspect of the doctrine of man's finite-infinite nature proves at certain crucial points to be contradictory to the more concrete self-Other aspect. Thus, the duality of idealism's understanding of man provides a basis for its own correction, and the susceptibility of its anthropology to the test of experience provides a standpoint from which a revision of idealistic metaphysics is suggested. The fact that the two men whose writings have been selected as the primary subject matter of this study in idealistic anthropology--Josiah Royce and Bernard Bosanquet--were leaders of Anglo-American thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries permits a favorable evaluation of that period's understanding of man. This general conclusion necessitates that the contemporary disparagement of the absolute idealistic doctrine of man be discounted