Volume 50, Issue 1/2, 2019
Philip T. Grier
Pages 1-45
https://doi.org/10.5840/owl2019501/28
A Turning Point in Oxford Idealism
Errol E. Harris¡¯s Oxford Writings
As a young Victoria Scholar from South Africa studying at Oxford from 1931¨C33, Errol Harris encountered most of the prominent representatives of ¡°Oxford Idealism¡± there. He discovered that, predominantly under the influence of Bradley, they were uniformly convinced that Hegel¡¯s Naturphilosophie was a superfluous ¡°addition¡± to his system, accomplishing nothing not already provided by the Science of Logic, and that, moreover, to treat Nature as a reality (as opposed to an appearance) would introduce a fundamental contradiction into Hegel¡¯s thought. In this general attitude they were strongly supported by the Italian ¡°neo-Idealists¡± with whom they were closely engaged. In work accomplished during those two years, Harris laid the foundations for a thorough reversal of this attitude, arguing that in the absence of a philosophy of nature Hegel¡¯s system could be neither coherent nor complete. On this basis Harris would eventually succeed in constructing the outlines of a complete cosmology grounded in twentieth-century physical theory.