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The Heritage of Idealism

1929 to 1931
University of Glasgow

First Course (1929–1930): The Heritage of Idealism (Philosophy as the Way of Supposing)

Lecture I (2 December 1929): The Approach to ‘Natural Theology’ from Professional Philosophy.

Lecture II (3 December 1929): The End or Aim of Philosophy.

Lectures III and IV (9 and 10 December 1929): Lessons from the History of Philosophy.

Lecture V (16 December 1929): The Content, Form and Method of Philosophy (Philosophising as Wholly and Purely ‘Supposing’).

Lecture VI (17 December 1929): Speculative and Militant Stage of Philosophy.

Lecture VII (6 January 1930): Philosophy as Concrete, Actual and Active.

Lecture VIII and IX (7 and 13 January 1930): What Supposing is—Historical Review of Appearance of Suppositions (‘Hypotheses’) in the Sciences and in History.

Lecture X (14 January 1930): Philosophy, Experience and ‘Common Sense’.

Second Course (1931): The Controversies of Idealism with Science, History and Theology (Concerning Nature, Man and God)

Lecture I (12 January 1931): Summary of the Conclusions Arrived at in First Course.

Lecture II (13 January 1931): ‘The Objective Universe’ and the conditions of its ‘objectivity’.

Lecture III (19 January 1931): The two kinds of objects of knowledge and the two kinds of knowing, and their union in truths and Truth.

Lecture IV (20 January 1931): What lies beyond Truth, and the attempts to relieve our ignorance of it.

**Lecture V (26 January 1931): Science and its account of Nature or the World of Things.

Lecture VI (27 January 1931): Psychology and its account of Man’s Soul and its World.

Lecture VII (2 February 1931): History and its account of human Nature and its environment.

Lectures VIII and IX (3 and 9 February 1931): Theology and its doctrines of divine Nature, or of God and His World.

Lecture X (10 February 1931): The Beyond of Knowledge, or the Universe of and for Spirit. The judgment of Philosophy upon its own nature, work and worth.

**In Lectures V–IX the several accounts will be reviewed in the light of (Idealistic) Philosophy, their accompanying doctrine criticized and the claims to acceptance of their adherent or annexed suppositions weighed and assessed.

Books

The Heritage of Idealism

While John Alexander Smith never published his Gifford Lectures, W.J. Mander has suggested that "a sense of his position may be gained from his contribution to the second series of Muirhead's Contemporary British Philosophy, where he characterizes his idealism in three theses; that reality is something essentially in process or historical (unlike the stationary or immobile Absolute of Bradley or Bosanquet), that history is something essentially spiritual, and that spirit is something which most freely and fully manifests itself in self-consciousness." W.J.

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