John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart, henceforth simply“McTaggart”, was one of the most important systematicmetaphysicians of the early 20^th century. His greatest workisThe Nature of Existence, the first volume of which waspublished in 1921 while the second volume was published posthumouslyin 1927 with C.D. Broad as the editor of the manuscript. In addition,he authored many important articles on metaphysics, including hisfamous “The Unreality of Time” in 1908, some of which arecollected in hisPhilosophical Studies (1934).

McTaggart was also a dedicated interpreter and champion of Hegel, andin addition to many articles on the Hegelian philosophy, he publishedthe following books:Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (1896,2^nd edition printed in 1922), which contains a painstakingdiscussion of the nature of the dialectic as well as the resultsachieved by its means, many of which are conclusions that McTaggartcontinued to argue for throughout his career, including among themthat time is unreal, that existence exhausts reality, that modalnotions cannot be applied to reality as a whole, and that absolutereality contains imperfections;Studies in Hegelian Cosmology(1901, 2^nd edition printed in 1918), in which cosmology isunderstood as the discipline that applies a priori conclusions tothose entities and features that we are acquainted with viaexperience, such as selves, the universe, and good and evil, and inwhich topics ranging from the ethical status of punishment and thenature of sin to whether the absolute is a person, whether humanbeings are immortal, or whether Hegel is a Christian are discussed ingreat detail; andA Commentary on Hegel’s Logic (1910), whichconsists of a critical commentary on the alleged logical connectionsbetween various categories by which experience must be organized andthe various transitions that lead one from Hegel’s category of Beingto the category of Absolute Idea.

The extent to which McTaggart’s interpretations of Hegel arecorrect is not a matter on which I am competent to determine. For whatit is worth, McTaggart’s work on Hegel does not appear to behighly regarded by contemporary scholars of Hegel, insofar as this isreflected in the paucity of references toMcTaggart’s interpretations.^[1]In what follows, I will spend little time on those works of McTaggartthat occupy themselves with the Hegelian philosophy. This isunfortunate, since this might give the impression that grappling withHegel’s philosophy was merely a side project for McTaggart ratherthan a task of much importance for his philosophical development. InhisCommentary on Hegel’s Logic, McTaggart tells us thatthe exposition of Hegel’s philosophy has been the chief object ofhis life for the last twenty-one years (Commentary on Hegel’s Logic, 311).McTaggart’s Hegelianism was alsoimportant for the development of other philosophers such as BertrandRussell, whose early work was inspired by the idealism defended byMcTaggart in hisStudies of the Hegelian Dialectic.^[2] However, it isworth noting that McTaggart himself later abandoned the dialecticalmethod that he took to be central to Hegel’s ownmetaphysics.

The plan for this article is as follows. Section 1 will providebiographical information about McTaggart. I will then begin to discussthe central themes of McTaggart’s philosophy. Section 2 focuses onMcTaggart’s views on the methods of metaphysics. Section 3 discussesMcTaggart’s famous argument for the unreality of time. Section 4 willfocus on McTaggart’s philosophy of religion, which was a kind ofatheistic mysticism. Section 5 will focus onMcTaggart’sontological idealism, which is a view akin to theidealism of Leibniz and Berkeley. Section 6 will focus on McTaggart’sposition on what was perhaps the central metaphysical debate of hisperiod, namely, the issue ofmonism vs.pluralism as well as the concordant issue of the reality ofrelations. Section 7 will be devoted to a smorgasbord of topics ofinterest to contemporary metaphysicians, including McTaggart’sviews on parts and wholes, the distinction betweenexistenceandreality, and questions about essentialism.

Section 8 will be the final part of this article, and will focus onMcTaggart’s views on ethics. I will discuss McTaggart’s views on thenature of intrinsic value, focusing on the questions of to whatontological category the bearers of intrinsic value belong and whatkinds of features determine the intrinsic value of these entities. Iwill also discuss McTaggart’s views on love, the emotion that heaccords the highest place in his ethical system.

• 1. Biographical Sketch of McTaggart
• 2. McTaggart’s Method of Metaphysics
• 3. The Unreality of Time
• 4. McTaggart’s Philosophy of Religion
• 5. McTaggart’s Ontological Idealism
• 6. McTaggart’s Metaphysical Pluralism
• 7. Other Interesting Metaphysical Views
• 9. Ethics
• Bibliography
  • Primary Texts
  • Selected Secondary Sources
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Biographical Sketch of McTaggart

John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart was born on the third of September,1866, in Norfolk Square in London, to Francis Ellis and SusanMcTaggart (Rochelle 1991, 16). He was named at birth “JohnMcTaggart Ellis”, but took on the second iteration of“McTaggart” after his great-uncle, also named “JohnMcTaggart”, died without descendents and willed his money toFrancis Ellis on the condition that his family assumed the surname“McTaggart”. And so John McTaggart Ellis became JohnMcTaggart Ellis McTaggart. (At Cambridge, he was sometimes referred toas “McT”.)

He began preparatory school at Weybridge, but because of his frequentadvocacy of atheism he was removed, and transplanted to Caterham.There he became notorious for refusing to play football, preferringrather to lie in the middle of the field (Levy 1981, 101).He began to study Immanuel Kant’sCritique of Pure Reason around this time (Rochelle 1991, 20).He moved from Caterham to Clifton College as a boarding student in 1882. He cherished his memories of Clifton College, despite the perhaps not infrequent bullying he encountered there.^[3]

He began his study of philosophy at Trinity College in Cambridge in1885 (Rochelle 1991, 42). In 1886 he joined the influential secretdiscussion group, the Cambridge Apostles (Rochelle 1991, 45; Levy1981, 103). At this time, A.N. Whitehead was already a member of thegroup, and G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell would soon join in theearly 1890s. McTaggart graduated in 1888 (Rochelle 1991, 57). He waselected a Prize Fellow of Trinity College in 1891 on the basis of hisdissertation on Hegel’s dialectic, which was later recast ashisStudies in the Hegelian Dialectic. In 1897 he was made alecturer in Moral Sciences (Philosophy) at Trinity College, and heheld this post until he retired in 1923 at the age of 56 (Geach 1979,14). He died unexpectedly two years later, in 1925.

Inspired by the work of F.H. Bradley, he published a pamphlet“The Further Determination of the Absolute” in 1893. (Thispamphlet is reprinted in hisPhilosophical Studies.) There heargued that there are three stages to demonstrating the“idealist’s philosophy”. First, prove that the worldis not exclusively matter, next prove that it is exclusively spiritual,and finally determine the nature of spirituality. He argues that itfollows from Hegel’s dialectic that the universe is timeless, andthat both knowledge and desire are mere appearance. The true realitythat gives rise to these appearances consists in finite spiritsperceiving and loving one another. The production of “The FurtherDetermination of the Absolute” was an emotional experience aswell for McTaggart. He wrote in a letter that “It was liketurning one’s heart inside out” (Dickinson 1931, 37).

Throughout his life, he defended the claim that ultimate realityconsists of loving spirits. He did not live to see his final defense inprint. He died in 1925, at the age of 58, two years before the secondvolume ofthe Nature of Existence was published in 1927 underthe editorial care of C.D. Broad.

F.H. Bradley was an important influence on McTaggart. McTaggart thoughtthat Bradley was “the greatest of living philosophers” andonce told G.E. Moore that when Bradley walked in, “he felt as ifa Platonic Idea had entered the room”.^[4]McTaggart also greatly admiredSpinoza, enough to have a quotation from Spinoza engraved on histombstone. But McTaggart’s philosophical views were distinctivelyhis own.

In turn, McTaggart was influential in the intellectual development ofG.E. Moore. McTaggart was Moore’s youngest philosophy teacher atCambridge. According to Paul Levy what influenced Moore most wasMcTaggart’s “constant insistence on clearness, on askingthe question ‘what does this mean’” (Levy 1981, 60).Moore read and commented on early drafts of bothMcTaggart’sSome Dogmas of Religion, published first in1906, and the first volume ofthe Nature of Existence.^[5]

Bertrand Russell, whose early work was deeply influenced by McTaggart,claims that McTaggart was very shy. In his autobiography, Russellwrites:

… McTaggart was even shyer than I was. I heard a knock on mydoor one day… a very gentle knock. I said “come in”but nothing happened. I said “come in” louder. The dooropened, and I saw McTaggart on the mat. He was already a president ofthe union, and about to become a fellow, and I was inspired and in aweon account of his metaphysical reputation, but he was too shy to comein, and I was too shy to ask him in. I cannot remember how manyminutes this situation lasted, but somehow or other he was at last inthe room. (Russell 1951, 88)

Russell also tells us later in his autobiography that he wondered ifhe would ever do as good as work as McTaggart (Russell 1951, 200).

C.D. Broad described McTaggart, who was his director of studiesat Cambridge (Redpath 1997, 571),thusly:

Take an eighteenth-century English Whig. Let him be a mystic. Endowhim with the logical subtlety of the great schoolmen and their beliefin the powers of human reason, with the business capacities of asuccessful lawyer, and with the lucidity of the best type of Frenchmathematician. Inspire him (Heaven knows how) in early youth with apassion for Hegel. Then subject him to the teaching of Sidgwick and thecontinual influence of Moore and Russell. Set him to expound Hegel.What will be the result? Hegel himself could not have answeredthis questiona priori, but the course of the world historyhas solved itambulando by producing McTaggart. (C.D. Broad,1927, pp.312-313, quoted in Keeling 1929.)

He was on most accounts an unusual fellow, with a big head and acrab-like walk (Rochelle 1991, 97).Peter Geach (1971, 10) reports that,“To the end of his days he walked down corridors with a curiousshuffle, back to the wall, as if expecting a sudden kick frombehind.” Unlike F.H. Bradley, whose feline-directed nocturnalactivities were not so benign, McTaggart saluted cats whenever hemet them (Dickinson 1931, 68; Rochelle 1991, 97). (F.H.Bradley preferred to shoot cats; see the entry onF. H. Bradley.) His preferredmethod of transportation was a tricycle, a fact which led a Cambridgepaper to publish the following poem about him:

Philosopher, your head is all askew; your gait is not majestic in theleast;
you ride three wheels, where other men ride two;Philosopher, you are a funny beast.

McTaggart was delighted by this poem.^[6]

2. McTaggart’s Method of Metaphysics

Although McTaggart’s early forays in metaphysics employed a“Hegelian” dialectical method, McTaggart’s mostwell-known works proceed in a fashion that would be familiar to somecontemporary analytic metaphysicians.

McTaggart conducts metaphysics almost entirely from the armchair. Inthe first chapter ofSome Dogmas of Religion, McTaggartcharacterizes metaphysics as the systematic study of the ultimatenature of reality. He then argues that the empirical sciences, such asphysics, cannot replace metaphysical inquiry. The argument is roughlyas follows. First, the claim that some empirical science such asphysics provides knowledge of ultimate reality is not itself a claim ofphysics, but rather a metaphysical claim made about physics. And assuch the evaluation of this claim goes beyond the province of physics.Second, McTaggart claims that metaphysical materialists, dualists,Berkeleyian idealists, and Hegelians all accept the same system ofscientific propositions, whilst differing amongst themselves on theissue of how these propositions are to be interpreted. McTaggartconcludes from this claim that there are metaphysical issues remainingeven after we have settled on our best scientific theory.

A similar conclusion is defended in chapter 3 of the first volume ofThe Nature of Existence. McTaggart there raises the followingworries about using ‘inductive methods’ to arrive atmetaphysical results. First, McTaggart claims that the rationality ofusing induction in general is questionable. According toMcTaggart, we need an argument for the rationality of induction, andsuch an argument will not be an inductive argument. Second, McTaggartraises two specific worries about using inductive arguments to derivemetaphysical claims about reality as a whole. The first specific worryis that, since there is only one entity that is reality as a whole, wecannot use an inductive argument to determine the features of thisentity. (McTaggart appears to conceive of inductive arguments asexemplifying the patternthere are many As and each observed A isF,so every A is F.) The second worry is that,since there are infinitely many existing entities (a claim for whichMcTaggart will argue for later inthe Nature of Existence),and we observe only finitely many of them, any inductive argumentmoving from claims about the features of what we observe to thefeatures of existent entities in general will be dubious.

Perhaps McTaggart’s skepticism about the usefulness of empiricalinquiry for metaphysical investigations is why his twentieth-centuryworks are almost entirely devoid of commentary on the revolutionsoccurring in fundamental physics. (Einstein is mentioned exactly oncein both volumes ofThe Nature of Existence, briefly and inpassing in section 369 of the second volume.) Unlike some of hisnear-contemporaries, such as A.N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell,McTaggart proceeds as if he were blithely unaware of the potential forinterplay between physics and philosophy.^[7]

McTaggart by and large proceeds deductively by appealing topropositions he holds to be synthetic a priori and then derivingfurther claims from them. McTaggart does allow that experience has arole to play in metaphysical inquiry, albeit a limited one.McTaggart’sThe Nature of Existence explicitly appealsto two empirical claims, first that something exists and second thatwhat exists is differentiated, i.e., has proper parts. McTaggart holdsthat only the former claim is knowable only by experience; the latterclaim is derivable, he claims, from the synthetic a priori positionthat everything has proper parts. This latter claim will be furtherdiscussed in sections 6 and 8 of this article.

Moreover, McTaggart grants that the data provided by sense-perceptionare prima facie true. That is, if we seem to perceiveP, thenunless there are compellinga priori reasons or reasonsderiving from other perceptions to believe~P, we shouldbelieveP. This principle does real work in McTaggart’ssystem. We apparently perceive that objects are ordered in time: someevents occur before others, whilst others are simultaneous. McTaggartholds that there is a powerfula priori argument that nothingis actually in time. (McTaggart’s argument will be discussed insection 6 of this article.) But there is no powerful argument that theobjects that are apparently ordered by temporal relations are notordered by some other (non-temporal) relation. Perception teachesus both that objects are in time and that they are ordered by somerelation. Only the former is called into question by McTaggart’sargument against the reality of time. In this way, McTaggart arrives atthe question: what is the nature of the ordering relation that, inconjunction with other facts, gives rise to the appearance that theobjects which it orders are in time?

Were McTaggart alive today, his (perhaps excessive) apriorism wouldprobably put off many of his analytic colleagues. But all of them wouldappreciate his strong desire to make his arguments as clear and asrigorous as he could make them.^[8]G.E. Moore, who imbibed this philosophicalvalue during his time at Cambridge, had this to say:

How clear he was, compared to the majority of philosophers. And whatimmense pains he took to get clear, even if he did not always succeed.… I think it can fairly be said that what McTaggart was mainlyengaged with was trying to find a precise meaning for Hegel’sobscure utterances, and he did succeed in finding many things preciseenough to be discussed: his own lectures were eminently clear. …But certainly Hegel never meant anything that precise! Afterthese two years in which I was obliged to read Hegel, I never thoughtit worth while to read him again; but McTaggart’s own publishedworks I thought it worthwhile to study carefully…. (Moore 1942,18–19)

Whatever may be thought of these and other conclusions ofMcTaggart’s, and of the validity of his arguments for them, therecan, I think, be no question that in respect of ingenuity and subtlety,and above all, perhaps in respect of the clearness of his thought, hewas a philosopher of the very first rank. … Nor was it onlythat McTaggart was naturally clear-headed in a very unusual degree: hespared no pains in trying to get clearer and clearer about all matterswhich seemed to him to be fundamental. Perhaps the most valuable lessonwhich his pupils learnt from him was the importance and difficulty oftrying to get quite clear as to what you hold, and of distinguishingbetween the good and bad reasons for holding it. (Moore 1925, 271)

3. The Unreality of Time

McTaggart is most famous for arguing that time is unreal. He wasattracted to this conclusion early in his career, perhaps as a resultof his mystical experiences. In June of 1889, McTaggart wrote in aletter to Roger Fry that he had some ideas about the elimination oftime (1991, 59). His 1896 bookStudies in the HegelianDialectic contains an argument for the unreality of time insections 141–142, but this argument is very unlike the ones thatsucceed it. In 1908, he published “The Unreality of Time”inMind. This argument was later reincarnated in the secondvolume ofthe Nature of Existence.

McTaggart distinguished two ways of ordering events or positions intime. First, they might be ordered by the relation ofearlierthan. This ordering gives us a series, which McTaggart callsthe B-series. A second ordering is imposed by designating somemoment within the B-series asthe present moment. This secondordering gives us a series that McTaggart callstheA-series. According to McTaggart, in order for time to bereal both series must exist, although McTaggart holds that, in somesense, the A-series is more fundamental than the B-series.

Although there are various ways to reconstruct McTaggart’sargument, for our purposes it will suffice to consider the followingone:

1. Time is real only if real change occurs.
2. Real change occurs only if the A-series exists.
3. The A-series does not exist.

Therefore, time is not real.

McTaggart has comparatively little to say in support of premise (1).(We find McTaggart accepting premise (1) in as early a work as hisStudies in the Hegelian Dialectic, section 144.) Roughly,McTaggart’s rationale for premise (2) is that the contents ofpositions are events. There is real change only if events change, andthe only way an event can change is by first being future, thenpresent, and then past, i.e., by changing positions in the A-series.According to McTaggart, an event enjoying qualitative variation acrossits temporal axis, such as a poker that begins hot and later cools,does not constitute an example of real change, since it is always thecase that the earlier part of this event is hotter than the later partof this event. For this reason, McTaggart rejects the account ofchange offered by Bertrand Russell in hisPrinciples ofMathematics (section 442), according to which something changesjust in case a proposition true of it at one time is not true of itwhen evaluated at a later time. (With respect to anypropositionP, ifP has some truth-value whenevaluated at a time, it is always the case thatP has thattruth-value when evaluated at that time.)

In general, McTaggart believes that facts about positions inB-series are ‘fixed’ in the sense that they are always trueno matter which time is present. The only thing left to change then iswhich events are actually present. So if there is no A-series, ifnothing is truly ever present, past or future, then there is nochange.

McTaggart argues for premise (3) by attempting to demonstrate that theexistence of the A-series would generate a contradiction.According to McTaggart,being present,being past,andbeing future are incompatible determinations. Buteverything in time must have each of them. How best to reconstruct the rationale for this premise is highly contentious.^[9] The intuitive picture seems tobe this. Consider an event that from our perspective is past. Perhapsit is the event of McTaggart first considering the unreality of time.From the perspective of that event, it is present (and we are future).However, the ordering generated by the A-series is supposed to be anobjective ordering: an A-series is not thereby generated simply byone’s arbitrary choice of a point of time as the present. Sincethe respective situations are symmetrical, there is no reason to preferone perspective over the other. If we take both perspectives as beingcorrect, then we must say of some event (and every event by parity ofreasoning) that it is past, present, and future. So instead we shouldsay that neither perspective is correct, and that the A-series does notexist.

Although time is unreal, our perception of temporal order is not whollydelusory, for there is a real relation that really orders apparentlytemporal events in the way that they appear to be ordered in theB-series. This relation itself generates a series, which McTaggartcalls the C-series. (For this reason, McTaggart describes his denial ofthe reality of time as Hegelian rather than Kantian, since (onMcTaggart’s interpretation) although both thinkers denied thereality of time, only Hegel thought that there was an underlyingreality to which the apparent reality of time corresponded.) Were thereto be an A-series, the conjunction of it with the C-series would yielda B-series.

McTaggart entertained several theories about the nature of theC-series. One theory that he did not seriously argue against is theview that the C-relation is a primitive transitive, asymmetric relationfor which nothing positive may be said concerning it.^[10]I will briefly discuss atheory that he entertains in his article “The Relation of Time toEternity”, which was re-published inMind in 1909 butwas written at least two years before. (This article is also reprintedinPhilosophical Studies.)

In this article, McTaggart distinguishes three meanings of the term“eternity”: the sense in which time might be eternal inthat it is infinitely extended, the sense in whichpropositions (conceived as abstract objects) are eternally ortimelessly true, and the sense of eternity that pertains to existentthings that are not temporally located. An example of a putativelyeternal being in this sense is a God conceived as existing outside oftime. McTaggart focuses on the third sense of “eternal”,which is the sense in which, given the unreality of time, everyexistent is eternal.

Although the eternal is timeless, some temporal metaphors might moreaptly characterize the eternal than others. Some theists describe thelife of the divine being as one that is ‘eternallypresent’, an expression that on its face is explicitlycontradictory. Yet describing the divine life as eternally presentseems more apt than describing it as eternally past. McTaggart citesseveral considerations that favor metaphorically describing the eternalas present. First, the present changes only by ceasing to be presentand the eternal never changes. The constancy of the eternal is likethat of the present while it continues to be present. Second,many hold that the present enjoys more reality than the past or thefuture, and many also hold that eternal things enjoy more reality thanthat which is in time. So the present is more like the eternal than isthe past, at least in this respect. Third, the role of the eternal inour emotional lives seems similar to the role of the present. McTaggartclaims that one who loves an eternal God experiences an emotionrelevantly like one who loves a presently existing thing, and not atall alike the emotion of one who loves something that is merely past oryet to be. Finally, neither past things nor future things have causalefficacy, but arguably both present and eternal things do.

Although these considerations favor metaphorically describing theeternal as present, they are not decisive. McTaggart argues that thereis some reason to favor instead metaphorically describing the eternalas future. Suppose that time is unreal, but there is a real orderingcorresponding to the apparent temporal ordering. In other words,suppose that there is a C-series. One theory of the C-series is that itis anadequacy series. The things ordered by the C-series arerepresentations of how reality actually is, and the relationthat generates the C-series isx is less adequate than y. Onthis view, states that appear to be present more accurately representreality than states that appear to be past, but both in turn are lessaccurate representations than states that appear to be future. Theterminal end of the C-series consists in maximally adequate, i.e., truerepresentations of how reality is. Reality is timeless. So the finalstage of a series of representations that gives rise to the appearanceof a temporal order is a stage that represents reality as beingtimeless. For this reason, McTaggart holds that it is appropriate todescribe the eternal as being future.

In chapters 44–50 of the second volume ofthe Nature ofExistence, McTaggart reassesses and rejects the theory that theC-series is generated by the relation of being less adequate than. Heultimately settles on the view that the C-series is an “inclusionseries”, one in which each element in the series has as a properpart its predecessor in the C-series. The elements of the inclusionseries are misperceptions of reality, but they are not ordered merelyby the relationx is less accurate than y. Strictly,McTaggart distinguishes many C-series, one for which each perceiver,but argues that they are commensurable. The illusion of time issomehow generated by facts about the parthood relations obtainingbetween mistaken perceptions, but how exactly this illusion isgenerated is a question McTaggart admits to not having an answer.

According to McTaggart, although time is unreal, temporal judgmentscan be well or ill-founded in the sense that, given how things actuallyare, some judgments about time and temporal ordering capture real factsabout the underlying reality that gives rise to the appearance of time.So, for example, reality is such that it is better to say that WorldWar I took place after the American civil war than it is to say thatthe American civil war took place after World War I. Althoughboth judgments are false, the former judgment at least correctly orderssome events in a real series, whereas the latter does not.

4. McTaggart’s Philosophy of Religion

Although McTaggart was an atheist from a very early age, he wascertainly a religious person, at least on his own definition of“religion”. In chapter 1 ofSome Dogmas ofReligion, McTaggart defined “religion” as “anemotion that rests on a conviction of harmony between ourselves and theuniverse at large.” According to McTaggart, a necessary conditionon judging that there is harmony between the universe at large andourselves is that one judge that the universe is good on the whole(Some Dogmas of Religion, section 11).

In an earlier pamphlet, titled “Dare to Be Wise”(reprinted in hisPhilosophical Studies), McTaggart defined“pessimism” as the view that the universe as a whole ismore bad than good, and “optimism” as the view that theuniverse as a whole is more good than bad. According toMcTaggart, whether optimism is true is one of the central religiousquestions. Probably no philosophical belief was more important toMcTaggart than optimism. McTaggart defended optimism very early in hiscareer, in a pamphlet published in 1893 titled “On theFurthermore determination of the Absolute” (reprinted in hisPhilosophical Studies), and the second volume oftheNature of Existence concludes with a full-throttled argument foroptimism.

However, McTaggart denied that the truth of optimism required the truthof theism. As noted earlier, McTaggart was throughout his adult life anunwavering atheist. In chapter VI ofSome Dogmas of Religion,McTaggart defines “God” as “a being who is personal,supreme, and good.” Although McTaggart’s definitionrequires that God be a person in the philosophical sense, it neitherrequires that God be omnipotent nor requires that God beomnibenevolent. It merely requires that God be more powerful than anycreated thing and that God be more good than evil. McTaggart held thatthe three most popular arguments for the existence of God, which hetook to be the cosmological argument, the argument from design, and theargument from goodness, cannot prove the existence of an omnipotentGod. McTaggart also raises worries in this chapter about the coherenceof the notion of omnipotence by calling attention to various paradoxesand puzzles surrounding the notion. It should be noted thatMcTaggart’s conception of omnipotence is very strong: for one tobe omnipotent in his sense one must be able to perform impossibletasks.

Some Dogmas of Religion does not contain a direct argument forthe non-existence of God, but rather contains rebuttals of argumentsfor the existence of God.The Nature of Existence doescontain a direct argument for atheism, which appears in chapter 43 ofvolume II. This argument is roughly as follows. At this point in thebook, McTaggart believes that he has established that the universeconsists of some number of immaterial spirits, each of which is aprimary part of the universe. Roughly, to say that thexs form primary parts ofy is to say that the way ofcarving upy into thexs is a privileged orfundamental way of carving upy. For an intuitive example,consider a sphere whose top half is blue and whose bottom half is red.Perhaps the sphere has infinitely many arbitrary undetached parts, butthe way of carving the sphere into the top and the bottom half is aprivileged way of carving it. McTaggart then argues that, if there is aGod, then it is either identical with the sum of all that exists, or isthe creator of all that is distinct from God, or is the mere guider andshaper of all that is distinct from God. God cannot be the sum of allthat exists, since then God would be a person who is composed of otherpersons. But according to McTaggart, no person can have as a partanother person.^[11]

Second, God cannot be the creator of all else that exists.According to McTaggart, that would make God more fundamental than anyof the other selves that are primary parts of the universe. But allselves are equally fundamental. McTaggart has a second argument for theconclusion that God cannot be the creator of everything else thatexists. According to McTaggart, nothing is truly in time. Since time isunreal, there can be no creation. However, even if time is unreal,McTaggart believes that we can truly say of two things that there is acausal relation between them. But, if time is unreal, this relationmust be symmetric; in order to distinguish the cause from the effect,McTaggart holds that we must appeal to temporal asymmetries, none ofwhich exist. Since creation is an asymmetric causal relation, and thereare no such relations if time is unreal, there is no creation, andhence God cannot be identified with the creator of everything that isnot identical with God. For similar reasons, McTaggart held that therecannot be a being who is the shaper and guider of everything that isnot him.

McTaggart was a mystic. McTaggart held that there are two essentialcharacteristics of mysticism. (These two characteristics arearticulated in his article “Mysticism”, which is reprintedinPhilosophical Studies.) First, mysticism requires therecognition of a unity of the universe that is greater than thatrecognized by ordinary experience or by science. The universe might behighly unified without it being the case that the apparentlynumerically distinct parts of the universe are actually identical.According to McTaggart, Hegel believed in a mystic unity although hedid not believe that this unity amounted to numerical identity. OnMcTaggart’s interpretation, Hegel identified God as a communityof finite spirits. McTaggart’s own view was substantially thesame, although he did not label the community of spirits“God”.

A second essential characteristic of mysticism is the view that itis possible to be conscious of this unity in a way different from thatof ordinary discursive thought. We can be conscious of abstract truthsor of spiritual reality directly in a matter akin to sense perception.McTaggart calls this consciousness “mystic intuition”, andthat of which it is a recognition “mystic unity”. Mysticunity is more fundamental than mystic intuition. The existence ofmystic intuition implies the existence of mystic unity, but the clearlythe converse does not hold. The universe might be highly unifiedwithout anyone recognizing that it is so.

From a very early age, McTaggart had what he took to be mysticalexperiences. These experiences presented the world as beingfundamentally unified by the relation of love. Reality as it appearedto him in these experiences consisted fundamentally of immaterialspirits who stand in the relation of love to one another. Theseexperiences provided him with great comfort, but he believed that thefact that he had them did not provide others with a reason to believein the unity he took them to reveal.^[12]Philosophical argument was needed to supplyothers with a reason.

In general, McTaggart held that religious (or metaphysical) beliefscannot rest merely on the unfounded convictions of believers, or onthe claim that most people believe it, or on that we must believe itin order to be happy, or that we should believe it on faith (SomeDogmas of Religion, section 31). With respect to matters ofmetaphysics, we need arguments. According to McTaggart, we also needthe courage to search for the truth and to follow the arguments werethey lead, even when are unhappy with where they lead. Sinceexperience cannot correct the beliefs of metaphysicians, if a lack ofcourage leads them astray, nothing will lead them back to thetruth. We do not want to be driven to falsecomfort.^[13]

Although McTaggart denied the reality of time, he did in a sense defendthe immortality of the self. Since some judgments about time can bewell-founded even though false, it might be that judgments aboutwhether we will enjoy life again after our deaths are well-founded.McTaggart held that they were, and moreover defended the view that eachof us existed prior to our births as well.^[14]

5. McTaggart’s Ontological Idealism

McTaggart endorsed bothontological idealism andepistemological realism. Epistemological realism, as looselyformulated by McTaggart, is the view that knowledge is true (justified)belief, and that truth consists in correspondence with reality.^[15]Ontologicalidealism is the view that the sum total of all that exists consistsin persons.^[16]According to McTaggart, althoughreality is composed of persons, it does not follow that nothing is realunless it can be known by some person.^[17]

McTaggart’s version of ontological idealism was inspired byhis reading of Hegel. In one of his earlier writings, “TheFurther Determination of the Absolute” (reprinted in hisPhilosophical Studies), McTaggart tells us that Hegel’sview of the absolute spirit is that it is made of finite individuals,each of which is individuated by how it is related to the others, andeach of which perceives that every other self is of the same nature asitself.

McTaggart more or less interpreted Hegel as holdingMcTaggart’s own view, which is that reality consists of a seriesof either finitely many or infinitely many persons. Reality iscomposed of persons and their states, which are parts of them. Eachperson is perceived by some person or persons, and a person perceivesanother person either by perceiving the whole person or by perceivingsome part of the person. Since, on McTaggart’s view, persons havetheir perceptions (and other mental states) as proper parts, one way toperceive a person is by perceiving a perception of that person.^[18]BecauseMcTaggart allows thatx might perceive a perception ofy withouty’s perception being also aperception ofx, McTaggart distinguishes between perceiving aperception (or, more generally, any mental state) and having thatperception (or, more generally, having that mental state).^[19]

Although selves have proper parts, McTaggart denies that any twoselves can ever share a proper part. Nor is it possible that one selfis a proper part of another. Further, no experience or mental state ingeneral can occur without it being a part of some self. McTaggartclaims that these are ultimate synthetic a priori truths.^[20]

Although persons have proper parts, the property of being a person(which McTaggart callspersonality) is a simple,unanalyzable quality.^[21]Although the self is, in a sense, a bundle of mental states, not everybundle of mental states is a self.^[22]We are acquainted with the propertypersonality, and contra Hume, Bradley, and perhaps BertrandRussell, each of us is acquainted with something that has thisproperty, namely oneself.

On McTaggart’s view, our perceptions are grossly mistaken abouthow things are. It is not clear whether McTaggart holds that ourperceptions are grossly mistaken about what there is. When amisperception represents the world as containing material objects, arethere some objects such that we misperceive them as beingmaterial?

In the second volume ofthe Nature of Existence, McTaggartendorsed the view that we never directly perceive material objects, butrather infer material objects from what we directly perceive.^[23]So, onMcTaggart’s view, strictly speaking perception never representsobjects as being material objects.^[24]Perception, however, does represent theexistence of sense-data. But McTaggart also denies that anything isa sense-datum.^[25]However, apparent perceptions of sense-data are really perceptions ofsomething, namely persons, parts of persons, or sums of person-parts.So my perceptions do succeed in correctly representing the existence ofsomething other than myself, although my perceptions grosslymisrepresent the nature of what isperceived.

Why do we misperceive our perceptions of persons or their parts asbeing perceptions of sense-data? Unlike the case of materialobjects, when we perceive something as a sense-datum, our perceptionitself (rather than a judgment we are led to by the perception) ismistaken. McTaggart hypothesizes that, if there is a single causeof this widespread error, it must be connected with the fact that wemisperceive a C-series as an A-series. This hypothesis is somewhatsupported by the fact that whenever we perceive some object, we alwaysperceive that object as being in time.^[26]So the appearance of time is systematicallyconnected with every appearance of something else, and is possiblyresponsible for radically distorting how that something else appears.

McTaggart’s argument for ontological idealism resists easysummary. In outline, the main moves are as follows. McTaggart firstargues that every substance isgunky, that is, every substanceis such that it has a proper part that is also a substance. So for eachsubstance, there is an infinite series of substances that are parts ofit (Nature of Existence I, chapter XXII). McTaggart holdsthat a priori reflection reveals that every substance is necessarilygunky, although there might be respects in which some substance issimple. (Were there to be persisting material atoms, there might beentities that lack spatial parts, but they would nonetheless havetemporal parts.)

Second, according to McTaggart, for each substance, there must be asufficient description of that substance (Nature of ExistenceI, section 105). A substance is described by mentioning itsqualities. An exclusive description of a substance is a descriptionthat applies only to that substance. A sufficient description of asubstance is an exclusive description that mentions only qualities thatmake no reference to other substances (Nature of Existence I,sections 101–102).^[27]

Third, given that each substance must have a sufficient description,the gunkyness of substances implies a contradiction if substances areeither material objects or sense-data. McTaggart holds that thegunkyness of substances and the requirement that every substance havesufficient description result in a contradiction unless the followingrequirement is satisfied: that the universe divides itself into a setof entities – call themprimary parts – whosesufficient descriptions imply sufficient descriptions of every set ofparts of the universe onto infinity. In order for the sufficientdescriptions of primary parts to imply the sufficient descriptions ofall others, there must exist a relation of ‘determiningcorrespondence’ such that all other objects are individuated bystanding in the transitive closure of that relation to the primaryparts, which in turn are individuated independently of standing in anyrelation of determining correspondence.^[28]

If material objects or sensa are part of reality, either there is norelation suitable to be a relation of determining correspondence orthere are no objects suitable to serve as primary parts of the universebecause they could not be individuated prior to standing in sucha relation.^[29]One of McTaggart’s arguments forthis conclusion has as a premise that objects with spatial properties,such as material objects, always have their natures in virtue of thenatures of their parts. But in this case, unless some material objectsare such that at each level of their decomposition into proper parts,new qualities sufficient to describe them uniquely are present, nomaterial object could serve as a primary part of the universe.McTaggart then argues that no such qualitative variation is to be foundin the actual world.^[30]

However, if the primary parts of reality are persons and therelation of determining correspondence is the relation of perception,then McTaggart holds that every substance can have a sufficientdescription even though every substance is gunky.^[31]Since it is possiblethat every spiritual substance be both gunky and have a sufficientdescription, idealism is a live option. That it is possible does notshow conclusively that it is actual, but according to McTaggart, absentany better hypothesis, it is the one that is reasonable to accept.McTaggart holds that we can conceive of nothing that is not a materialobject, a sense-datum, or something spiritual, and since the first twokinds of objects are metaphysically impossible, the hypothesis ofidealism is the only conceivable hypothesis left standing.

6. McTaggart’s Metaphysical Pluralism

McTaggart, unlike many of the idealists that were his contemporaries,was a friend of the reality of relations and a kind of metaphysicalpluralist.

McTaggart’s realism about relations seems to be a relativelymild realism: he believes in the existence of relations, and grantsthat statements attributing relations to things might be true to thefullest degree, but it is not clear the extent to which he believedthat facts about the obtainings of relations weremetaphysically basic.^[32]It is true that the notion of perception, which is on the face of it arelational notion, plays a fundamental role in his idealistic system.Recall that McTaggart held that reality consists of immaterial selvesthat are unified by perceiving each other. What is not clear is whetherMcTaggart believed that whenever somex perceives somey, it is virtue of the intrinsic qualities ofx andy. (In one sense of the term “intrinsic relation”,perception would be an intrinsic relation if this claim weretrue.)

McTaggart believed that the most extreme kind of monism, namely thedoctrine that there is exactly one thing, is incoherent. For if therewere exactly one thing, it could have no attributes or features, andhence, on McTaggart’s view, would really be nothing.^[33]For thisreason, McTaggart held that we must not think of ‘the absolutespirit’ as an undifferentiated unity. In McTaggart’s earlypaper, “The Further Determination of the Absolute”,McTaggart argues that if the absolute has features, then it must haveparts standing in relations to one another.

McTaggart also rejected the less radical version of monism that holdsthat there is only one substance. In first volume ofthe Nature ofExistence, sections 65 and 73, McTaggart defined“substance” as that which has features without being afeature. In his later article, “an Ontological Idealism”,he defines “substance” as that which has features withoutbeing a feature or having a feature as a part. The reason for therevision is that at this point in McTaggart’s career, he acceptedthe existence offacts construed as complexes of particularsand properties. Facts satisfy the older definition of“substance” but not the newer one. McTaggart arguesthat we perceive that there are many substances, but also holds that itis a priori that, if there is one substance, then there are many, sinceit is a priori that every substance has infinitely many parts.McTaggart also rejectedsolipsism understood as the view thatreality consists of a single person, which although infinitely dividedis such that nothing exists that is not a part of him. Solipsism thusunderstood is strictly compatible with the existence of a plurality ofsubstances; however, McTaggart held that solipsism was ruled out by therequirement that there be a relation of determining correspondence.^[34]

Interestingly, although McTaggart holds that some pantheisticphilosophers of the east held the view that there is exactly onesubstance, McTaggart denies that Spinoza held this view, and moreoverdoes not attribute the view to his contemporaries, such as F.H.Bradley. His pluralism consists in the fact that individual selves arethe fundamental units of being in his theory: from facts about theselves, all else follows. He is clearly a monist in the sense that hebelieved that all substances are immaterial substances.

7. Other Interesting Metaphysical Views

McTaggart was a systematic metaphysician and so did what systematicmetaphysicians do: on his way to defending one metaphysical view, heended up defending several. We will briefly discuss some of theinteresting positions he advocated.

Hyper-essentialism. McTaggart endorsed a radical form ofessentialism. Any individual substance save reality as a whole has allof its features essentially. In several places, McTaggart seems toassert that it is meaningless to ascribe modal features to reality as awhole. See, for example,Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic,section 47, and remarks made in his “The Further Determination ofthe Absolute”. This view is motivated by the thought that,although a substance is distinct from its nature understood as the sumof its qualities, it nonetheless is individuated by its nature and somust have it essentially. (See the first volume ofthe Nature ofExistence, sections 109–113). McTaggart calls the relation betweenthe parts of a substances’ natureextrinsicdetermination, since, given the existence of that substance, allof those properties that are parts of that subject’s nature mustexist and so in that sense determine each other.

McTaggart seems to have flirted with a kind of counterpart theory as away to soothe intuitions that substances might have had differentproperties than the ones that they in fact have. After considering theconsequences of his view for the modal profile of ordinary objects,such as the mountain Snowdon, he writes:

A mountain which differed from the actual Snowdon only in being a footshorter, and in whatever was implied by that, would resemble it soclosely in every characteristic that we are interested in that weshould certainly give it the name Snowdon. (The Nature ofExistence, vol. I, 117)

Although the actual Snowdon couldn’t have been shorter, therecould have been a mountain sufficiently like it to warrant us giving itthe name “Snowdon.”

Reality and Existence. McTaggart distinguished betweenreality andexistence, both of which he held to besimple and undefinable qualities. According to McTaggart, the conceptof being is the same as the concept of reality, and so it is atautology to say whatever is, is real.^[35]Reality is a monadic property, and does notcome in degrees. Existence is not to be identified with the conjunctiveproperty of being real and being spatiotemporal, for McTaggart heldthat no existent is spatiotemporal.^[36]Moreover, reality is not to beidentified with existence, since it is conceptually possible thatsomething might be real without existing.

That said, everything that is real might also exist. The first portionof McTaggart’sthe Nature of Existence is devoted toshowing that either reality and existence are in fact coextensive, or,failing this, that can learn everything important about what is real bystudying what exists. As part of the project of showing this, McTaggartargues against the reality of some putative entities that might betaken to be real but non-existent. For example, McTaggart argues thatthere is no reason to believepropositions (construed asabstract objects). According to McTaggart, truth is a relationnot between a proposition and a fact but rather between a belief and afact, whereas falsity is a relation between a belief andallthe facts: to be false is to fail to correspond with any fact.Moreover, on McTaggart’s view, there are no non-existentfacts.

McTaggart also dispenses withpossibilities, and argues thatall statements about possibilities are best understood as concerningconnections between existing things. Statements apparently aboutpossibilities are really statements about actualities: they are aboutthe actual implications and non-implications of various characteristicshad by actual entities. (See section 40 of the first volume oftheNature of Existence for further discussion.)

Mereological Doctrines. McTaggart holds the followingdoctrines concerning the part-whole relation as it applies tosubstances. First, McTaggart endorsesunrestrictedcomposition: whenever there are some substances, there is afurther substance that is composed of them. McTaggart dismisses theworry that unrestricted composition implies that there are bizarresubstances such as the substance composed of all the readers of the SEPand the moon. (See chapter 16 of the first volume ofthe Nature ofExistence.) For this reason, McTaggart holds that there is asubstance that is composed of everything that there is. He calls thissubstance “the Universe”. (See section 77 and chapter 18 ofthe first volume ofthe Nature of Existence.)

Second, McTaggart accepts thatthe doctrine of temporalparts is well-founded: if time is real, then objects have temporalparts corresponding to each moment at which they exist. If time isunreal, then objects have parts corresponding to each node in the realC-series that they occupy. This view is articulated in several placesin both volumes ofthe Nature of Existence, and it plays aminor argumentative role in section 163 of volume I.Interestingly, McTaggart does not explicitly arguefor thedoctrine, but rather seems to think that the doctrine of temporal partswill be ‘generally admitted’. (See the second volume ofthe Nature of Existence, section 412.)

Third, McTaggart argues that it isa priori that everysubstance isgunky. A substance is gunky just in case it hasproper parts, and every proper part of that substance in turn hasfurther proper parts. Chapter 22 of the first volume ofthe Natureof Existence contains a defense of this position.

Fourth, McTaggart distinguishes between compound substances andgroups. A compound substance is a substance that has othersubstances as proper parts. On McTaggart’s view, every substanceis a compound substance. A group also has substances as proper parts,but it not merely a compound substance. Rather, it is something moreakin to aset or acollection. However, McTaggartexplicitly claims that groups are not classes because a class is“determined by a class-concept, while a group is determined by adenotation.” (See page 276 of “An OntologicalIdealism” in hisPhilosophical Studies, as well aschapter XV of the first volume ofthe Nature of Existence,wherein he claims that classes are determined by properties.)

In addition to having substances asparts, groups have themasmembers. On McTaggart’s view, parthood is notsufficient for membership. Although the parthood relation istransitive, the membership relation is not. According to McTaggart,whenever there are some substances, they also form a group, andwhenever there are some groups they too from a group. Although there isa universal substance, no group contains all the other groups. Finally,no group contains itself as a part. McTaggart appears to have aniterative conception of the group-theoretic hierarchy, although hedenies that there are groups with only one or fewer members.

One puzzling feature of McTaggart’s mereological system is hisapparent acceptance of a form ofrelative identity:xandy might be the same substance while simultaneously beingdifferent groups. In section 128 of the first volume ofthe Natureof Existence, McTaggart considers the group consisting of thecounties of Great Britain and the group consisting of the parishes ofGreat Britain. McTaggart argues that although these are not the samegroups, we ought to say that they are the same substance. He does notappear to merely mean that this substance may be partitioned in twodifferent ways, and that corresponding to these ways are twonumerically distinct groups.

9. Ethics

It is fair to say that McTaggart dedicated much more of philosophicalenergy to metaphysics than ethics. That said, McTaggart did haveinteresting ethical views, some of which will be discussed here.

In the Hegelian phase of McTaggart’s career, McTaggart defended aform of consequentialism in which the ultimate good coincided with whatis ultimately real: a series of persons each of whose final end is incomplete harmony with the universe (and so with the final ends of everyother individual), resulting in the happiness of each individual.^[37]Although theproduction of this ultimate good is our obligation, it is exceedinglydifficult for us to know which actions of ours are what we ought to do.For this reason, McTaggart suggests that we need a‘criterion’ for moral rightness, i.e., a decision-proceduresuch that if we follow it we are most apt to do what we ought to do.McTaggart argues that a form of hedonistic utilitarianism is the bestcriterion for moral rightness that we can reasonably hope for.^[38]McTaggartgrants that sometimes this criterion could give incorrect results, andthat since following it is not a certain guide to what is right, wemust admit that our ethical knowledge is limited and incomplete.

The latter McTaggart was a moral realist cut from the same cloth ashis former student G.E. Moore. He held that (intrinsic)goodness andbadness were simple qualities, notreducible to non-normative properties, and not reducible to therelationis intrinsically better than. (See chapter 64 of thesecond volume ofthe Nature of Existence fordiscussion.)

The fundamental bearers of intrinsic value are eitherpersons (or other conscious beings) orstates ofpersons (which in turn he took to be proper parts ofpersons). Because no person is a part of another person, the universeitself cannot be taken to be a fundamental bearer of intrinsicvalue. Therefore, one can say of the universe that it is intrinsicallygood or intrinsically bad only if one means by this either somethingabout the average value of parts of the universe or by their totalvalue. (This view is defended in “The Individualism ofValue”, reprinted inPhilosophical Studies.) McTaggartopts for the latter view, and for this reason, McTaggartacceptsthe repugnant conclusion, which is that a universecontaining millions of people whose lives are barely worth livingmight be better than a world containing far fewer people, each of whomlive lives of spectacular value. McTaggart notes that this conclusionwould be repugnant to certain moralists, but sees no reason to think‘repugnance in this case would be right.’ (See section 870of the second volume ofthe Nature of Existence.)

Although persons or states of persons are the bearers of intrinsicvalue, they have their value in virtue of having other properties.McTaggart was an ethical pluralist, granting that many different sortsof properties can contribute to the value of a state of a person.Pleasure and pain are both intrinsically valuable (the latter havingnegative value, of course), and both are present in timeless reality.Pain is always intrinsically bad, regardless of whether the recipientof the pain deserves to be in pain. On the basis of this claim,McTaggart argued against the justifiability of vindictive punishment.(SeeSome Dogmas of Religion, section 133, as well as“Hegel’s Theory of Punishment”, which furtherdevelops this view; chapter five ofStudies in HegelianCosmology is devoted to a discussion of punishment.) Andunfortunately, delusory perceptions, of which we are susceptible, areintrinsically bad. For this reason, McTaggart concludes that absolutereality is not free from intrinsic disvalue. (Even if pain is illusory,the illusion that there is pain is real, and is itself bad. SeehisStudies in the Hegelian Dialectic, page 155.) For thisreason, Hegel’s attempts to prove that the absolute is perfectare doomed to failure.^[39]

Love is central in McTaggart’s theory of the good. Love is not tobe identified with benevolence, which McTaggart did not regard as anemotion but rather as a desire to do good for others. Furthermore, loveis not to be identified with sympathy or sexual desire, but mayoccasion both. Love is not invariably caused by pleasure and it doesnot invariably cause pleasure. We might be caused to love someonebecause of that person’s qualities, but we do not love thatperson’s qualities but rather the person himself. We can love aperson whom we do not believe to be good.

According to McTaggart, love is “supremely” good. Bythis, McTaggart does not mean that love is incommensurably better thanall other goods; were it, the smallest increase in love would begreater than any other increase in any other valuable thing. However,love issupreme in the following way: there is some amount oflove such that that particular amount of love is greater in intrinsicvalue thanany amount of any other good. On McTaggart’sview, the goodness of other goods asymptotically approach the goodnessof that amount of love, whereas the goodness of love enjoys no upperbound. (See sections 850–853 of the second volume oftheNature of Existence.)

The optimistic conclusion ofthe Nature of Existence is thattimeless reality consists of persons who experience tremendous love foreach other. The quantity of love is sufficient in value to dwarf anyevils that remain. McTaggart argues that the value of this quantity oflove might well be infinite.

Bibliography

Primary Texts

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• Candlish, Stewart and PierfrancescoBasile, 2009. “F.H. Bradley”,The StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta(ed.), URL =<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/bradley/>.
• Dickinson, G. Lowes, 1931.J. McT. E. McTaggart,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Geach, Peter, 1995. “Cambridge Philosophers III:McTaggart”,Philosophy, 70(274): 567–579.
• –––, 1979.Truth, Love and Immortality:anIntroduction to McTaggart’s Philosophy, Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press.
• Haldar, Hiralal, 1927.Neo-Hegelianism, London: HeathCranton Ltd.
• Ingthorsson, R.D., 2016.McTaggart’s Paradox, New York:Routledge.
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• King-Farlow, John, 1974. “The Positive McTaggart onTime”,Philosophy, 49(188): 169–178.
• Kreines, J., 2008. “The Logic of Life: Hegel’sPhilosophical Defense of Teleological Explanation in Biology”,inThe Cambridge Companion to Hegel (second edition),F. Beiser (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 344–377.
• Levy, Paul, 1981.G.E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles,Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Mander, W.J., 1996. “On McTaggart onLove”,History of Philosophy Quarterly, 13(1):133–147.
• Mellor, D.H., 1981,Real Time, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.
• –––, 1998,Real Time II, London and NewYork: Routledge.
• Monk, Ray, 1999. “Cambridge Philosophers IX: Russell”,Philosophy, 74(287): 105–117.
• Moore, G.E., 1925. “Death of Dr. McTaggart”,Mind, 34(134): 269–271.
• –––, 1942. “An Autobiography”, inThePhilosophy of G.E. Moore, Paul Schilpp (ed.), Tudor PublishingCompany.
• Nathan, N.M.L., 1991. “McTaggart’s Immaterialism”,Philosophical Quarterly, 41(165): 442–456 (discussesdetermining correspondence, and new arguments for idealism).
• Oakeley, Hilda, 1930. “Time and the Self in McTaggart’sSystem”,Mind, 39(154): 175–193 (critiques McTaggart’sviews on reality of self, and argues against ‘the futurity of thewhole’).
• Patterson, Robert Leet, 1931. “McTaggart’s Contributionto the Philosophy of Religion”,Philosophy, 6(23):323–335.
• Redpath, Theo, 1997. “Cambridge Philosophers VIII: C.D.Broad”,Philosophy, 72(282): 571–494.
• Rochelle, Gerald, 1991.The Life and Philosophy of JohnMcTaggart Ellis McTaggart, 1866–1925, Edward Mellon Press.
• Russell, Bertrand, 1951.The Autobiography of BertrandRussell (1872–1914), London: Allen and Unwin Press.
• Saunders, Joe, 2018. “Taking Love Seriously: McTaggart,Absolute Reality, and Chemistry”,British Journal for theHistory of Philosophy, 26(4):719–737.
• Sharma, Ramesh, 2015.J.M.E. McTaggart: Substance, Self, andImmortality, London: Lexington Books.
• Stern, R., 1994. “British Hegelianism: A Non-MetaphysicalView?”,European Journal of Philosophy, 2:293–321.
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Bradley, Francis Herbert |Moore, George Edward |Russell, Bertrand |time

Acknowledgments

I thank Ben Bradley, Daniel Nolan, David Sanford, Byron Simmons, and an anonymousreferee for extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of thisentry.