Australian-born philosopher Samuel Alexander (1859–1938) was aprominent figure in early twentieth-century British philosophy. He isbest known for advancing “British Emergentism”, a movementthat held mind “emerges” from matter. Alexander rejectedidealism, and accordingly can be labelled a “newrealist” alongside the likes of Bertrand Russell; however,unlike other new realists, Alexander maintained close ties withBritish idealism throughout his career, and his ontology arguablybears similarities to the Absolute Idealism of F. H.Bradley. Alexander’s mature metaphysical system is set out inhis greatest workSpace, Time, and Deity (1920). Alexanderconceives the world as a hierarchy of levels: space and time sit atthe lowest level, and through a process of emergence give rise to thelevels of matter, life, mind, and deity. These levels are pervaded by“categorial” features of reality, such as substance,universals, and causality. Although Alexander is primarily known as ametaphysician, he wrote extensively on many other philosophicaltopics, including the history of philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, andthe philosophy of religion. Alexander spent most of his professionalcareer at the University of Manchester, where he supported variousmoves in education and feminism. On his death, Alexander left hisphilosophical papers and correspondence to the John Rylands Library atManchester, and this collection constitutes an important philosophicarchive of the period.

Alexander’s work was widely celebrated during his lifetime. J. H.Muirhead (1939: 3) wrote that, after Bradley’s death in 1924,Alexander was “the leading figure in British philosophy, and whomall schools, whatever their differences, were delighted tohonour as their chief”. John Laird (1939: 61–5)describedSpace, Time, and Deity as “the boldestadventure in detailed speculative metaphysics” sinceHobbes. Although he never founded a school of philosophy,Alexander is credited with having an influence on figures as diverseas new realists Laird, C. D. Broad, and Edwin B. Holt; theprocess philosopher A. N. Whitehead; John Anderson, “fatherof Australian philosophy”, and his school at Sydney; Britishidealists May Sinclair and Hilda Oakeley; and philosopher ofhistory R. G. Collingwood. A number of studies were produced onAlexander’s work in the mid-twentieth century, but it then saw aperiod of neglect. Over the last decade or so, interest has increased,as indicated by Fisher’s (2021) collectionMarking theCentenary of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity.

• 1. Life
• 2. Early Writings
  • 2.1 History of Philosophy: Hegel and Locke
  • 2.2 Evolutionary Ethics
• 3. Metaphysics and Related Views
  • 3.1 Realism and Compresence
  • 3.2Space, Time, and Deity
  • 3.3 Philosophy of Religion
• 4. Late Writings
  • 4.1 History of Philosophy: Spinoza
  • 4.2 Art and Other Forms of Value
  • 4.3 The Historicity of Things
• 5. Alexander’s Legacy
• Bibliography
  • Works by Alexander
  • Other Primary Literature
  • Secondary Literature
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life

Alexander was born in Sydney on 6 January 1859, to a Jewish family. Hewas the third son of Samuel Alexander, a British emigrant and saddler.Alexander’s father died a few weeks after his birth, and fiveyears later the remaining family moved to Melbourne. Alexander washome-educated by tutors before entering Wesley College in 1871.Alexander entered the University of Melbourne in 1875, andsubsequently won awards in arts, sciences, languages and naturalphilosophy. In 1877, Alexander sailed for England, in an attempt towin a scholarship at Oxbridge. He successfully obtained a scholarshipat Balliol College, Oxford, and went on to win a First in 1881. Thefollowing year, Alexander was awarded a Fellowship at Lincoln College,Oxford.

At this time, the Oxford philosophical scene was dominated by Britishidealism, and Alexander formed lifelong ties with the Absoluteidealists F. H. Bradley, A. C. Bradley, and Bernard Bosanquet. Thisidealist influence is evident in Alexander’s earliest works, onHegel and moral progress. Arguably, it is also evident in his laterworks on metaphysics too. As a student, Alexander also readPlato—under the tutelage of the idealist BenjaminJowett—and Hegel.

Although Alexander remained largely UK-based, in 1882he travelled to Germany for a year, spending at least some ofthis time at the University of Berlin, where he became familiar withthe physiological psychology of Hermann von Helmholtz. In 1890 hetravelled to Freiburg, Germany, to spend roughly another year workingin Hugo Münsterberg’s new psychological laboratory.

In 1893, Alexander accepted a Professorship at the University ofManchester. He took an active part in the university life there, andstrongly supported feminism. Alexander remained at Manchester for therest of his life, and in 1902 he brought various family membersover—including his mother and three of his siblings—fromAustralia to Manchester. He did not marry. Although Alexander neverreturned to Australia he maintained a correspondence with severalAustralian philosophers, including the Scottish-born JohnAnderson.

As Alexander developed his anti-idealist views, he published onnaturalism and realism. He corresponded at length with fellow Britishemergentists C. Lloyd Morgan and C. D. Broad on psychology andmetaphysics. Whilst he rejected idealism, he also continued tocorrespond with F. H. Bradley and Bosanquet. During the War, Alexandercanvassed for recruits, and assisted Belgian refugees.

Interest in Alexander’s work grew as he became President ofthe Aristotelian Society from 1908–1911 (hebecame President again, from 1936–1937). He was invited todeliver the Gifford lectures during the war years 1917 and 1918.These were called ‘Space, time, and deity’ and would form the basis ofhis (1920)Space, Time, and Deity. Laird reportsthat, after the war, Alexander struggled with writing its two volumes:“He was overwhelmed by a sense of his littleness in comparisonwith the task to which he was tied” (Laird 1939: 61).Nonetheless,Space, Time, and Deity was finallyfinished, assuring Alexander’s place within the British philosophicallandscape. It was praised by new realists and idealists alike. AsJohn Passmore puts it:

…even when he [Alexander] broke with the Idealists, theycontinued to speak of him with a respect they rarely showed to the NewRealists—although this charity did not survive the bleakness ofCambridge, where McTaggart, forgetting his own blackened pots,complained ofSpace, Time, and Deity that “in everychapter we come across some view which no philosopher, exceptProfessor Alexander, has ever maintained”. It would be inhumanto expect the arch-enemy of Time to praise its arch-prophet. (Passmore1957: 268)

Bleakness of Cambridge aside, Alexander received many honours duringhis lifetime. These include his election as a Fellow of the BritishAcademy in 1913, an honorary D.Litt from Oxford in 1924, an honoraryLitt.D from the University of Liverpool in 1925, and another from theUniversity of Cambridge in 1934. In 1923, Alexander retired fromManchester. In a speech, he described how proud and happy he wasduring his time as a professor there, “during which I tried todo my part” (Alexander, cited in Laird 1939: 71).

Alexander’s retirement did not stem the tide of his output.Having completedSpace, Time, and Deity, Alexander continuedto produce a stream of articles as prolific as it was diverse. Hewrote several pieces comparing his metaphysics to that of Spinoza, andAlexander took pride—rooted partly in their shared Jewishheritage—in the deep similarity he perceived there. Alexanderalso wrote on the nature of art, history, Moliere, Pascal, theology,and Jane Austen. Alexander was a lifelong fan of Austen, andparticularly lovedPersuasion. His friend and colleague, J.H. Muirhead, suggested that Alexander’s love of literature mayhave resulted from partial deafness, which made it difficult forhim to appreciate music.

Ultimately, Alexander turned his philosophic attention away frommetaphysics to art and value. Lord Listowel describesAlexander’s move towards aesthetics:

But why, of the many unsailed seas he must have been tempted to chart,did his insatiable curiosity launch him on a last voyage into therough waters of aesthetic theory? There is no certain answer to thisquestion. What we do know is that the third person of the hallowedtrinity whose members are Truth, Goodness, and Beauty had hithertobeen sadly neglected as compared with the first two, and that atreatise on aesthetics was urgently required as the coping stone of aneatly finished philosophical system. Yet it would be a grievous errorto suppose that his fondness for the subject was due solely or evenmainly to systematic grounds. Art, in its manifold shapes, attractedhim irresistibly… [he] wrote and talked about Art because hereally loved the pictures, statues, mansions, poems, novels, and playsthat are its concrete manifestations. (Listowel 1939: 181)

Alexander’s full system of aesthetics can be found in his finalmonograph,Beauty and Other Forms of Value (1933).

In his late years, Alexander continued to publish, but Laird reportsthat Alexander was greatly troubled from the 1930s by the suffering ofJewish refugees; Alexander did all he could to help with pen and purse(Laird 1939: 94). Alexander died on 13 September 1938, and his asheslie in the Manchester Southern Cemetery. He bequeathed the majority ofhis estate, and his philosophical papers, to the University ofManchester. A bust of Alexander, by the artist Epstein, stands in theUniversity of Manchester’s Samuel Alexander Building (formerlyknown as the Hall of the Arts Building). Alexander reportedly saidthat he would be happy to haveErravit cum Spinoza engravedon his funeral urn; Muirhead suggested that instead he should haveUt alter Spinoza philosophatus^[1] (Muirhead 1939: 14).

A biography of Alexander can be found in Laird’s (1939) memoir;see also Muirhead (1939) and G. F. Stout (1940).

2. Early Writings

2.1 History of Philosophy: Hegel and Locke

Alexander’s first publication, “Hegel’s Conceptionof Nature” (1886), reveals Alexander’s philosophicupbringing in Oxford’s British Hegelian enclave. Alexander aims to setout Hegel’s conception of nature, “so fantastic andso poetical that it may often be thought not to beserious”, as clearly as possible. He also aims to showwhere it agrees with, and diverges from, contemporary science. Thearticle explains that science leads to a philosophy of naturethrough observation—for example, transforming seemingly isolatedindividuals into universals by discovering their generalcharacter—and the discovery of laws. Alexander also comparesHegel’s account to contemporary theories of evolution, andargues there is a “great likeness” (Alexander 1886: 518).Arguably, some of the positions that Alexander attributes to Hegel aresimilar to his own mature views; for example, Alexander reads Hegel asholding that space and time are “in the world” as much asmatter (Alexander 1886: 506).

Alexander’s early monographLocke (1908) discussesJohn Locke’sEssay on ethics, politics, andreligion. This short book reveals Alexander’s admirationfor Locke, and Lockean empiricism. Whilst this work is mainly ofscholarly interest, Alexander spends one chapter “Observationson theEssay” critiquing Locke, and here Alexanderreveals the bent of his own early views. For example, Alexandercomplains that Locke might have gone further had he applied hisobservations regarding the continuity of mental experience tosubstance (Alexander 1908: 52). This is suggestive, given that one ofAlexander’s later key claims concerning spacetime—thestuff of substances—is that it is continuous.

2.2 Evolutionary Ethics

Alexander’s first monograph,Moral Order andProgress (1889), defends evolutionary ethics, thenaturalist thesis that human morality is a product of biologicalevolution. The monograph is based on a dissertation written byAlexander at Oxford, for which he won the 1887 T. H. Green MoralPhilosophy Prize. In the preface, Alexander writes,

I am proud to have my work connected, however indirectly, with thename of T. H. Green; and I feel this all the more because, though, aswill be obvious, my obligations to him are very great, I have notscrupled to express my present dissent from his fundamentalprinciples. (vii)

The preface also reveals the strong idealist backdrop against whichAlexander’s work is set: the monograph is dedicated to A. C.Bradley, and in the preface Alexander personally thanks D. G. Ritchie,William Wallace, R. L. Nettleship, and J. S. Haldane. Alexander addsthat he owes a special debt of gratitude to F. H. Bradley, who wentthrough the essay with him (Alexander 1889: ix). Alexander continuedto exchange philosophic ideas with many of these idealists throughouttheir lives.

Alexander opens the monograph by stating that the proper business ofethics is the study of moral judgements, such as “It is wrong tolie”. Alexander sets out to discover the nature of morality,asking what these judgements actually express (Alexander 1889:1–3). He does so by examining a selection of “workingconceptions” in ethics—including right, wrong, andduty—and asking what they correspond to. In the same way thatthe working conceptions of physics—including energy, matter andmotion—are ordered according to a “naturalcoherence”, Alexander aims to order ethical conceptions.Alexander concludes that these working conceptions correspond to waysof maintaining equilibrium in society. For example, ideas of good orright imply nothing more than “an adjustment of parts in anorderly whole”: the equilibrium of different persons insociety.

[T]he predicate ‘good’ applied to an action… meansthat the act is one by which the agent seeks to perform the functionrequired of him by his position in society. (Alexander 1889: 113)

Alexander takes this thesis to be the common ground of at least twocurrent rival ethical theories:

Now nothing is more striking at the present time than the convergenceof the main opposing ethical theories, at any rate, in our owncountry—on the one hand, the traditional English mode ofthought, which advancing through utilitarianism has ended in theso-called evolutionary ethics; and on the other, the idealisticmovement which is associated with the German philosophy derived fromKant… Both these views recognise that kind of proportionbetween the individual and his society, or between him and the law,which is expressed under the phrase, organic connection. (Alexander1889: 5–6)

Alexander’s perception of progress in ethical theory, towardsthis correct end point, is Hegelian in style.

Alexander’s ethical system is a kind of evolutionary ethics,akin to that of Leslie Stephen. By applying evolution toethics, Alexander explains that one can mean either the mereintegration of the biological into the ethical sphere, or treatingmorals as one part of a comprehensive view of the universe, in which asteady development from the lower to the higher can be observed, adevelopment which follows the law of the survival of the fittest(Alexander 1889: 14). Alexander, of course, means both. He emphasisesthat while his ethical system, based on the organic nature of society,is due in part to the influence of the biological sciences, it wouldbe an “entire misapprehension” to think that it wereentirely due to this influence; his views are also the result ofprogress in ethics and politics (Alexander 1889: 7–8).

It is worth noting that, despite the spectre of Hegelian idealismhovering in the background of this work, Alexander firmly resistsidealism’s tendency towards monism, the view that the universe isin some sense One:

[T]he conception of a common good is apt to suggest an absoluteidentity of good… in greater or less degree all forms ofso-called Monism, which hold that in the good act the individual is atone with others, and with the Universal Being, are victims of themisconception. (Alexander 1889: 174)

In other words, Alexander is arguing that just because he is puttingforward one conception of goodness—organic connection withinsociety—we should not accept that individuals within society arenot individuals.

3. Metaphysics and Related Views

3.1 Realism and Compresence

Although Alexander may have defended realism from hisearliest works, his mature realism can be found in a battery of laterpapers, published in quick succession: including his1909–10, 1912a, 1912b and 1914. These papers advance thesesthat Alexander would expand on inSpace, Time, and Deity(1920).

In “The Basis of Realism” (1914), Alexander rejectsidealism in favour of realism. He writes that the “temper”of realism is to de-anthropomorphise: to put man and mind in theirproper places in the world of things. Whilst mind is properlyunderstood as part of nature, this does not diminish its value(Alexander 1914: 279–80). For Alexander, realism is thusnaturalistic. This paper is an expansion of Alexander’s lessrigorous (1909–10), where he compares the new conception of mindas a mere part of the universe—as opposed to being at the centreof the universe—to the move from geocentrism toheliocentrism.

A key part of Alexander’s view is that minds exist in the worldalongside other things. Minds are “compresent” with otherobjects in the world, such as tables and mountains. In fact, allexistents are compresent with each other:

There is nothing peculiar in the relation itself between mind and itsobjects; what is peculiar in the situation is the character of one ofthe terms, its being mind or consciousness. The relation is one ofcompresence. But there is compresence between two physical things. Therelation of mind and object is comparable to that between table andfloor. (Alexander 1914: 288)

According to Alexander, we perceive the world directly: we do notperceive representations or ideas of tables, but the tables themselves(or aspects of the tables). We are conscious of ourperceptual process, a consciousness he labels“enjoyment”. Any direct theory of perception must accountfor error. If we perceive the world directly, how do we makemistakes about it? Alexander’s answer is that we do not perceivethe world incorrectly, but we can incorrectly apply partialperceptions to wholes. For example, we may correctly perceive a tableas having a flat edge, but incorrectly apply that perception tothe table as a whole.

Alexander also argues here that minds emerge from lower-level livingorganisms, and are no less real for it:

[M]ind, though descended on its physical side from lower forms ofexistence, is, when it comes, a new quality in the world, and no moreceases to be original because in certain respects it is resoluble intophysical motions, than colour disappears because it is resoluble intovibrations. (Alexander 1914: 304)

The biology that informed Alexander’s early (1889) work onethics survives in his account of mind: mind emerges in the worldthrough evolution. This theory of “emergent evolution” isakin to that advanced by C. Lloyd Morgan; Alexander later referencesMorgan’sInstinct and Experience (1912). Alexanderadds here that the lowest level of existence is space andtime—that they are “the foundation of allreality”—and he greatly expands on this view in his book(1920).

On Alexander’s realism, including the motivations underlyingit and the question of whether realism can be found in hisearliest work, see Weinstein (1984), Fisher (2017; 2021b),and Thomas (2021).

3.2Space, Time, and Deity

This difficult two-volume work sets out Alexander’s grandmetaphysical picture, a sweeping system that offers acosmogony, an explanation of how the world came to be in itscurrent state; and a hierarchical ontology based on emergencethat attempts to account for matter, life, mind, value, and deity.Alexander does not argue for this picture. Rather, he intends that hispicture should provide a description of the world. This is in linewith his general methodology.

Philosophy proceeds by description; it only uses argument in order tohelp you to see the facts, just as a botanist uses a microscope.(Alexander 1921b: 423)

The idea is thatSpace, Time, and Deity offers a descriptionof the world that best fits the facts.

The first chapter ofSpace, Time, and Deity opens withAlexander’s proclamation that all the vital problems ofphilosophy depend on space and time (Alexander 1920i: 35). Alexanderconceives space and time as the stuff out of which all things aremade: space and time are real and concrete, and out of them emergematter, life, and so on. Space and time are unified in afour-dimensional manifold, spacetime. This single vast entity does notmove but contains all motions within itself, and so Alexander labelsit “Motion”. In this respect, Alexander’s spacetimebears some resemblance to F. H. Bradley’s (1893) Absolute:neither Motion nor the Absolute move or exist in time, but they bothcontain motion and time within themselves.

Alexander presents a metaphysical argument for the unity of space andtime, arguing they are merely distinguishable aspects of Motion. Heargues that space and time must be unified because, when abstractedaway from each other, it becomes clear that they could not existindependently. Time would become a mere “now”, incapableof succession; and space would become a mere “blank”,without distinguishable elements (Alexander 1920i: 47). Motion is bothsuccessive and boasts distinguishable elements - this isbecause it is the union of space and time. Alexander’smetaphysical argument for this union was severely criticised by Broad (1921a,b).^[2] Alexander considered his account of spacetime to be in line with thephysics of his day. The following might be understood as anargument from physics for his position:

Our purely metaphysical analysis of Space-Time on the basis ofordinary experience is in essence and spirit identical withMinkowski’s conception of an absolute world of four dimensions,of which the three-dimensional world of geometry omits the element oftime. (Alexander 1920i: 87)

Alexander goes on to distinguish between the characters of empiricalexistents that are variable—such as life, redness orsweetness—and those that are pervasive.

[These pervasive qualities] belong in some form to all existentswhatever. Such are identity (numerical identity for example),substance, diversity, magnitude, even number… The pervasivecategories of existence are what are known from Kant’s usage asthe categories of experience, and I shall call them, in distinctionfrom the empirical ones or qualities, categorial characters.(Alexander 1920i: 184–5)

Categorial qualities are the properties of spacetime, and this is whythe categories apply to all things within spacetime. This discussionbuilds on Alexander’s “The Method of Metaphysics; and theCategories” (1912). In a later paper, “SomeExplanations” (1921b), which aims to answer critics’worries, Alexander explains that the existence of the categoriesimplies the existence of something that contains them: spacetime.

[F]or me the doctrine of the categories, taken along with the notionof S-T [spacetime], is central… What is “relation”in virtue of which duration is a whole of related successive moments?What does relation stand for in our experience? I answer that italready implies S-T, and that until it receives its concreteinterpretation it is in metaphysics a word. (Alexander 1921b:411–2)

The idea is that, by supposing the existence of spacetime, we explainthe existence of relations (characteristics of reality that holdbetween all things). Similarly, the existence of spacetime explainsthe existence of all other categories. For more on relations, seeAlexander’s (1921b).

The second volume ofSpace, Time, and Deity asks howspacetime is related to the various levels of existence within it:matter, life, mind and deity. Alexander argues we should model theemergence of levels within spacetime on the emergence of mind frombody:

Empirical things are complexes of space-time with their qualities, andit is now my duty to attempt to show how the different orders ofempirical existence are related to each other… [T]he nature ofmind and its relation to body is a simpler problem in itself than therelation of lower qualities of existence to their inferior basis; andfor myself it has afforded the clue to the interpretation of the lowerlevels of existence. (Alexander 1920ii: 3)

Analogous to the way that Alexander takes mind to emerge from body,new levels of being emerge from spacetime when the motions withinspacetime become complex enough:

Empirical things or existents are… groupings within Space-Time,that is, they are complexes of pure events or motions in variousdegrees of complexity. Such finites have all the categorialcharacters, that is, all the fundamental features which flow from thenature of any space-time… [A]s in the course of Time newcomplexity of motions comes into existence, a new qualityemerges… The case which we are using as a clue is the emergenceof the quality of consciousness from a lower level of complexity whichis vital [i.e., life]. (Alexander 1920ii: 45)

Alexander has been criticised for explaining the emergence ofqualities within spacetime by analogy with mind-body emergence, as thelatter kind of emergence is rarely taken to be as unproblematic asAlexander appears to conceive it. For more on this, see for exampleEmmet (1950).

According to Alexander, the emergence of new levels of being withinspacetime is driven by a “nisus”, a striving or felt pushtowards some end:

There is a nisus in Space-Time which, as it has borne its creaturesforward through matter and life to mind, will bear them forward tosome higher level of existence. (Alexander 1920ii: 346)

This means that the emergence of qualities in spacetime is not merelya process, it is a progress. Exactly what the nisusis hasdivided commentators.^[3] but however it is best understood, it pushes the emergence of newqualities within spacetime, and this includes the push towardsdeity.

The second volume ofSpace, Time, and Deity also contains arelatively brief discussion of beauty, and other forms of value.Alexander hugely expands on this account in his 1933 monograph;see Section 4.2 below.

Alexander engaged in extended correspondence onSpace, Time, andDeity:his letters with F. H. Bradley, C. D. Broad, and C.Lloyd Morgan are particularly important. Some of the Bradleycorrespondence can be found in Bradley’s (1999)CollectedWorks. Other letters can be found in Samuel AlexanderPapers, John Rylands Library, Manchester.

Secondary literature on Alexander’s spacetime metaphysicsincludes Brettschneider (1964), Broad (1921a,b), Murphy’s(1927–1928) series, Emmet (1950), Thomas (2013), Fisher (2015),and Rush (2021). Schaffer’s (2009) argues for the identificationof spacetime with matter, and traces this line of thought toAlexander. Secondary literature on Alexander’s account ofmind-body emergence include classic critiques from Broad (1921a,b),Calkins (1923) and Emmet (1950). Stout (1922) discusses and rejectsAlexander’s theory of perception. There has been more recentwork on Alexander’s account of emergence in general; seeMcLaughlin (1992), Gillet (2006), and O’Connor and Wong(2012).

3.3 Philosophy of Religion

One of the optimistic conclusions ofSpace, Time, and Deityis that, in the future, deity will emerge as a quality of the universeas a whole. This deity-world emergence is akin to mind-body emergence.In the following passage, Alexander explains that we should notidentity God with spacetime. Instead, the spacetime system is in theprocess of “engendering” God:

The universe, though it can be expressed without remainder in terms ofSpace and Time, is not merely spatio-temporal. It exhibits materialityand life and mind. It compels us to forecast the next empiricalquality of deity. On the one hand, we have the totality of the world,which in the end is spatio-temporal; on the other the quality of deityengendered or rather being engendered, within that whole. These twofeatures are united in the conception of the whole world as expressingitself in the character of deity, and it is this and not bareSpace-Time which for speculation is the ideal conception of God.(Alexander 1920ii: 353–4)

For Alexander, God is the whole world possessing the quality of deity(Alexander 1920ii: 353). However, the “whole world” doesnot yet exist because Alexander’s universe is one of process;the universe is in progress towards becoming complete, and this is whyAlexander claims the universe is in process towards deity. The wholeworld, which will possess the quality of deity, does not yet exist,but part of it does: “As an actual existent, God is the infiniteworld with its nisus towards deity” (Alexander 1920ii: 353). Thequality of deity has not yet arrived—and indeed, may neverarrive—but God exists in the sense that part of his body, thegrowing world, does.

A potential problem for Alexander is that God is frequently perceivedas being atemporal. In contrast, on Alexander’s system, God isboth spatial and temporal. Alexander recognises that this could beconsidered a problem, but argues that in fact it is an advantage. IfGod does not “precede” the world, but rather is theproduct of it, you can avoid one formulation of the problem ofevil, on which God creates the world and allows suffering within it(Alexander 1920ii: 399).

God is then not responsible for the miseries endured in working outhis providence, but rather we are responsible for our acts. (Alexander1920ii: 400)

A created deity makes our positions as free agents more important.

Alexander’s account of deity is explored further in his 1927“Theism and Pantheism”, reprinted in hisPhilosophical and Literary Pieces (1939). This paper arguesthat theology is a kind of science aiming to account for acertain kind of experience: one’s sense of the divine in theworld (Alexander 1939: 316). Alexander discusses a particularphilosophical problem facing theism, the question of whethertranscendence (i.e., being beyond the material world) and immanence(i.e., living within the world) can be combined in one being, as isoften claimed of God. Alexander argues he can offer a solution: Godcan be understood as being transcendent and immanent if he will emergefrom the world:

God… is himself in the making, and his divine quality or deitya stage in time beyond the human quality. And as the root and leavesand sap of the plant feed its flower, so the whole world, as so farunrolled in the process of time, flowers into deity…God’s deity is thus the new quality of the universe whichemerges in its forward movement in time. (Alexander 1939: 330)

God is transcendent in the sense that he is still in the making, andimmanent in the sense that he will bloom from the whole world.

Extended discussions of Alexander’s theism can be found in Titus(1933) and Thomas (2016). Brief discussions can be found inMcCarthy (1948) and Stiernotte (1954). Emergentisttheologies, holding that insome sense God will emergefrom the universe, are currently enjoying a revival, and in thiscontext Clayton (2004) discusses Alexander’s system as a rivalto his own.

4. Late Writings

4.1 History of Philosophy: Spinoza

After the publication ofSpace, Time, and Deity, Alexanderreportedly came across the system of Spinoza for the first time. In alate series of papers, includingSpinoza and Time(1921a) and “Lessons from Spinoza” (1927), Alexanderreconstructs his system as a “gloss” of Spinoza.

Alexander argues that philosophy and physics has only just begun to“Take time seriously” and, had Spinoza been aware ofthese developments, his ontology would ultimately have resembledAlexander’s. Alexander particularly refers to the thesis thatspace and time should be combined into the four dimensional manifoldspacetime.

Spinoza’sEthics argues there is only one substance, andthis substance is identical with God and nature. The substance has aninfinite number of attributes, including spatial extension, and itsupports an infinity of dependent modes. Alexander argues that hissystem is similar to Spinoza’s except that he understands thesingle substance—Motion—to have only two attributes, spaceand time.

In our gloss upon Spinoza the ultimate reality is full of Time, nottimeless but essentially alive with Time, and the theatre of incessantchange. It is only timeless in the sense that taken as a whole it isnot particularised to any one moment of duration, but comprehends themall… Reality is Space-Time or motion itself, infinite orself-contained and having nothing outside itself. (Alexander 1921a:39)

Alexander argues his gloss solves problemsin Spinoza’s original system. He also praises Spinoza forsuccessfully combining religious values and naturalism (Alexander1927: 14). Alexander concludes one of his pieces on this topic bysaying that he takes pride in the similarity between his system andSpinoza’s (Alexander 1921a: 79). Alexander was corresponding atthis time with the Spinoza scholar Harold Joachim.

There is very little secondary literature on this aspect ofAlexander’s thought, although Thomas (2013) has argued Alexanderis best understood through Spinoza.

4.2 Art and Other Forms of Value

Alexander’s writing on art falls into two kinds. First, thereare essays on literature and art. These are all reprinted inAlexander’s (1939), and cover a wide range oftopics: from the art of Jane Austen, to the writings of Pascal,to the origin of the creative impulse. Second, there are the piecescomprising Alexander’s account of value. Alexander’s earlyinterest in ethics—exemplified in his first monograph(1889)—survived in his later work as a preoccupation with thenature of value, albeit with a focus on the aesthetic value of beauty.Alexander’s (1920) contained several chapters on the nature ofvalue, and he goes on to supplement these with further papers on thesame theme. These include “Naturalism and Value”, and“Value”, both reprinted in Alexander’sPhilosophical and Literary Pieces (1939); and “Moralityas An Art” (1928). These papers culminate in another monograph,Beauty and Other Forms of Value(1933), Alexander’s most important work on the topic. Hiswritings on value are of greater philosophic interest than those onliterature and art.

The views that Alexander expresses in “Morality as An Art”provide a useful introduction to his full account. In this paper,Alexander argues we can fruitfully understand morality by comparing itwith fine art. He argues that, just as the value of beauty found inart is a human construction, so are moral values:

For it is the most obvious feature of fine art that it is a humanconstruction. But it is not so evident that truth and morality are asmuch constructions of ours as beauty is… I am here to plead theopposite doctrine. The highest so-called values, truth, beauty, andgoodness, are all of them human inventions, and the valuable is whatsatisfies certain human instincts or impulses. (Alexander 1928:143)

An objection to this view is that beauty is not constructed; we mightfind it in a natural landscape, for example. Alexander replies to thisthat landscapes and other natural phenomena are rendered beautiful bythe parts that we pick out, akin to a photographer composing apicture. As such, the beauty of nature is composed by us (Alexander1928:149). This entails that there is no difference in kind betweennatural beauty and art; for more on this, see Alexander’s“Art and the Material” (reprinted in Alexander 1939).

Alexander argues we construct values in response to certain needs. Forexample, beauty satisfies the impulse of constructiveness in humans.In “Value”, Alexander connects human art to the dambuilding of beavers (Alexander 1939: 296). Analogously, moralitysatisfies the impulse of gregariousness or sociality in humans.

[I]t is humanized out of the purely animal sociality… which wefind in animals that live in herds like wild dogs, or form societieslike bees. (Alexander 1928: 150)

Beauty and other forms of Value (1933) expands on thisaccount. Alexander perceives his naturalistic account of value to besimilar to that offered by Spinoza. In “Naturalism andValue”, Alexander tells us that Spinoza’s is the“true” naturalism: everything is extension, includingvalue, and yet everything is still divine (Alexander 1939: 279).

Building on the many smaller pieces that preceded it,Beauty andOther Forms of Value provides a full naturalist account of value.Alexander’s approach is to discuss the supreme values inturn, beginning with beauty, and moving on to truth and goodnes.He continues down to lesser values. He aims to explain not justwhat values are, but also how they came to be.

Alexander argues that anything can have value if it matters to athing. In this sense, food is valuable to an animal, and moisture isvaluable to a plant. However, the “supreme”values—beauty, goodness and truth—can be distinguishedfrom others because they are the only values that are valuable inthemselves, for their own sake:

When we come to the highest values, the beautiful, the true and thegood, these in one respect are like wheat and apples: they are objectsof a certain constitution—statues and sonatas, landscapes,generous deeds, chemistry. Their pre-eminence as values is that theyhave no being apart from their value. That is because they are notmerely found, like apples, and their value, like the value of applesfor food, then discovered, but are made to have value, come intoexistence along with their value. (Alexander 1933: 293)

The claim that these values come into existence along with their valueis of course referring to Alexander’s thesis, also given inhisBeauty and other forms of Value (1933), that thesupreme values are human inventions.

As we saw above, Alexander argues that humans construct values inresponse to certain needs or instincts. The final part ofBeautyand Other Forms of Value identifies the animal origin of oursupreme values. For example, there is an analogy to be drawn betweenthe social impulse in humans and in bees. “Naturalism andValue” explains that in the same way that bees’instinct for finding honey once seemed to be“magical” and yet has been explained by biology innaturalistic terms, similarly values appear to be magical and yet canbe explained naturally (Alexander 1939: 282). He goes on to argue thatDarwin’s theory of evolution plays an important role in thedevelopment of value:

[T]he doctrine of natural selection may be described as the history ofhow value makes its entry into the organic world. So far as it is anecessary part of the process by which species are established, it isthe principle which constitutes the history of value, for it shows howthe mere interests of individual organisms come to be well-founded andto be values. (Alexander 1933: 287)

The idea is that, for animals, things that have value are usuallythose that will further the survival of the species, such as food.Animals whose interests do not help to maintain their existencesuccumb under the conditions of their existence, and “leave thefield” for others. In this way, natural selection provides ahistory of value. More on this can be found in Alexander’s“Naturalism and Value” (reprinted in Alexander 1939). Thisintegration of the theory of evolution into Alexander’saesthetics should come as no surprise to us, being as it is a theme inAlexander’s larger work.

Alexander’s writings on art and value were well received intheir day:

[Alexander’s] happy blending of Herbert Spencer’s patientempiricism with the bolder systematic sweep of Bradley and the giantfigures of German idealism was nowhere more fruitful than in histreatment of aesthetics. (Listowel 1939: 183)

The secondary literature includes Listowel (1939), Fox (1934),Hooper (1950), and Innis (2017).

4.3 The Historicity of Things

“The Historicity of Things” (1936) is one ofAlexander’s last papers. One reason it is valuable isthat it gives a concise overview of Alexander’s spacetimemetaphysics in his own words. Another reason it is valuable isthat it tackles an unusual theme: the relationship between history andnature. Alexander argues that while some of the contributions tophilosophy from science are clear, it is less clear what philosophycan learn from history (Alexander 1936: 12). Alexander argues that, astime and motion belong to the most fundamental level of reality, allthat exists is “historical”. As such, science begins withhistory:

History can claim to be mistress of science, as much as mathematics,though in a different sense. They stand for the two vital elements inevery science which cannot be separated, if they can be consideredseparately, the constructive process by which we discover by ourthought the order inherent in things, and the raw materialitself… It must be remembered, however, of course, thathistoricalscience is but one of the sciences which arisefrom the facts and happenings of the world. (Alexander 1936: 24)

Alexander’s characterisation of history as having the wholeworld as its subject matter is interesting not least because it provedso controversial. Both R. G. Collingwood and Hilda Oakeley, twophilosophers of history associated with British idealism, took strongissue with Alexander’s description; see Collingwood’sreprintedPrinciples of History (1938 [1999: 56]) andOakeley’s “The World as Memory and as History”(1925–6).

Both Oakeley and Collingwood corresponded with Alexander, and what hassurvived of their correspondence can be found in the Samuel AlexanderPapers at the John Rylands Library. The Alexander-Collingwoodcorrespondence has been published in Kobayashi (2021), who alsoprovides discussion.

5. Alexander’s Legacy

Alexander’s work impacted a wide variety of thinkers, and he wasespecially widely read from the 1910s to the 1930s. His work wasused and referenced by the likes of British new realists BertrandRussell, G. E. Moore, and G. F. Stout, John Laird, C. D. Broad;and by American realists Edwin B. Holt, and George P. Adams;for a longer list, see Fisher (2021a).

The last decade has seen increasing scholarly interest in tracingAlexander’s influence on other philosophers. For example, his work wasalso picked up by John Anderson, who attended Alexander’s1917–1918 Gifford lectures. Lines of thought stemming fromAlexander can be found in Anderson’s Australian student, D.M.Armstrong; and in American philosopher Donald C. Williams. OnAlexander’s influence on Anderson and Armstrong, see Gillett(2006), Fisher (2015), Cole (2018, §1; §5.2); and Weblin(2021). On Williams, see Fisher (2015) and Williams (2021).Metaphysician Dorothy Emmet’s (2021) piece shows her work alsoowed a lot to Alexander.

The extent of Alexander’s intellectual relationship withphilosopher of history R. G. Collingwood is only recently coming to beappreciated; see O’Neill (2006), Connelly (2021), and Kobayashi(2021). Unusually for a realist, Alexander’s work was alsopicked up by at least two British idealists, May Sinclair and HildaOakeley; see Thomas (2015; 2019).

Bibliography

Works by Alexander

• 1886, “Hegel’s Conception of Nature”,Mind, 11: 495–523.
• 1889,Moral Order and Progress: An Analysis of EthicalConceptions, London: Trubner & Co.
• 1908,Locke, London: Archibald Constable & Co.
• 1909–10, “Ptolemaic and Copernican Views of the Placeof Mind in The Universe”,The Hibbert Journal, 8:47–66.
• 1912a, “The Method of Metaphysics; and theCategories”,Mind, 21: 1–20.
• 1912b, “On Relations; and in Particular the CognitiveRelation”,Mind, 21: 305–28.
• 1914, “The Basis of Realism”,Proceedings of theBritish Academy, 5: 279–314.
• 1920,Space, Time, and Deity (2 volumes), London:Macmillan & Co Ltd.
• 1921a,Spinoza and Time, London: Unwin Brothers.
• 1921b, “Some Explanations”,Mind, 30:409–428.
• 1928, “Morality as An Art”,Journal ofPhilosophical Studies, 3: 143–57.
• 1927, “Lessons from Spinoza”,ChroniconSpinozanum, 5: 14–29.
• 1933,Beauty and other forms of Value, London: Macmillan& Co.
• 1939,Philosophical and Literary Pieces, edited by JohnLaird. London, Macmillan & Co.
• 2021,Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander’s Space,Time and Deity, in Fisher, A. R. J. (ed.), Palgrave Macmillan:Cham, Switzerland.

Other Primary Literature

• Bradley, F. H., 1893,Appearance and Reality, London:Swan Sonnenschein.
• Collingwood, R. G., 1938 [1999],The Principles ofHistory, W. H. Dray & W. J. Van der Dussen (eds.), Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• Morgan, C. Lloyd., 1912,Instinct and Experience, London:Methuen.
• Oakeley, H. D., 1926–7, “The World as Memory and asHistory”,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 27:291–316.
• Spinoza,Ethics, in Edwin Curley, translator,TheCollected Writings of Spinoza (Volume I), Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1985.

Secondary Literature

• Bateman, J. V., 1940, “Professor Alexander’s Proofs ofthe Spatio-Temporal Nature of Mind”,The PhilosophicalReview, 49: 309–324.
• Bradley, F. H., 1999,Collected Works of FH Bradley, Volumes 4&5, Selected Correspondence, edited by Carol A. Keene,Chippenham: Theommes Press.
• Brettschneider, Betram, 1964,The Philosophy of SamuelAlexander, New York: Humanities Press.
• Broad, C. D., 1921a, “Professor Alexander’s GiffordLectures I”,Mind, 30: 25–39.
• –––, 1921b, “Professor Alexander’sGifford Lectures II”,Mind, 30: 129–150.
• Calkins, Mary Whiton, 1923, “The Dual Role of the Mind inthe Philosophy of S. Alexander”,Mind, 32:197–210.
• Clayton, Philip, 2004,Mind and Emergence, New York:Oxford University Press.
• Cole, Creagh McLean. 2018. John Anderson. InStanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta.https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/anderson-john/.
• Connelly, James M. (2021). “Becoming Real: The Metaphysicsof Samuel Alexander and R.G. Collingwood”, in Fisher,A. R. J. (ed.),Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander’sSpace, Time and Deity, pp. 193–210, Palgrave Macmillan: Cham,Switzerland.
• Emmet, Dorothy, 1950, “Time is the mind of space”,Philosophy, 25: 225–234.
• –––, 2021. “SamuelAlexander in Manchester”, in Fisher, A. R. J. (ed.),Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time andDeity, pp. 77–88, Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, Switzerland.
• Gillet, Carl, 2006, “Samuel Alexander’s Emergentism:Or, higher causation for physicalists”,Synthese, 153:261–296.
• Fisher, A. R. J., 2015, “Samuel Alexander’s Theory ofCategories”,The Monist, 98: 246–267.
• –––, 2017, “Samuel Alexander’s EarlyReactions to British Idealism”,Collingwood and BritishIdealism Studies 23: 169–96.
• –––, 2021a, “Introduction”, inFisher, A. R. J. (ed.),Marking the Centenary of SamuelAlexander’s Space, Time and Deity, pp. 1–20, PalgraveMacmillan: Cham, Switzerland
• –––, 2021b, “Samuel Alexander and thePsychological Origins of Realism”, in Fisher,A. R. J. (ed.),Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander’sSpace, Time and Deity, pp.165–192, Palgrave Macmillan:Cham, Switzerland.
• Fox, A. C., 1934, “Professor Alexander’s EthicalViews”,International Journal of Ethics, 44:405–417
• Hooper, Sydney E., 1950, “A Reasonable Theory of Morality(Alexander and Whitehead)”,Philosophy, 25:54–67.
• Innis, Robert. E, 2017, “Aesthetic Naturalism and the«Ways of Art»: linking John Dewey and SamuelAlexander”,Rivista Di Storia Della Filosofia, 3:513–532.
• Kobayashi, Chinatsu, 2021, “Collingwood’sLetters to Alexander”, Collingwood and British IdealismStudies 27: 145–196.
• Laird, John, 1939, “Memoir” in Alexander’sPhilosophical and Literary Pieces, J. Laird (ed.), London:Macmillan & Co.
• Listowel, Lord, 1939, “The Aesthetic Doctrines of SamuelAlexander”,Philosophy, 14: 180–191.
• McCarthy, John, 1948,The Naturalism of Samuel Alexander,New York: Macmillan.
• McLaughlin, B., 1992, “The rise and fall of BritishEmergentism”, inEmergence or Reduction?, A. Beckerman,H. Flohr and J. Kim (eds.), pp. 49–39, Berlin: Walter deGruyer.
• Muirhead, J. H., 1939, “Samuel Alexander”,Philosophy, 14: 3–14.
• Murphy, Arthur E., 1927a, “Alexander’s Metaphysic ofSpace-Time I”,The Monist, 37: 357–383.
• –––, 1927b, “Alexander’s Metaphysicof Space-Time II. Space-Time and the Categories”,TheMonist, 37: 624–644.
• –––, 1928, “Alexander’s Metaphysicof Space-Time III: Space-Time and Knowledge”,TheMonist, 38: 18–37.
• O’Connor, Timothy and Hong Yu Wong, 2012, “EmergentProperties”,The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/properties-emergent/>.
• O’Neill, Michael, 2006, “On the Role of Time inCollingwood’s Thought”, in Alexander Lyon Macfie (ed.)The Philosophy of History, Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan.
• Passmore, John, 1957,A Hundred Years of Philosophy.London: Duckwork.
• Rush, Michael, 2021, “Samuel Alexander on Motion”, inFisher, A. R. J. (ed.),Marking the Centenary of SamuelAlexander’s Space, Time and Deity, pp. 129–148,Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, Switzerland.
• Schaffer, Jonathan, 2009, “Spacetime as the OneSubstance”,Philosophical Studies, 145:131–148.
• Simons, Peter, 2021, “Samuel Alexander’sCategories”, in Fisher, A. R. J. (ed.),Marking theCentenary of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity,pp. 149–164, Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, Switzerland.
• Stiernotte, Alfred, 1954,God and Space-Time, New York:Philosophy Library.
• Stout, G. F., 1922, “Prof. Alexander’s Theory of SensePerception”,Mind, 31: 385–412.
• –––, 1940, “S. Alexander(1859–1938): Personal Reminiscences”,Mind, 49:126–129.
• Thomas, Emily, 2013, “Space, Time, and SamuelAlexander”,British Journal for the History ofPhilosophy, 21: 549–569.
• –––, 2015, Hilda Oakeley on Idealism, Historyand the Real Past.British Journal for the History of Philosophy23 (5): 933–953.
• –––, 2016, “Samuel Alexander’sSpacetime God: A Naturalist Rival to Current EmergentistTheologies”, inAlternative Concepts of God, Y.Nagasawa and A. Buckareff (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press,pp. 225– 273.
• –––, 2019. The Idealism and Pantheism of MaySinclair.Journal of the American Philosophical Association5(2): 137–157.
• –––, 2021, “Samuel Alexander’s Placein British Philosophy: Realism and Naturalism from the 1880sOnwards”, in Fisher, A. R. J. (ed.),Marking theCentenary of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity,pp. 113–128, Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, Switzerland.
• Titus, Harold, 1933, “A Neo-realist’s Idea ofGod”,Journal of Religion, 13: 127–38.
• Weblin, Mark, 2021, “The Rise and Fall of AustralianEmpiricism”, in Fisher, A. R. J. (ed.),Markingthe Centenary of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity,pp. 211–236, Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, Switzerland.
• Weinstein, Michael, 1984,Unity and Variety in the Philosophyof Samuel Alexander, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UniversityPress.
• Williams, Donald C., 2021, “Samuel Alexander and theAnalytical Introverts”, in Fisher, A. R. J. (ed.),Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time andDeity, pp. 89–110, Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, Switzerland.

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• The Samuel Alexander Papers, held at the John Rylands Library (Manchester, UK)
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