Imagine truth is to be attained by subtracting all contradictions from life's experiences. Imagine if everyone did this and the totality of our discoveries then became one mosaic whole, an absolute reality that reflects back upon human beings their privileged position within.

Imagine defining the notion of an Absolute Reality that favors human beings as the meaning of the grand Platonic narrative of the West, calling it good. And then imagine making that notion the mechanism to be used for satisfying earthly, material, bodily as well as spiritual desires, longing for the Good which is the Absolute.

It's not surprising, then, that Bosanquet would tie this longing to do good to a religious stance toward the world, backed by a belief that ethics and morality will be the result of pursuing the proper desires. His logic would conclude that those eliminated contradictions were personal, self-serving desires that hindered the greater good from succeeding.

The 19th century experiences a drastic shift away from such metaphysical claims. These conjectured stories are what the existential phenomenologists would drop as important in the 20th century where ethics would be based on a freedom from such stories.

Bosanquet's aesthetics parallels some of the nature writers of the 19th century, such as Thoreau, with the idea that the natural world is beautiful because it is real.

Bosanquet's social theory reflects 19th century notions concerning an Absolute. For Hegel, it's Mind. For Schopenhauer, it's Will. For Bosanquet, the Absolute, too, is Mind, governed by harmony, brought into being by way of free will. For Schopenhauer, free will is a trick, an illusion we believe in order to do the Will's bidding. In reality, for Schopenhauer, the Will is much more sinister. It eats its own. For Bosanquet, the world's harmony seems a brighter place, opening toward human fulfillment. For Bosanquet, rationality is clean. A thoroughly rational world will produce the good life for all its human members.

Bernard Bosanquet -- Biography

This is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  

Excerpt:

Bernard Bosanquet was born on July 14, 1848 in Rock Hall (near Alnwick), Northumberland, England. He was the youngest of five sons of the Reverend Robert William Bosanquet by the latter's second wife, Caroline (MacDowall). Bernard's eldest brother, Charles, was one of the founders of the Charity Organization Society and its first Secretary. Another brother, Day, was an Admiral in the Royal Navy and served as Governor of South Australia. Yet another, Holford, was elected to the Royal Society and was a fellow of St John's College, Oxford...  

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