BAX, E[rnest] Belfort

The Problem of Reality. Being Outline Suggestions for a Philosophical Reconstruction

London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892. First Edition. First impression. Small octavo (19.5cm). Gray-green printed cloth, titled in gilt on spine; 177pp. Half-title and rear fly-leaf slightly darkened; mild bumps to board corners, else a tight, clean and attractive copy, Near Fine.

Bax (1854-1926), a barrister, historian, and philosopher, was among the leading exponents and interpreters of German idealism in late Victorian England. If he is little remembered today it is possibly because his political and legal theories were somewhat out of the mainstream: an ardent Socialist and promoter of Marx, he was a co-founder, with William Morris, of the Socialist League in 1885. More notorious (and damaging) was his strident anti-feminism, articulated in such works as The Legal Subjection of Men (1896) and The Fraud of Feminism (1913). Of the current work, Bax stated: "...[it was] my first statement by way of a philosophical formulation of my own...this, I may say, was a very slight and imperfect sketch..." (see Bax, "Analysis of Reality," in Muirhead, Contemporary British Philosophy; 1924; v.II, p.57-81). This "sketch" was expanded upon in Bax's later works, The Roots of Reality (1906) and The Real, the Rational, and the Alogical (1920).

Price: $125.00

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