## 1. Life



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



At this time, the Oxford philosophical scene was dominated by British
idealism, and Alexander formed lifelong ties with the Absolute
idealists F. H. Bradley, A. C. Bradley, and Bernard Bosanquet. This
idealist influence is evident in Alexander's earliest works, on
Hegel and moral progress. Arguably, it is also evident in his later
works on metaphysics too. As a student, Alexander also read
Plato--under the tutelage of the idealist Benjamin
Jowett--and Hegel.



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



In 1893, Alexander accepted a Professorship at the University of
Manchester. He took an active part in the university life there, and
strongly supported feminism. Alexander remained at Manchester for the
rest of his life, and in 1902 he brought various family members
over--including his mother and three of his siblings--from
Australia to Manchester. He did not marry. Although Alexander never
returned to Australia he maintained a correspondence with several
Australian philosophers, including the Scottish-born John
Anderson.



As Alexander developed his anti-idealist views, he published on
naturalism and realism. He corresponded at length with fellow British
emergentists C. Lloyd Morgan and C. D. Broad on psychology and
metaphysics. Whilst he rejected idealism, he also continued to
correspond with F. H. Bradley and Bosanquet. During the War, Alexander
canvassed for recruits, and assisted Belgian refugees.



Interest in Alexander's work grew as he became President of
the Aristotelian Society from 1908-1911 (he
became President again, from 1936-1937). He was invited to
deliver the Gifford lectures during the war years 1917 and 1918.
These were called 'Space, time, and deity' and would form the basis of
his (1920) *Space, Time, and Deity*. Laird reports
that, after the war, Alexander struggled with writing its two volumes:
"He was overwhelmed by a sense of his littleness in comparison
with the task to which he was tied" (Laird 1939: 61).
Nonetheless, *Space, Time, and Deity* was finally
finished, assuring Alexander's place within the British philosophical
landscape. It was praised by new realists and idealists alike. As
John Passmore puts it:



> 
> 
> ...even when he [Alexander] broke with the Idealists, they
> continued to speak of him with a respect they rarely showed to the New
> Realists--although this charity did not survive the bleakness of
> Cambridge, where McTaggart, forgetting his own blackened pots,
> complained of *Space, Time, and Deity* that "in every
> chapter we come across some view which no philosopher, except
> Professor Alexander, has ever maintained". It would be inhuman
> to expect the arch-enemy of Time to praise its arch-prophet. (Passmore
> 1957: 268)
> 
> 
> 



Bleakness of Cambridge aside, Alexander received many honours during
his lifetime. These include his election as a Fellow of the British
Academy in 1913, an honorary D.Litt from Oxford in 1924, an honorary
Litt.D from the University of Liverpool in 1925, and another from the
University of Cambridge in 1934. In 1923, Alexander retired from
Manchester. In a speech, he described how proud and happy he was
during his time as a professor there, "during which I tried to
do my part" (Alexander, cited in Laird 1939: 71).



Alexander's retirement did not stem the tide of his output.
Having completed *Space, Time, and Deity*, Alexander continued
to produce a stream of articles as prolific as it was diverse. He
wrote several pieces comparing his metaphysics to that of Spinoza, and
Alexander took pride--rooted partly in their shared Jewish
heritage--in the deep similarity he perceived there. Alexander
also wrote on the nature of art, history, Moliere, Pascal, theology,
and Jane Austen. Alexander was a lifelong fan of Austen, and
particularly loved *Persuasion*. His friend and colleague, J.
H. Muirhead, suggested that Alexander's love of literature may
have resulted from partial deafness, which made it difficult for
him to appreciate music.



Ultimately, Alexander turned his philosophic attention away from
metaphysics to art and value. Lord Listowel describes
Alexander'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 the
> rough waters of aesthetic theory? There is no certain answer to this
> question. What we do know is that the third person of the hallowed
> trinity whose members are Truth, Goodness, and Beauty had hitherto
> been sadly neglected as compared with the first two, and that a
> treatise on aesthetics was urgently required as the coping stone of a
> neatly finished philosophical system. Yet it would be a grievous error
> to suppose that his fondness for the subject was due solely or even
> mainly to systematic grounds. Art, in its manifold shapes, attracted
> him irresistibly... [he] wrote and talked about Art because he
> really loved the pictures, statues, mansions, poems, novels, and plays
> that are its concrete manifestations. (Listowel 1939: 181)
> 
> 
> 



Alexander's full system of aesthetics can be found in his final
monograph, *Beauty and Other Forms of Value* (1933).



In his late years, Alexander continued to publish, but Laird reports
that Alexander was greatly troubled from the 1930s by the suffering of
Jewish refugees; Alexander did all he could to help with pen and purse
(Laird 1939: 94). Alexander died on 13 September 1938, and his ashes
lie in the Manchester Southern Cemetery. He bequeathed the majority of
his estate, and his philosophical papers, to the University of
Manchester. A bust of Alexander, by the artist Epstein, stands in the
University of Manchester's Samuel Alexander Building (formerly
known as the Hall of the Arts Building). Alexander reportedly said
that he would be happy to have *Erravit cum Spinoza* engraved
on his funeral urn; Muirhead suggested that instead he should have
*Ut 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 Conception
of Nature" (1886), reveals Alexander's philosophic
upbringing in Oxford's British Hegelian enclave. Alexander aims to set
out Hegel's conception of nature, "so fantastic and
so poetical that it may often be thought not to be
serious", as clearly as possible. He also aims to show
where it agrees with, and diverges from, contemporary science. The
article explains that science leads to a philosophy of nature
through observation--for example, transforming seemingly isolated
individuals into universals by discovering their general
character--and the discovery of laws. Alexander also compares
Hegel's account to contemporary theories of evolution, and
argues there is a "great likeness" (Alexander 1886: 518).
Arguably, some of the positions that Alexander attributes to Hegel are
similar to his own mature views; for example, Alexander reads Hegel as
holding that space and time are "in the world" as much as
matter (Alexander 1886: 506).



Alexander's early monograph *Locke* (1908) discusses
John Locke's *Essay* on ethics, politics, and
religion. This short book reveals Alexander's admiration
for Locke, and Lockean empiricism. Whilst this work is mainly of
scholarly interest, Alexander spends one chapter "Observations
on the *Essay*" critiquing Locke, and here Alexander
reveals the bent of his own early views. For example, Alexander
complains that Locke might have gone further had he applied his
observations regarding the continuity of mental experience to
substance (Alexander 1908: 52). This is suggestive, given that one of
Alexander's later key claims concerning spacetime--the
stuff of substances--is that it is continuous.


### 2.2 Evolutionary Ethics



Alexander's first monograph, *Moral Order and
Progress* (1889), defends evolutionary ethics, the
naturalist thesis that human morality is a product of biological
evolution. The monograph is based on a dissertation written by
Alexander at Oxford, for which he won the 1887 T. H. Green Moral
Philosophy Prize. In the preface, Alexander writes,



> 
> 
> I am proud to have my work connected, however indirectly, with the
> name of T. H. Green; and I feel this all the more because, though, as
> will be obvious, my obligations to him are very great, I have not
> scrupled to express my present dissent from his fundamental
> principles. (vii)
> 
> 
> 



The preface also reveals the strong idealist backdrop against which
Alexander'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 adds
that he owes a special debt of gratitude to F. H. Bradley, who went
through the essay with him (Alexander 1889: ix). Alexander continued
to exchange philosophic ideas with many of these idealists throughout
their lives.



Alexander opens the monograph by stating that the proper business of
ethics is the study of moral judgements, such as "It is wrong to
lie". 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 "working
conceptions" in ethics--including right, wrong, and
duty--and asking what they correspond to. In the same way that
the working conceptions of physics--including energy, matter and
motion--are ordered according to a "natural
coherence", Alexander aims to order ethical conceptions.
Alexander concludes that these working conceptions correspond to ways
of maintaining equilibrium in society. For example, ideas of good or
right imply nothing more than "an adjustment of parts in an
orderly whole": the equilibrium of different persons in
society.



> 
> 
> [T]he predicate 'good' applied to an action... means
> that the act is one by which the agent seeks to perform the function
> required of him by his position in society. (Alexander 1889: 113)
> 
> 
> 



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



> 
> 
> Now nothing is more striking at the present time than the convergence
> of the main opposing ethical theories, at any rate, in our own
> country--on the one hand, the traditional English mode of
> thought, which advancing through utilitarianism has ended in the
> so-called evolutionary ethics; and on the other, the idealistic
> movement which is associated with the German philosophy derived from
> Kant... Both these views recognise that kind of proportion
> between the individual and his society, or between him and the law,
> which is expressed under the phrase, organic connection. (Alexander
> 1889: 5-6)
> 
> 
> 



Alexander's perception of progress in ethical theory, towards
this 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 to
ethics, Alexander explains that one can mean either the mere
integration of the biological into the ethical sphere, or treating
morals as one part of a comprehensive view of the universe, in which a
steady development from the lower to the higher can be observed, a
development which follows the law of the survival of the fittest
(Alexander 1889: 14). Alexander, of course, means both. He emphasises
that while his ethical system, based on the organic nature of society,
is due in part to the influence of the biological sciences, it would
be an "entire misapprehension" to think that it were
entirely due to this influence; his views are also the result of
progress in ethics and politics (Alexander 1889: 7-8).



It is worth noting that, despite the spectre of Hegelian idealism
hovering in the background of this work, Alexander firmly resists
idealism's tendency towards monism, the view that the universe is
in some sense One:



> 
> 
> [T]he conception of a common good is apt to suggest an absolute
> identity of good... in greater or less degree all forms of
> so-called Monism, which hold that in the good act the individual is at
> one with others, and with the Universal Being, are victims of the
> misconception. (Alexander 1889: 174)
> 
> 
> 



In other words, Alexander is arguing that just because he is putting
forward one conception of goodness--organic connection within
society--we should not accept that individuals within society are
not individuals.


## 3. Metaphysics and Related Views


### 3.1 Realism and Compresence



Although Alexander may have defended realism from his
earliest works, his mature realism can be found in a battery of later
papers, published in quick succession: including his
1909-10, 1912a, 1912b and 1914. These papers advance theses
that Alexander would expand on in *Space, Time, and Deity*
(1920).



In "The Basis of Realism" (1914), Alexander rejects
idealism in favour of realism. He writes that the "temper"
of realism is to de-anthropomorphise: to put man and mind in their
proper places in the world of things. Whilst mind is properly
understood as part of nature, this does not diminish its value
(Alexander 1914: 279-80). For Alexander, realism is thus
naturalistic. This paper is an expansion of Alexander's less
rigorous (1909-10), where he compares the new conception of mind
as a mere part of the universe--as opposed to being at the centre
of the universe--to the move from geocentrism to
heliocentrism.



A key part of Alexander's view is that minds exist in the world
alongside other things. Minds are "compresent" with other
objects in the world, such as tables and mountains. In fact, all
existents are compresent with each other:



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



According to Alexander, we perceive the world directly: we do not
perceive representations or ideas of tables, but the tables themselves
(or aspects of the tables). We are conscious of our
perceptual process, a consciousness he labels
"enjoyment". Any direct theory of perception must account
for error. If we perceive the world directly, how do we make
mistakes about it? Alexander's answer is that we do not perceive
the world incorrectly, but we can incorrectly apply partial
perceptions to wholes. For example, we may correctly perceive a table
as having a flat edge, but incorrectly apply that perception to
the table as a whole.



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



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



The biology that informed Alexander's early (1889) work on
ethics survives in his account of mind: mind emerges in the world
through evolution. This theory of "emergent evolution" is
akin to that advanced by C. Lloyd Morgan; Alexander later references
Morgan's *Instinct and Experience* (1912). Alexander
adds here that the lowest level of existence is space and
time--that they are "the foundation of all
reality"--and he greatly expands on this view in his book
(1920).



On Alexander's realism, including the motivations underlying
it and the question of whether realism can be found in his
earliest work, see Weinstein (1984), Fisher (2017; 2021b),
and Thomas (2021). 


### 3.2 *Space, Time, and Deity*



This difficult two-volume work sets out Alexander's grand
metaphysical picture, a sweeping system that offers a
cosmogony, an explanation of how the world came to be in its
current state; and a hierarchical ontology based on emergence
that attempts to account for matter, life, mind, value, and deity.
Alexander does not argue for this picture. Rather, he intends that his
picture should provide a description of the world. This is in line
with his general methodology.



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



The idea is that *Space, Time, and Deity* offers a description
of the world that best fits the facts.



The first chapter of *Space, Time, and Deity* opens with
Alexander's proclamation that all the vital problems of
philosophy depend on space and time (Alexander 1920i: 35). Alexander
conceives space and time as the stuff out of which all things are
made: space and time are real and concrete, and out of them emerge
matter, life, and so on. Space and time are unified in a
four-dimensional manifold, spacetime. This single vast entity does not
move but contains all motions within itself, and so Alexander labels
it "Motion". In this respect, Alexander's spacetime
bears some resemblance to F. H. Bradley's (1893) Absolute:
neither Motion nor the Absolute move or exist in time, but they both
contain motion and time within themselves.



Alexander presents a metaphysical argument for the unity of space and
time, arguing they are merely distinguishable aspects of Motion. He
argues that space and time must be unified because, when abstracted
away from each other, it becomes clear that they could not exist
independently. Time would become a mere "now", incapable
of succession; and space would become a mere "blank",
without distinguishable elements (Alexander 1920i: 47). Motion is both
successive and boasts distinguishable elements - this is
*because* it is the union of space and time. Alexander's
metaphysical argument for this union was severely criticised by
 Broad (1921a,b).[2]
 Alexander considered his account of spacetime to be in line with the
physics of his day. The following might be understood as an
argument from physics for his position:



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



Alexander goes on to distinguish between the characters of empirical
existents that are variable--such as life, redness or
sweetness--and those that are pervasive.



> 
> 
> [These pervasive qualities] belong in some form to all existents
> whatever. Such are identity (numerical identity for example),
> substance, diversity, magnitude, even number... The pervasive
> categories of existence are what are known from Kant's usage as
> the categories of experience, and I shall call them, in distinction
> from the empirical ones or qualities, categorial characters.
> (Alexander 1920i: 184-5)
> 
> 
> 



Categorial qualities are the properties of spacetime, and this is why
the categories apply to all things within spacetime. This discussion
builds on Alexander's "The Method of Metaphysics; and the
Categories" (1912). In a later paper, "Some
Explanations" (1921b), which aims to answer critics'
worries, Alexander explains that the existence of the categories
implies the existence of something that contains them: spacetime.



> 
> 
> [F]or me the doctrine of the categories, taken along with the notion
> of 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 it
> already implies S-T, and that until it receives its concrete
> interpretation it is in metaphysics a word. (Alexander 1921b:
> 411-2)
> 
> 
> 



The idea is that, by supposing the existence of spacetime, we explain
the existence of relations (characteristics of reality that hold
between all things). Similarly, the existence of spacetime explains
the existence of all other categories. For more on relations, see
Alexander's (1921b).



The second volume of *Space, Time, and Deity* asks how
spacetime is related to the various levels of existence within it:
matter, life, mind and deity. Alexander argues we should model the
emergence of levels within spacetime on the emergence of mind from
body:



> 
> 
> Empirical things are complexes of space-time with their qualities, and
> it is now my duty to attempt to show how the different orders of
> empirical existence are related to each other... [T]he nature of
> mind and its relation to body is a simpler problem in itself than the
> relation of lower qualities of existence to their inferior basis; and
> for myself it has afforded the clue to the interpretation of the lower
> levels 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 within
spacetime become complex enough:



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



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



According to Alexander, the emergence of new levels of being within
spacetime is driven by a "nisus", a striving or felt push
towards some end:



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



This means that the emergence of qualities in spacetime is not merely
a process, it is a progress. Exactly what the nisus *is* has
divided
 commentators.[3]
 but however it is best understood, it pushes the emergence of new
qualities within spacetime, and this includes the push towards
deity.



The second volume of *Space, Time, and Deity* also contains a
relatively 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 on *Space, Time, and
Deity:* his letters with F. H. Bradley, C. D. Broad, and C.
Lloyd Morgan are particularly important. Some of the Bradley
correspondence can be found in Bradley's (1999) *Collected
Works*. Other letters can be found in Samuel Alexander
Papers, John Rylands Library, Manchester.



Secondary literature on Alexander's spacetime metaphysics
includes 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 identification
of spacetime with matter, and traces this line of thought to
Alexander. Secondary literature on Alexander's account of
mind-body emergence include classic critiques from Broad (1921a,b),
Calkins (1923) and Emmet (1950). Stout (1922) discusses and rejects
Alexander's theory of perception. There has been more recent
work on Alexander's account of emergence in general; see
McLaughlin (1992), Gillet (2006), and O'Connor and Wong
(2012).


### 3.3 Philosophy of Religion



One of the optimistic conclusions of *Space, Time, and Deity*
is that, in the future, deity will emerge as a quality of the universe
as a whole. This deity-world emergence is akin to mind-body emergence.
In the following passage, Alexander explains that we should not
identity God with spacetime. Instead, the spacetime system is in the
process of "engendering" God:



> 
> 
> The universe, though it can be expressed without remainder in terms of
> Space and Time, is not merely spatio-temporal. It exhibits materiality
> and life and mind. It compels us to forecast the next empirical
> quality 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 deity
> engendered or rather being engendered, within that whole. These two
> features are united in the conception of the whole world as expressing
> itself in the character of deity, and it is this and not bare
> Space-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" does
not yet exist because Alexander's universe is one of process;
the universe is in progress towards becoming complete, and this is why
Alexander claims the universe is in process towards deity. The whole
world, which will possess the quality of deity, does not yet exist,
but part of it does: "As an actual existent, God is the infinite
world with its nisus towards deity" (Alexander 1920ii: 353). The
quality of deity has not yet arrived--and indeed, may never
arrive--but God exists in the sense that part of his body, the
growing world, does.



A potential problem for Alexander is that God is frequently perceived
as being atemporal. In contrast, on Alexander's system, God is
both spatial and temporal. Alexander recognises that this could be
considered a problem, but argues that in fact it is an advantage. If
God does not "precede" the world, but rather is the
product of it, you can avoid one formulation of the problem of
evil, 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 out
> his providence, but rather we are responsible for our acts. (Alexander
> 1920ii: 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 his
*Philosophical and Literary Pieces* (1939). This paper argues
that theology is a kind of science aiming to account for a
certain kind of experience: one's sense of the divine in the
world (Alexander 1939: 316). Alexander discusses a particular
philosophical problem facing theism, the question of whether
transcendence (i.e., being beyond the material world) and immanence
(i.e., living within the world) can be combined in one being, as is
often claimed of God. Alexander argues he can offer a solution: God
can be understood as being transcendent and immanent if he will emerge
from the world:



> 
> 
> God... is himself in the making, and his divine quality or deity
> a stage in time beyond the human quality. And as the root and leaves
> and sap of the plant feed its flower, so the whole world, as so far
> unrolled in the process of time, flowers into deity...
> God's deity is thus the new quality of the universe which
> emerges in its forward movement in time. (Alexander 1939: 330)
> 
> 
> 



God is transcendent in the sense that he is still in the making, and
immanent 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 in
McCarthy (1948) and Stiernotte (1954). Emergentist
theologies, holding that in *some* sense God will emerge
from the universe, are currently enjoying a revival, and in this
context Clayton (2004) discusses Alexander's system as a rival
to his own.


## 4. Late Writings


### 4.1 History of Philosophy: Spinoza



After the publication of *Space, Time, and Deity*, Alexander
reportedly came across the system of Spinoza for the first time. In a
late series of papers, including *Spinoza and Time*
(1921a) and "Lessons from Spinoza" (1927), Alexander
reconstructs 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 of
these developments, his ontology would ultimately have resembled
Alexander's. Alexander particularly refers to the thesis that
space and time should be combined into the four dimensional manifold
spacetime.



Spinoza's *Ethics* argues there is only one substance, and
this substance is identical with God and nature. The substance has an
infinite number of attributes, including spatial extension, and it
supports an infinity of dependent modes. Alexander argues that his
system is similar to Spinoza's except that he understands the
single substance--Motion--to have only two attributes, space
and time.



> 
> 
> In our gloss upon Spinoza the ultimate reality is full of Time, not
> timeless but essentially alive with Time, and the theatre of incessant
> change. It is only timeless in the sense that taken as a whole it is
> not particularised to any one moment of duration, but comprehends them
> all... Reality is Space-Time or motion itself, infinite or
> self-contained and having nothing outside itself. (Alexander 1921a:
> 39)
> 
> 
> 



Alexander argues his gloss solves problems
in Spinoza's original system. He also praises Spinoza for
successfully combining religious values and naturalism (Alexander
1927: 14). Alexander concludes one of his pieces on this topic by
saying that he takes pride in the similarity between his system and
Spinoza's (Alexander 1921a: 79). Alexander was corresponding at
this time with the Spinoza scholar Harold Joachim.



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


### 4.2 Art and Other Forms of Value



Alexander's writing on art falls into two kinds. First, there
are essays on literature and art. These are all reprinted in
Alexander's (1939), and cover a wide range of
topics: from the art of Jane Austen, to the writings of Pascal,
to the origin of the creative impulse. Second, there are the pieces
comprising Alexander's account of value. Alexander's early
interest in ethics--exemplified in his first monograph
(1889)--survived in his later work as a preoccupation with the
nature of value, albeit with a focus on the aesthetic value of beauty.
Alexander's (1920) contained several chapters on the nature of
value, and he goes on to supplement these with further papers on the
same theme. These include "Naturalism and Value", and
"Value", both reprinted in Alexander's
*Philosophical and Literary Pieces* (1939); and "Morality
as An Art" (1928). These papers culminate in another monograph,
*Beauty and Other Forms of Value*
(1933), Alexander's most important work on the topic. His
writings on value are of greater philosophic interest than those on
literature 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 it
with fine art. He argues that, just as the value of beauty found in
art is a human construction, so are moral values:



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



An objection to this view is that beauty is not constructed; we might
find it in a natural landscape, for example. Alexander replies to this
that landscapes and other natural phenomena are rendered beautiful by
the parts that we pick out, akin to a photographer composing a
picture. As such, the beauty of nature is composed by us (Alexander
1928:149). This entails that there is no difference in kind between
natural 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. For
example, beauty satisfies the impulse of constructiveness in humans.
In "Value", Alexander connects human art to the dam
building of beavers (Alexander 1939: 296). Analogously, morality
satisfies the impulse of gregariousness or sociality in humans.



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



*Beauty and other forms of Value* (1933) expands on this
account. Alexander perceives his naturalistic account of value to be
similar to that offered by Spinoza. In "Naturalism and
Value", Alexander tells us that Spinoza's is the
"true" naturalism: everything is extension, including
value, and yet everything is still divine (Alexander 1939: 279).



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



Alexander argues that anything can have value if it matters to a
thing. In this sense, food is valuable to an animal, and moisture is
valuable to a plant. However, the "supreme"
values--beauty, goodness and truth--can be distinguished
from others because they are the only values that are valuable in
themselves, for their own sake:



> 
> 
> When we come to the highest values, the beautiful, the true and the
> good, these in one respect are like wheat and apples: they are objects
> of a certain constitution--statues and sonatas, landscapes,
> generous deeds, chemistry. Their pre-eminence as values is that they
> have no being apart from their value. That is because they are not
> merely found, like apples, and their value, like the value of apples
> for food, then discovered, but are made to have value, come into
> existence along with their value. (Alexander 1933: 293)
> 
> 
> 



The claim that these values come into existence along with their value
is of course referring to Alexander's thesis, also given in
his *Beauty and other forms of Value* (1933), that the
supreme values are human inventions.



As we saw above, Alexander argues that humans construct values in
response to certain needs or instincts. The final part of *Beauty
and Other Forms of Value* identifies the animal origin of our
supreme values. For example, there is an analogy to be drawn between
the social impulse in humans and in bees. "Naturalism and
Value" explains that in the same way that bees'
instinct for finding honey once seemed to be
"magical" and yet has been explained by biology in
naturalistic terms, similarly values appear to be magical and yet can
be explained naturally (Alexander 1939: 282). He goes on to argue that
Darwin's theory of evolution plays an important role in the
development of value:



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



The idea is that, for animals, things that have value are usually
those that will further the survival of the species, such as food.
Animals whose interests do not help to maintain their existence
succumb under the conditions of their existence, and "leave the
field" for others. In this way, natural selection provides a
history of value. More on this can be found in Alexander's
"Naturalism and Value" (reprinted in Alexander 1939). This
integration of the theory of evolution into Alexander's
aesthetics should come as no surprise to us, being as it is a theme in
Alexander's larger work.



Alexander's writings on art and value were well received in
their day:



> 
> 
> [Alexander's] happy blending of Herbert Spencer's patient
> empiricism with the bolder systematic sweep of Bradley and the giant
> figures of German idealism was nowhere more fruitful than in his
> treatment 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 of
Alexander's last papers. One reason it is valuable is
that it gives a concise overview of Alexander's spacetime
metaphysics in his own words. Another reason it is valuable is
that it tackles an unusual theme: the relationship between history and
nature. Alexander argues that while some of the contributions to
philosophy from science are clear, it is less clear what philosophy
can learn from history (Alexander 1936: 12). Alexander argues that, as
time and motion belong to the most fundamental level of reality, all
that exists is "historical". As such, science begins with
history:



> 
> 
> History can claim to be mistress of science, as much as mathematics,
> though in a different sense. They stand for the two vital elements in
> every science which cannot be separated, if they can be considered
> separately, the constructive process by which we discover by our
> thought the order inherent in things, and the raw material
> itself... It must be remembered, however, of course, that
> historical *science* is but one of the sciences which arise
> from the facts and happenings of the world. (Alexander 1936: 24)
> 
> 
> 



Alexander's characterisation of history as having the whole
world as its subject matter is interesting not least because it proved
so controversial. Both R. G. Collingwood and Hilda Oakeley, two
philosophers of history associated with British idealism, took strong
issue with Alexander's description; see Collingwood's
reprinted *Principles of History* (1938 [1999: 56]) and
Oakeley's "The World as Memory and as History"
(1925-6).



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


## 5. Alexander's Legacy



Alexander's work impacted a wide variety of thinkers, and he was
especially widely read from the 1910s to the 1930s. His work was
used and referenced by the likes of British new realists Bertrand
Russell, 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 tracing
Alexander's influence on other philosophers. For example, his work was
also picked up by John Anderson, who attended Alexander's
1917-1918 Gifford lectures. Lines of thought stemming from
Alexander can be found in Anderson's Australian student, D.M.
Armstrong; and in American philosopher Donald C. Williams. On
Alexander's influence on Anderson and Armstrong, see Gillett
(2006), Fisher (2015), Cole (2018, SS1; SS5.2); and Weblin
(2021). On Williams, see Fisher (2015) and Williams (2021).
Metaphysician Dorothy Emmet's (2021) piece shows her work also
owed a lot to Alexander.



The extent of Alexander's intellectual relationship with
philosopher of history R. G. Collingwood is only recently coming to be
appreciated; see O'Neill (2006), Connelly (2021), and Kobayashi
(2021). Unusually for a realist, Alexander's work was also
picked up by at least two British idealists, May Sinclair and Hilda
Oakeley; see Thomas (2015; 2019).