Edward Caird

Born Mar. 22, 1835, in Greenock; died Nov. 1, 1908, in Oxford. Scottish neo-Hegelian philosopher.

From 1866 to 1893, Caird was a professor at Glasgow and Oxford. He is known chiefly for his work in the history of philosophy. In his Critical Philosophy of Kant (2 vols. 1889), one of the most important English studies on Kant, Caird interpreted Hegel’s philosophy as the realization of Kant’s “critical idealism.” He held the basic principle of Hegel’s dialectics to be “identity in diversity.” Affirming the idea of evolution, Caird sought to apply it to the history of religion. He regarded Christianity as Absolute Religion, the highest achievement in the historical development of religion, and considered Hegel’s philosophy to be a “theoretical form” of Christianity.