Howison, George Holmes
Howison, George Holmes
(1834-1916) A teacher at the University of California. He regarded the tendency of monistic thinking as the most vicious in contemporary philosophy. Opposed absolute idealism or cosmic theism for its thoroughgoing monism because of its destruction of the implications of experience, its reduction to solipsism and its resolution into pantheism. His “personalistic idealism”, unlike absolute idealism, did not negate the uniqueness and the moral nature of finite selves. Moreover, a priori consciousness is a human, not a divine original consciousness within the individuil mind. — H.H.