McTaggart, John M. E. (1866–1925)

John M. E. McTaggart, a British Hegelian philosopher and one of the most independent minds of his generation, produced, among other things, a logical and coherent argument for the essential unreality of time. He was the son of Francis and Caroline Ellis; the surname McTaggart was added by his father in order to fulfill a condition for an inheritance. The now prosperous family sent young McTaggart to the prestigious Clifton School and Trinity College, Cambridge. While visiting his widowed mother in New Zealand in 1892, he met Margaret Elizabeth Bird. The two married during his next visit to New Zealand, in 1899. His entire academic career, between 1897 and 1923, was at Cambridge, where he developed his brilliant, though idiosyncratic, blend of quasi-Hegelian idealism and atheism.

A genial man, McTaggart was a longtime friend of G. E. Moore (1873–1958), despite the latter's role as the most influential critic of British Hegelianism. And along with Moore and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), McTaggart was a member of the irreverent Cambridge club known as the Apostles. But his friendship with Russell came to an end during the First World War, when McTaggart led a campaign to have Russell thrown out of Cambridge University for his vocal opposition to conscription. McTaggart died suddenly and unexpectedly in January 1925.

One of the many paradoxes of McTaggart's life is that he produced no disciples and yet generated some of the most exhaustive commentary of any British philosopher of his generation. His importance among philosophers was given graphic illustration in C. D. Broad's massive three-volume Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (1933, 1938), which remains one of the most comprehensive expositions of a 20th-century philosopher's body of work. Broad succeeded McTaggart at Trinity College. McTaggart's views on time were defended as recently as 1960 by the British antirealist philosopher Michael Dummett. McTaggart was a philosopher's philosopher, and he devoted little time toward engaging the interest of nonspe-cialists. But among professional philosophers he is best remembered for his work in logic, which remains influential to this day. An important example of McTaggart's logical power is his theory of the unreality of time.