Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Nature of Existence
McTaggart's 1921-27 magnum opus — systematic idealist metaphysics including the Unreality of Time argument
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Nature of Existence (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Total |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Disembodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Reversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Nature of Existence
1921 (Vol. I); 1927 (Vol. II, posthumous). McTaggart died in January 1925 at age 58; his unfinished work was completed and published by Broad.
Space
The Nature of Existence
Trinity College, Cambridge — McTaggart's institutional base from 1885 until his 1925 death.
Matter
The Nature of Existence
Two-volume systematic metaphysical treatise (~600 pages total). Form is rigorously systematic-deductive: numbered sections, propositions, derivations.
Observer
The Nature of Existence
Late McTaggart. The observer is the philosophical metaphysician working in the last sustained generation of the British idealist tradition (alongside Bradley, Bosanquet, and Royce).
Energy
The Nature of Existence
Late-systematic energies. The book is the culmination of forty years of British-idealist metaphysical work, executed with a rigor that no other British-idealist had attempted.
Information
The Nature of Existence
Two-volume magnum opus. The volume II Unreality-of-Time argument has been the single most-discussed McTaggart passage in twentieth-century analytic philosophy.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
McTaggart's magnum opus — the most concentrated late-British-idealist metaphysical synthesis and the source of the canonical Unreality of Time argument. The A-theory/B-theory distinction (McTaggart's framework) shaped twentieth-century philosophy of time; the personal-idealist conclusions did not survive analytic philosophy's anti-idealist turn (Moore, Russell), but the time-argument has been continuously productive.