Born in London, McTaggart was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for his working life. His philosophy took Hegelian or absolute idealism as a starting-point, but developed a unique blend of the belief that reality is ultimately spiritual, belief in the immortality of the soul, and belief in a direct relationship of love between souls, but coupled with denial of the existence of material objects, space, and most famously time. McTaggart’s proof that the a-series is necessary to time, yet itself involves contradiction, is currently his best remembered contribution to metaphysics, and still forms a pivotal issue in the subject. His works include Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (1896) and the two-volume The Nature of Existence (1921–7).