F.H. Bradley

Along with utilitarianism, British idealism was the most important philosophical and practical movement in Britain and its Empire during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Even though the British idealists have regained some of their standing in the history of philosophy, their own historical theories still fail to receive the deserved scholarly attention. This article helps to fill that major gap in the literature. Understanding historiography as concerning the appropriate modes of enquiring into the recorded past, this article analyses the key historiographical commitments that underpin the writings of the early T.H. Green (section two), Edward Caird (section three), and F.H. Bradley (sections four and five). Section six explores the influence of Bradley’s historiography. These approaches are linked by the belief that all thought can be properly understood only by critical historians who possess the appropriate tools with which to distinguish permanently valid truths from the transient imperfections with which those truths are mixed. A crucial division between them is the invocation of a neo-Hegelian Geist by the early Green and Caird, and Bradley’s reliance on a progressive human nature. Moreover, the article establishes that R.G. Collingwood’s highly influential theories of ‘absolute presuppositions’ and ‘re-enactment’ were taken largely from Bradley’s historiography.

This paper looks at the manner in which Eliot finds an expression of his philosophical precepts, an embodiment of the philosophic theory of point-of-view, in the practice of poetic allusion exemplified by Dante. To begin, this examination will consider Eliot's philosophy of the point-of-view as expressed his dissertation and graduate essays. Then, we will move to consider how Eliot found the expression of these precepts in Dante’s poetry—particularly in the craft tactics, he employs to construct the allusions in The Devine Comedy. Next, we will consider, as a case study, the specific example of the Ulysses episode in “Canto 26,” for it’s use of the point-of-view to structure its allusive content. Finally, we will touch on how Eliot identified this method, relates it to his philosophic studies and incorporates it as a poetic craft practice in his early poetry.

In 1883, F.H. Bradley published an impressive two-volume treatise The Principles of Logic which dominated logical thinking in the English speaking world for a great number of years, but which has now vanished, almost without a trace. There were good reasons why the theory disappeared so rapidly. One reason was that Bradley used his logical theory as a platform from which to develop a metaphysical doctrine that philosophers increasingly found unpalatable. This is the uncompromising monism according to which only reality as a whole can be completely real, with everything else reduced to the rank of mere appearance. The rejection of Absolute Monism would not, however, be in itself sufficient cause to abandon Bradley's initial analysis of thought, if in other respects it seemed attractive. After all, it might well be the case that Bradley reaches a metaphysical conclusion that is unacceptable, not because there is anything wrong with his point of departure, but because he has taken a wrong path in the middle of his argument. The central reason for the collapse of the Bradley logical system, however, was the appearance at the beginning of the twentieth century of the formidable logic of Principia Mathematica, which quickly pushed aside the traditional Aristotelian logic. One may get the impression that Bradley was also a supporter

"This paper addresses a number of closely related questions concerning
Kant’s model of intentionality, and his conceptions of unity and of magnitude
[Grösse]. These questions are important because they shed light on three issues
which are central to the Critical system, and which connect directly to the recent
analytic literature on perception: the issues are conceptualism, the status of
the imagination, and perceptual atomism. In Section 1, I provide a sketch of the
exegetical and philosophical problems raised by Kant’s views on these issues. I
then develop, in Section 2, a detailed analysis of Kant’s theory of perception as
elaborated in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment; I show
how this analysis provides a preliminary framework for resolving the difficulties
raised in Section 1. In Section 3, I extend my analysis of Kant’s position by
considering a specific test case: the Axioms of Intuition. I contend that one way
to make sense of Kant’s argument is by juxtaposing it with Russell’s response
to Bradley’s regress; I focus in particular on the concept of ‘unity’. Finally, I offer,
in Section 4, a philosophical assessment of the position attributed to Kant in
Sections 2 and 3. I argue that, while Kant’s account has significant strengths, a
number of key areas remain underdeveloped; I suggest that the phenomenological
tradition may be read as attempting to fill precisely those gaps."

In this thesis I defend F.H. Bradley's monistic idealism from William James' criticisms of it while offering a Bradleyan critique of James' radical empiricism in turn. My conclusion is that James' misunderstood Bradley's methodology and that, as a result, his critique did not effect the validity of Bradley's argument. I counter James' criticisms by arguing that James' radical empiricist metaphysics can be subsumed within a stage of Bradley's account of reality.

There is stock argument against libertarianism: that the indeterminism it postulates makes human choice a matter of chance and this is no better as a basis for practical rationality and moral responsibility than the most rigid determinism.  I suggest that a similar problem arises on deterministic assumptions: although human choice is no longer a matter of mere chance, it remains arbitrary since whatever explains a person’s choice to act on the reasons for an action rather than those against, it is not a matter of reasons that were reasons FOR THAT PERSON.  The explanatory gap is closed in the wrong way for the impression of sheer arbitrariness to be cancelled.  I discuss (via a digression on F. H. Bradley) whether Davidson’s ‘anomalous monism’ would, if correct, necessitate any modification to this conclusion.  I also ask how the problem addressed in this paper relates to Galen Strawson’s rejection of the possibility of complete autonomy or self-determination.

I argue that, according to F. H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies, duties of our station (positional duties) are not morally obligatory unless they are required from an ideal point of view. I support my interpretation by showing that Bradley places the ideal point of view higher than the social and requires that what society demands from us is evaluated from that higher point of view. My argument relies on a detailed analysis of “my station and its duties”. The phrase must be understood as a category that (1) refers to different concepts throughout Ethical Studies (i.e. a theory that Bradley rejects, a revised thesis that he accepts, and positional duties), and (2) embraces several theses (descriptive, normative, and ideal), each involving a number of claims, only a few of which Bradley accepts. I argue that Bradley rejects the normative thesis of MSID theory that identifies moral obligation with social requirements because he finds bottom-up idealization (what ought to be must conform to what is) unsatisfactory. Bradley’s inclusion of “my station and its duties” in the moral ideal must be understood as amounting to the claim that a positional duty is morally obligatory only when it is justified by the norms governing pre-institutionalised relationships.

A small number of scholars have noted T. S. Eliot's anticipation of the hermeneutical theory later articulated by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. Eliot similarly concerns himself with the epistemological assumptions of positivism in the human sciences and the implications of objectivizing texts and other cultural phenomena by adopting the attitude of the scientific observer. For both thinkers, this represents an approach to social life which either distorts or altogether misses the truth claims of those whose ideas are to be interpreted. Furthermore, Eliot develops a theory of understanding that is similar to the historicizing of interpretation that one finds later in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. However, among those who have observed these affinities, a key difference has been neglected. In his effort to confront such secularizing forces in the human sciences, Eliot comes to embrace an intellectualist philosophy of history, which relies on a tenuous dualism between the metaphysical and the physical, while Gadamer's philosophy of history collapses the dichotomy between the world of ideas and the existential realm. Thus, Eliot ultimately identifies what transcends history exclusively with the realm of the spirit. This essay argues that as the mature Eliot struggled with the empirically reductive tendencies of the human sciences and aimed to save religious truth from their deterministic assaults, he increasingly retreated to an intellectualism that misconceived the ultimate basis of religious truth. Consequently, the existing literature neglects the intellectualism that defines Eliot's understanding of truth within history and the more concrete understanding of that encounter that one finds in Gadamer's thinking.

The goal of this paper is to reconstruct and interpret F. H. Bradley’s account of desire. I argue that Bradley rejects the standard theory that treats desire as a disposition to action and understands desire as identification of the self with an object. I suggest that, for Bradley, desires are essentially realizers of personal projects. In my view, Bradley’s account of desire comes closest to the narrative account. The paper explores the distinctions between desire, conation, wish, and need. The full paper can be found at the website of Homo Oeconomicus: http://www.homooeconomicus.org/index.php?action=past_issues&PHPSESSID=b3a00bf39ff22baabc46c76f2dfb43cb

Although F.H. Bradley’s influence on T.S. Eliot’s criticism has been well documented, the influence of Bradley’s dialectics on Eliot’s poetry remains relatively unexplored. This paper offers a reading of Four Quartets designed to draw out narrative techniques by which Eliot’s poetry incorporates Bradley’s dialectical thought. It argues that Four Quartets presents three perspectives of value—which it labels “disenchanted,” “aesthetic,” and “religious”—in conflict with each other. Insofar as Four Quartets emphasizes the contradictory views of these perspectives on experiences of time, death, and nature, it places the assumptions of each view in a comparatively demystified and critical context. The poem’s dialectical accomplishment, and its debt to Bradley, depends on facilitating this objective placement of perspectives even as it refuses to vacate the subjective values by which their unity is constructed.

It has been widely recognized that Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblance solved the problem of universals. This theory may be considered in two ways, however. (1) Family resemblance may be understood in a manner of abstract universals theory. Most commentators accept this interpretation. Though in this case, I would argue, Wittgenstein's contribution to the problem of universals seems to be overestimated. (2) Wittgenstein's theory may also be considered, following one of contemporary Polish philosophers J. Szymura, as a view connected with the Hegelian theory of concrete universals. The article is devoted to put forward some arguments for this interpretation. Firstly, it is coherent with all Wittgenstein's theses on family resemblance and states that there is literally nothing common in things. Secondly, it fits to Wittgenstein's language (terms such as "family", "Ähnlichkeit" and so on). Thirdly, there are some biographical pieces of evidence that Wittgenstein was inspired by Goethe's concept of "Urpflanze", which is very close to concrete universal.

There is one truth (one phenomenon or property of being true), but many truths (many true propositions, beliefs, theories, etc.). To show this requires answering arguments purportedly showing  (1a) that there is no truth or (1b) that there is more than one truth; and (2a) that there are no truths or (2b) there is only one.

If you are interested in this paper, you may also want to look at Haack, "The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth" (2008).

Different interpretations of Bradley’s regress argument are considered. On the basis of textual evidences, it is argued that the most persuasive is the one that sees the argument as primarily addressing the general issue of unity or connectedness.