Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
Appearance and Reality, preface (1893)
Eclecticism. Every truth is so true that any truth must be false.
No. 6
The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind.
No. 8
True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.
No. 10
There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.
No. 20
It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.
No. 22
We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.
No. 23
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart’s blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.
No. 25
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.
No. 33
One said of suicide, “As long as one has brains one should not blow them out.” And another answered, “But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.”
No. 48
Francis Herbert Bradley,
OMThe Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
, (30 January 1846 – 18 September 1924) was a British idealist philosopher.
Life
Bradley was born at
ClaphamClapham is a district in south London, England, within the London Borough of Lambeth.Clapham covers the postcodes of SW4 and parts of SW9, SW8 and SW12. Clapham Common is shared with the London Borough of Wandsworth, although Lambeth has responsibility for running the common as a whole. According...
,
SurreySurrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
(now part of the
Greater LondonGreater London is the top-level administrative division of England covering London. It was created in 1965 and spans the City of London, including Middle Temple and Inner Temple, and the 32 London boroughs. This territory is coterminate with the London Government Office Region and the London...
area). He was the child of Charles Bradley, an
evangelicalEvangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
preacher, and Emma Linton, Charles's second wife. A. C. Bradley was his brother. Educated at
Cheltenham CollegeCheltenham College is a co-educational independent school, located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.One of the public schools of the Victorian period, it was opened in July 1841. An Anglican foundation, it is known for its classical, military and sporting traditions.The 1893 book Great...
and
Marlborough CollegeMarlborough College is a British co-educational independent school for day and boarding pupils, located in Marlborough, Wiltshire.Founded in 1843 for the education of the sons of Church of England clergy, the school now accepts both boys and girls of all beliefs. Currently there are just over 800...
, he read, as a teen, some of
KantKANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
's
Critique of Pure ReasonThe Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement...
. In 1865 he entered the
University College.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...
, Oxford. In 1870, he was elected to a fellowship at Oxford's
Merton CollegeMerton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...
where he remained until his death in 1924. Bradley is buried in Holywell Cemetery in Oxford.
During his life, Bradley was a respected philosopher and was granted honorary degrees many times. He was the first British philosopher to be awarded the
Order of MeritThe Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
. His fellowship at Merton College did not carry any teaching assignments and thus he was free to continue to write. He was famous for his non-
pluralisticEpistemological pluralism is the view that different epistemological methodologies are necessary to attain a full description of the world. It arose in opposition to the purely reductionistic enterprise of many fields of science and realism in mathematics.According to David Fideler, Goethe was an...
approach to
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. His outlook saw a
monisticMonism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
unity, transcending divisions between
logicIn philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
,
metaphysicsMetaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
and
ethicsEthics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
. Consistently, his own view combined monism with absolute idealism. Although Bradley did not think of himself as a Hegelian philosopher, his own unique brand of philosophy was inspired by, and contained elements of, Hegel's dialectical method.
However, Bradley's philosophical reputation declined greatly after his death. British idealism was practically eliminated by G.E. Moore and
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
in the early 1900s. Bradley was also famously criticised in A. J. Ayer's logical positivist work,
Language, Truth and Logic, for making statements that do not meet the requirements of positivist verification principle, e.g. statements such as "The Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress."
In recent years, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in Bradley's and other idealist philosophers' work in the Anglo-American academic community.
Philosophy
Bradley rejected the
utilitarianUtilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
and
empiricistEmpiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
trends in English philosophy represented by
John LockeJohn Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
,
David HumeDavid Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
, and
John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
. Instead, Bradley was a leading member of the
philosophical movementA philosophical movement is either the appearance or increased popularity of a specific school of philosophy, or a fairly broad but identifiable sea-change in philosophical thought on a particular subject...
known as
British idealismA species of absolute idealism, British idealism was a philosophical movement that was influential in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The leading figures in the movement were T.H. Green , F. H. Bradley , and Bernard Bosanquet . They were succeeded by the...
, which was strongly influenced by
Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
and the
German idealistsGerman idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
,
Johann FichteJohann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
, Friedrich Schelling, and
G.W.F. HegelGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, although Bradley tended to downplay his influences. Bradley's ideas are sometimes compared to those of the Indian philosopher
Adi ShankaraAdi Shankara Adi Shankara Adi Shankara (IAST: pronounced , (Sanskrit: , ) (788 CE - 820 CE), also known as ' and ' was an Indian philosopher from Kalady of present day Kerala who consolidated the doctrine of advaita vedānta...
.
One characteristic of Bradley's philosophical approach is his technique of distinguishing ambiguity within language, especially within individual words. This technique might be seen as anticipatory of later advances in the
philosophy of languagePhilosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...
.
Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F.H. Bradley was the subject of T.S. Eliot's 1916
PhDPHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
dissertation, although he failed to take the
viva voceViva voce is a Latin phrase literally meaning "with living voice," but most often translated as "by word of mouth."It may also refer to:*Italian for "live voice."*Voice vote in a deliberative assembly...
.
Moral philosophy
Bradley's view of morality was driven by his criticism of the idea of self used in the current utilitarian theories of ethics.He addressed the central question of 'Why should I be moral?'
He opposed individualism, instead defending the view of self and morality as essentially social. Bradley held that our moral duty was founded on the need to cultivate our ideal 'good self' in opposition to our 'bad self'. However, he acknowledged that society could not be the source of our moral life, of our quest to realise our ideal self. Some societies for example may need moral reform from within, and this reform is based on standards which must come from elsewhere than the standards of that society.
He made the best of this admission in suggesting that the ideal self can be realised through following religion.
HIs views of the social self in his moral theorising are relevant to the views of
Johann Gottlieb FichteJohann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
,
George Herbert MeadGeorge Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of social psychology and the American sociological tradition in general.-...
, and
PragmatismPragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
. They are also compatible with modern views such as those of Rorty and
Anti-individualismAnti-individualism is an approach in various areas of thinking and philosophy. These areas have in common the view that what seems to be internal to the individual is to some degree dependent on the social environment...
approaches.
Books and publications
- Appearance and Reality, London : S. Sonnenschein ; New York : Macmillan , 1893. (1916 edition)
- Essays on Truth and Reality, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914.
- The Principles of Logic, London:Oxford University Press, 1922. (Volume 1)/(Volume 2)
- Ethical Studies, 1876, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927, 1988.
- Collected Essays, vols. 1-2, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935.
- The Presuppositions Of Critical History, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968.
External links