F. H. Bradley

{{Infobox philosopher

| name = {{nobr|F. H.}} Bradley

| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OM|size=100%}}

| region = Western philosophy

| era = 19th-century philosophy

| image = F.H. Bradley.png

| caption =

| birth_name = Francis Herbert Bradley

| birth_date = {{birth date|1846|1|30|df=yes}}

| birth_place = Clapham, England

| death_date = {{death date and age|1924|9|18|1846|1|30|df=yes}}

| death_place = Oxford, England

| alma_mater = University College, Oxford

| school_tradition = {{hlist | British Idealism | epistemic coherentism[https://www.iep.utm.edu/coherent/ Coherentism in Epistemology (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)]}}

| institutions = Merton College, Oxford

| main_interests = {{hlist | Metaphysics | ethics | philosophy of history | logic}}

| notable_ideas = {{hlist | Bradley's regress | epistemic coherentism}}

}}

Francis Herbert Bradley {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OM}} (30 January 1846{{snd}}18 September 1924) was a British idealist philosopher. His most important work was Appearance and Reality (1893).{{cite book |author=Clark, Ronald W. |title=The Life of Bertrand Russell |publisher=Jonathan Cape and Weidenfeld & Nicolson |location=London |year=1975 |page=45 |isbn=0-297-77018-7 }}

Life

Bradley was born at Clapham, Surrey, England (now part of the Greater London area). He was the child of Charles Bradley, an evangelical Anglican preacher, and Emma Linton, Charles's second wife. A. C. Bradley was his brother. Educated at Cheltenham College and Marlborough College, he read, as a teenager, some of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In 1865, he entered University College, Oxford. In 1870, he was elected to a fellowship at Oxford's Merton College where he remained until his death in 1924.{{cite book|editor1-last=Levens|editor1-first=R.G.C.|title=Merton College Register 1900–1964|date=1964|publisher=Basil Blackwell|location=Oxford|page=1}} 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 Merit. 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-pluralistic approach to philosophy. His outlook saw a monistic unity, transcending divisions between logic, metaphysics and ethics. 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, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's dialectical method.

Philosophy

Bradley rejected the utilitarian and empiricist trends in British philosophy represented by John Locke, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill. Instead, Bradley was a leading member of the philosophical movement known as British idealism, which was strongly influenced by Kant and the German idealists Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, and Hegel, although Bradley tended to downplay his influences.

In 1909, Bradley published an essay entitled "On Truth and Coherence" in the journal Mind (reprinted in Essays on Truth and Reality). The essay criticises a form of infallibilist foundationalism in epistemology. The philosopher Robert Stern has argued that in this paper Bradley defends coherence not as an account of justification but as a criterion or test for truth.{{cite journal | author = Robert Stern | year = 2004 | title = Coherence as a Test for Truth | journal = Philosophy and Phenomenological Research | volume = 69 | issue = 2 | pages = 296–326

| doi = 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00396.x | jstor = 40040722 }}

Bradley also defends a novel theory of facts. For Bradley, facts can justify our beliefs, but no fact justifies any belief to the point where it is immune from revision. "And the view which I advocate takes them [facts] all as in principle fallible… Facts for it [his view] are true, we may say, just so far as they work, just so far as they contribute to the order of experience. … And there is no ‘fact’ which possesses an absolute right."Pg. 210. Bradley, F. H. Essay. “On Truth and Coherence,” in Essays on Truth and Reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Facts of history are, for Bradley, arrived at via an inferential process. "The historical fact then (for us) is a conclusion; … For everything that we say we think we have reasons, our realities are built up of explicit or hidden inferences; in a single word, facts are inferential, and their actuality depends on the correctness of the reasoning which makes them what they are."Pg. 90. The Presuppositions of Critical History by F. H. Bradley, ed. Rubinoff, Lionel. J. M. Dent & Sons (Canada) Limited. 1968.

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.preface, Ethical studies: selected essays, G Herbert Bradley Liberal Arts Press, 1951 He addressed the central question of "Why should I be moral?"Ethical studies: selected essays, G Herbert Bradley Liberal Arts Press, 1951 p6.

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".Ethical studies: selected essays, G Herbert Bradley Liberal Arts Press, 1951, p153 However, he acknowledged that society could not be the source of our moral life, of our quest to realise our ideal self. For example, some societies may need moral reform from within, and this reform is based on standards which must come from elsewhere than the standards of that society.[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bradley/#Ethics Francis Herbert Bradley (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)]

He made the best of this admission in suggesting that the ideal self can be realised through following religion.Ethical studies: selected essays, G Herbert Bradley Liberal Arts Press, 1951, final essay: Selfishness and self-sacrifice

His views of the social self in his moral theorising are relevant to the views of Fichte, George Herbert Mead, and pragmatism. They are also compatible with modern views such as those of Richard Rorty and anti-individualism approaches.Goldberg, Sanford (2007). Anti-individualism: mind and language, knowledge and justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Legacy

Bradley's philosophical reputation declined greatly after his death. The polemical attacks of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell against "Neo-Hegelianism," combined with the rise of anti-German sentiment and cultural morass brought upon by the First World War, resulted in British Idealism falling out of favor in Anglo-American philosophy. 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."

There has in recent years, however, been a resurgence of interest in Bradley's and other idealist philosophers' work in the Anglo-American academic community.{{cite book|last1=Mallinson|first1=Jane|title=T.S. Eliot's interpretation of F.H. Bradley : seven essays|date=2002|publisher=Kluwer Academic Publishers|location=Dordrecht; Boston|isbn=1402009887|pages=1–2}}

In 1914, a then-unknown T. S. Eliot wrote his dissertation for a PhD from the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University on Bradley. It was entitled Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley. Due to tensions leading up to and starting the First World War, Eliot was unable to return to Harvard for his oral defence, resulting in the university never conferring the degree. Nevertheless, Bradley remained an influence on Eliot's poetry.{{cite book|last1=Kenner|first1=Hugh|title=Bradley. From The Invisible Poet|date=1959|publisher=Ivan Obolensky|location=New York}}

Books and publications

The Presuppositions of Critical History (1874), Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968. ([https://books.google.com/books?id=zDdPAQAAMAAJ&q=The+Presuppositions+of+Critical+History+(1876) 1874 edition])
Ethical Studies, (1876), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927, 1988. ([https://books.google.com/books?id=uFuMNgwBKeUC 1876 edition])
The Principles of Logic (1883), London: Oxford University Press, 1922. ([https://archive.org/details/theprinciplesofl01braduoft Volume 1])/([https://archive.org/details/theprinciplesofl02braduoft Volume 2])
Appearance and Reality (1893), London: S. Sonnenschein; New York: Macmillan. ([https://archive.org/details/appearanceandrea00braduoft 1916 edition])
Essays on Truth and Reality, (1914), Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1914 edition)
Aphorisms, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930.
Collected Essays, vols. 1–2, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935.

References

External links

{{cite SEP |url-id=bradley |title=Francis Herbert Bradley |last=Candlish |first=Stewart}}
{{cite SEP |url-id=bradley-moral |title=Bradley’s Moral Philosophy |last=Babushkina |first=Stewart|last2=Crossley|first2=David}}
[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9016119/F-H-Bradley Encyclopædia Britannica]
[https://archive.org/details/ethicalstudiesse00brad Selected essays from Ethical Studies]
[https://archive.org/details/appearanceandrea00braduoft Online text of Appearance and Reality]
[http://www.anthonyflood.com/bradleyxnmorality.htm Francis Herbert Bradley, An Unpublished Note on Christian Morality] on AnthonyFlood.com
[http://website2.net/bradleypage.html Summaries of F.H. Bradley's ethical arguments]
[https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVb_FXQVmlzXhzYYUCdWCfJ50F_6GWWCt&si=Avas2AbwtzAgN3F2 Selected recordings of F.H. Bradley's writings]

Category:1846 births

Category:1924 deaths

Category:19th-century English non-fiction writers

Category:19th-century English philosophers

Category:19th-century English essayists

Category:20th-century English philosophers

Category:20th-century English essayists

Category:Alumni of University College, Oxford

Category:English ethicists

Category:English male essayists

Category:British epistemologists

Category:Fellows of Merton College, Oxford