As regular readers of The Pluralist are aware, there appeared in 2008 an issue devoted to Jan Olof Bengtsson's The Worldview of Personalism.1 The issue included five articles, each concerned with a different aspect of the book; and after each article, there was a "Reply" by Bengtsson. In what follows, I shall say something about Bengtsson's reply to my own contribution, "Absolute and Personal Idealism." However, first let me briefly describe that article's argument.In "Absolute and Personal Idealism," I examined the (...) personalist attack on absolutism as formulated by Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison in two works: Hegelianism and Personality and The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy. In the first section of .. (shrink)

At more than five-hundred pages, this volume — the first in a set of five — is neither a short nor an easy read. Most will, I suspect, treat the book as a reference work, consulting only those sections relevant to their study. But its materials are sometimes demanding; and in several chapters readers will encounter considerable interpretive difficulties. I shall have more to say about these difficulties further down. First, though, a few comments on the book’s contents.

Arguing against those who situate F.H. Bradley as a skeptic, mystic, or empiricist, this book makes a case for understanding his thought firmly in the tradition of rationalistic idealism.

F.H. Bradley has been characterized by many commentators as something of a sceptic. And the reason why Bradley is often cast in this light is, I believe, largely a result of his theory of relations. As even the casual student is aware, the relational nature of all judgment leads, on Bradley’s analysis, to an infinite and, many have claimed, “vicious” regress. And when we add to this Bradley’s claim that all assertion is, at some level, “contradictory”, there seems to be (...) good reason for the sceptical moniker. What I would like to suggest in this paper, though, is that Bradley’s “scepticism” is not what it seems. Hence in what follows I shall argue that Bradley’s views on contradiction and contrariety are actually important aspects of his larger theory of knowledge; and, as such, they should be understood — not as doctrines whose intent is the condemnation of our ordinary inferences — but, rather, as a crucial component in the defense of such practices. What I hope to show, then, is that, far from being an endorsement of radical scepticism, Bradley’s theory of contradiction and contrariety is an effort to preserve the continuity between one judgment and another — a continuity that he sees as necessary to any coherent account of inference. But first some preliminaries. (shrink)

Despite renewed interest in T.H. Green’s social and political theory, little attention has as yet been given to his metaphysics and epistemology — even more neglected, though, are his views on logical matters. It is unclear why this is. I suspect that the obscurity of his discussion has much to do with it. Green routinely refers to writers in whom there is little interest today; and a good deal of effort is required to penetrate his technical vocabulary. Still, I believe (...) we miss something important when we ignore his specifically logical writings. Green has much to say about classical syllogism and its influence on his contemporaries. And, while the discussion is always grounded in his own idealist theory of knowledge, Green’s analysis often reveals surprising aspects of the problem being considered. In what follows, then, I shall consider one such analysis: his account of the logical/epistemological doctrine of Sir William Hamilton and H.L. Mansel — individuals whose writings, in Green’s eyes, made apparent all that was wrong with the “formal logic” of the day. (shrink)

In this paper I would like to examine what I believe is an often misunderstood aspect of F.H. Bradley’s philosophy. Specifically, I want to consider Bradley’s views on the relation between perception and what he calls the “feeling base” of experience. Although Bradley’s doctrine of feeling is generally recognized as one of the most distinctive aspects of his thought, his theory of perception is, I believe, also unusual in that it views our perceptual experience as permeated by conceptual identities. As (...) we shall see, Bradley understands perception as essentially ideal. And when he uses this term to describe the contents of our ordinary perceptual awareness, Bradley wants to convey to us his belief that there is something about perception which bears the mark of thought. “Ideal” and “ideality” — terms which signal the presence of thought — are also used by Bradley to indicate that an experience is at least partially abstract and general. Thus when he calls perception ideal he is claiming — contrary to the received view — that perception does not present us with objects that are wholly determinate and particular. (shrink)

In this thesis I focus on F. H. Bradley's theory of judgment and his doctrine of predication. My goal is to present an account of Bradley's views which pays special attention to his belief that all logical predication must necessarily fail to accomplish what it sets out to do. All assertion , we are told, attempts to state truth, whole and complete; but, in the end, it must fall short. All judgment, Bradley claims, must contain an element of untruth or (...) falsity. And the outcome of this theory of predication is a doctrine of "degrees of truth". No truth is understood as entirely true or entirely false; rather, each has a position in a hierarchy of truths with some being truer than others when measured against the theoretical criterion of absolute knowledge. ;But, this is not to be understood as a sceptical doctrine. I argue that Bradley's doctrine of predicative failure should be seen as the only means by which radical scepticism in the theory of knowledge can be avoided. If we were capable of possessing truths which are whole and complete unto themselves then there would exist no legitimate basis upon which the inferential development of thought could expand beyond a self-enclosed circle. ;In this essay I also examine a persisting historical problem. It is my claim that Bradley's theory should be understood as a continuation of and development within the British neo-Kantian tradition. Bradley's association with this tradition has sometimes been questioned based on scattered statements found in the 1883 edition of the Principles of Logic. Collectively these statements have been referred to as the doctrine of "floating ideas". However, I maintain that the doctrine of floating ideas must be distinguished from the theory of predicative failure . I argue that the two theories should in no way be identified and that certain misinterpretations of Bradley's position have resulted from confusing these two incompatible views. (shrink)

Remembered today primarily for his commentaries on Plato, R.L. Nettleship was a fellow and tutor of Balliol College, Oxford, from 1869 to 1892. And, while he was one of the past century’s better known interpreters of Plato, Nettleship’s influence extends well beyond the study of Greek philosophy. Although his life was cut short in its prime and saw the publication of no major works expressive of his own views, it is to Nettleship that we owe the existence of T.H. Green’s (...) collected Works and the book-length “Memoir” that introduces these volumes. And, despite its being ignored by later writers, Nettleship’s “Lectures on Logic” remains one of the most accessible accounts of the idealist theory of knowledge that came to dominate late nineteenth century British philosophy. (shrink)

Phillip Ferreira - Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T.H. Green - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 369-370 David O. Brink. Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pp. xiv + 139. Cloth, $27.50. The British idealists have not fared well during the past century. Still, there has been in recent years a renewed interest in the movement's (...) principal figures: F. H. Bradley and T. H. Green. And, while Bradley's polemical style has found a wider audience, Green's work—especially his Principles of Political Obligation—appears to have had the steadier following. Lesser known than Green's political writing, though, is his longer and more difficult Prolegomena to Ethics. And David O. .. (shrink)

While students of idealism will be pleased to see another important text back in print, the Cambridge Scholars Press reissue of F.H. Bradley’s Principles of Logic will, I suspect, find only a limited audience. Although the book is nicely bound and printed on what appears to be a high quality acid-free paper, CSP — surely for reasons of economy — has chosen to compress the text’s original five hundred thirty-four pages to three-hundred fourteen, entirely changing the pagination. What has also (...) changed in the CSP edition are the page headers. Sometimes the CSP edition provides a fuller account of the chapter contents than the original; often, though, the new headers tell us less. (shrink)