Bradley and the Structure of Knowledge

By Phillip Ferreira

Book Overview

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.

This book examines some of the central logical and epistemological doctrines of British idealist philosopher, F. H. Bradley. Through a detailed analysis of Bradley's doctrine of judgment and its relation to "feeling," Phillip Ferreira views as mistaken recent efforts to see Bradley as a writer in the tradition of anglo-empiricism. And, though the significance of Bradley's thought remains great, Ferreira contends that it stands at a considerable distance from mainstream philosophical analysis. Arguing against those who see Bradley as either a skeptic or a mystic, Bradley and the Structure of Knowledge places the thought of the nineteenth century Oxford philosopher where it was originally understood to belong-firmly in the tradition of rationalistic idealism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791441423
• ISBN13: 9780791441428
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 309 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A fine entry into Bradley's thought

Phillip Ferreira has here made a tremendous contribution to what seems to be a developing renaissance in Bradley studies (and Idealist studies generally). Concerned to subvert recent misunderstandings of Bradley's thought that would assimilate him to the tradition of British empiricism, Ferreira provides a detailed and highly readable exposition of Bradley's doctrines of truth, judgment, and "feeling" that restores him to his proper place in the tradition of rationalism and Idealism. This volume is an excellent introduction to Bradley's thought in general, the more so because Bradley's own writings are so difficult to find. (James Allard and Guy Stock have helpfully collected some of his central texts in _F.H. Bradley: Writings on Logic and Metaphysics_, which makes a nice companion to the present volume.) In it, Ferreira carefully examines and elaborates Bradley's understanding of _judgment_, which Ferreira describes as "_the_ basic act of cognition by which we knowingly encounter reality." The discussion turns to the relation between judgment and truth, the relation between contradition and thought, the specially Bradleian understanding of "coherence," and (very importantly) the relation between feeling and knowledge (which occupies two chapters). A closing chapter considers criticisms of Bradley levelled by Russell and James; a short conclusion argues briefly both that Bradley does not fit easily into more recent philosophical categories, and that Bradley's philosophy might provide a needed corrective to more recent views that we either have no access to the real or that such access provides no insight into universal _value_. An appendix delivers what seems to be a deathblow to recent views of Bradley as an Anglo-empiricist by considering his relations to what he regarded as the essentially empiricist view of inference: associationism. For Bradley, says Ferreira, "the truth is the whole." It would perhaps not be unfair to regard this volume as an attempt to spell out in some detail what this doctrine meant to Bradley and to suggest that its meaning should be important to us today as well. For those who, like me, have strong misgivings about the "analytic turn" in philosophy, this fine exposition of Bradley's thought will be most welcome. And for those who, also like me, regard Brand Blanshard as the finest of twentieth-century philosophers, this volume will be of interest as regards the Idealist tradition that was the strongest influence on that giant of rationalism.