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1 the Stereotypical Picture of the Russell/Bradley Dispute Notes 1 The Stereotypical Picture of the Russell/Bradley Dispute 1 The Order of Merit is restricted to 24 members at anyone time, plus addi­ tional non-UK recipients. At the time of writing there have only been 168 ordinary members of the Order (honorary appointments of figures outside the Commonwealth are additional). 2 Bradley's College Fellowship, obtained in December 1870 and terminable only on marriage or death, had no teaching duties attached. In June 1871 he suffered a severe inflammation of the kidneys which appears to have had permanent effects. It has been suggested, possibly with malice, that the Bradleys in general were disposed to hypochondria; be that as it may, he was prone thereafter to be incapacitated by cold, physical exhaustion or anxiety; hence his retired life. He took an active part in the running of his college, but avoided public occasions. Collingwood records of Bradley in his Autobiography, '[AJlthough I lived within a few hundred yards of him for sixteen years, I never to my knowledge set eyes on him.' But although the history of Bradley's public life is largely that of his books and articles, it is clear that his was not a narrowly bookish existence. To protect his health, he frequently escaped the damp chill of Oxford winters for the kinder weather of southern English and Mediterranean seaside resorts, where company perhaps more congenial than that of an all-male Oxford common room was available. 3 See, for instance, Hylton (1990), p. 1 and the title of Candlish (1998). 4 Recently there have appeared two collections of essays devoted to the philo­ sophy of F.H. Bradley and largely sympathetic in their treatment of it (Bradley J., ed., 1996; Mander, ed., 1996). It is striking that philosophers at Canadian universities supplied nearly all the material for the first of these volumes. Admittedly it arose from a conference held in Canada. But they also supplied nearly half of that for the second. And this arose from one held in England, at which the Canadian contingent was the largest national group. My conjec­ ture is that this persistence of interest is probably traceable to a much earlier filling of Canadian university positions by Scottish migrants; whatever the explanation, the phenomenon is as much social as philosophical. 5 The application of these terms, especially 'realism', has varied over the years. Some philosophers, for example, think that there can be realist idealists and that the proper contrast with idealism is materialism. I stick here with the idealist/realist contrast as that is in keeping with my epigraph. As that epi­ graph shows, it has certainly been standard at times to think this way. For illustration, see Russell (1924), CP9 p. 170; LK p. 333; also quoted in Chapter 6, p. 144, and Paton (1956), pp. 341, 347. 6 Some hint of why this change should have come about can be gained from Stroud 1979. 189 190 Notes to pp. 8-22 7 For examples of this phenomenon in (once) widely used textbooks, see Warnock (1958), pp. 2-3; Ayer (1971), p. 25. To point this out is not to deny that more judicious historians have generally treated this matter with greater delicacy (for example, Passmore 1957, p. 59). 8 There is a well-informed and sensitive discussion in chapter 8 of Mander (1994). 9 Some philosophers say that Russell had a great deal of respect for Bradley. This may be true. Certainly in their private correspondence he is polite, even deferential. However, his published remarks are, as we shall see, often very different in tone. 10 Text books and contributions to standard works of reference which fit this description include the following: Bonjour (1995); Dancy (1985), p. 110; Haack (1978), p. 86; Hamlyn (1970), p. 123; Kirkham (1998); O'Connor and Carr (1982), p. 166 (Bradley is here identified only by implication); Richards (1978), p. 139; Sprigge (1995); White (1967), p. 132; Woozley (1949), pp. 125 and 150. It would be very easy to add to this list. 11 For example: Blackburn (1984a), p. 235, and (1984b), pp. 155-6; Candlish (1981), p. 252, n. 6; Candlish (1984), p. 254; Candlish (1986), p. 245; Manser (1983), p. 133; Passmore (1957), p. 116; Walker (1985), p. 2; White (1971), p. 109; Wollheim (1959), p. 171; Wollheim (1969), p. 167. 12 For example, Acton (1967), p. 362; Wollheim (1959), p. 74 (1969), p. 7l. In Wollheim's case what Russell calls an 'unintentional' confusion is pre­ sented as a deliberate though inexplicit Bradleian commitment. 13 Allard (2005). More general recent accounts of Bradley, both of them clear and well informed, are Mander (1994) and Basile (1999). 14 A good, though somewhat unwieldy, example of the genre is Sprigge (1993). It is not surprising that the dual focus is rare, for it is likely to con­ front this intractable problem: Nothing short of a cogent account of how it is possible to confront the philosophical past philosophically as well as historically will give us what we need. But such an account will have to explain how one large-scale philosophical standpoint can engage with another in cases where each standpoint embodies its own conceptions of what rational superiority consists of in such a way that there can apparently be no appeal to any neutral and independent standard. (MacIntyre 1984, p. 40) 15 MacIntyre, lac. cit. 2 Finding a Way into Bradley's Metaphysics A similar view is expressed by Locke (1706), Book IV, Chapter XIV, §4, and, with names substituted for ideas, by J.S. Mill (1843), Chapter I §2. 2 Even Hume, who explicitly denied that judgments had to involve more than one idea (1739, Book I, Part III, §VII, fn. 1), conceived ideas in this way. It was essential to the account of reasoning in terms of the association of ideas, an account which Bradley vigorously rejected. Notes to pp. 24-8 191 3 For examples of each, see Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics, and Reinhardt Grossmann, Meinong (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974). A good con­ trast with Leibniz in this respect is Berkeley. 4 For example, even serious scholars (see, for instance, Manser and Stock 1984, p. 26) have thought that Bradley was referring to Leibniz on page 25 of Appearance and Reality when, in criticizing atomism, he mentioned 'the most thorough attempt to build a system on this ground' without appar­ ently thinking it necessary to identify this attempt more explicitly. The name of Leibniz comes naturally to a modern reader in this context but, as Bradley (1897), p. 539 makes clear, he was thinking of Herbart, who is now remembered, if at all, as an educationist. The error is corrected in the 1986 reprint of Manser and Stock (though not in the index). Perhaps it is indirect evidence of how Russellian the modern reader is that Russell himself made the same mistake: see Russell (1900), p. 15 n. 1. 5 I cherish a quotation from a New Statesman review printed inside the dust cover of my copy of Our Knowledge of the External World: 'This brilliant, lucid and amusing book which ... everyone can understand.' 6 In this chapter, whenever a citation date appears without an author's name attached, the name is to be understood as Bradley. 7 Nor is it, pace Wollheim (1959), p. 282 (1969), p. 277, feeling especially pleased about things. 8 Even this will not do ultimately, but 'ultimately' is the point at which his metaphysics reaches complete inexpressibility. Cf. (1883), PL p. 487, and below (p. 42tJ. Bradley came to be dissatisfied with the original 1883 text of this work, which even he described in correspondence as 'badly arranged & unnecessarily difficult', as is illustrated by the combination of the Additional Notes and Terminal Essays in the second edition. On this matter, see the excellent Keene (1999). I have tried not to rely on examples concerning which he changed his mind, unless I am drawing attention to this fact. 9 Contentious not merely in the sense that others readily dispute them, but also in the sense that what they are is itself a matter of dispute, as we shall see. 10 One may think here that in view of Bradley's attribution of the method of ideal experiment to Hegel, one should look to Hegel himself for explana­ tion. But to find such an explanation in Hegel turns out to be even more difficult than finding one in Bradley. The interpretation offered below is corroborated in an entry in the Bradley papers in Merton College Library (Bradley Papers, III B 2, p. 115). 11 The point is complicated by the fact that Bradley's philosophical logic is constantly being undercut by his metaphysics. In this case, for instance, after his drawing of the distinction between the valid and the invalid in rea­ soning, it emerges that he thinks that, ultimately, all inference is invalid (1883, PL p. 588 and 1922, PL p. 621). This adoption of temporary positions is a perennial irritant for one attempting to expound his views, and one can understand how A.R. Manser was led to claim that Bradley (1883) was a book of pure and defensible philosophical logic uncontaminated by the later and mistaken metaphysics (Manser 1983). This claim will be examined in Chapter 6 (p. 145tJ, but that it must be mistaken can be seen from the 192 Notes to pp. 28-37 parenthetical dates earlier in this footnote. Indeed, Bradley's 'later' meta­ physics is evidently influencing his moral philosophy as early as 1876 (Candlish 1978, §8). 12 To find the full story of Bradley's surprising response to this question, see Allard (2005), chapters 6 and 7.
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