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F. H. Bradley and Religious Faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Stephen Carr
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Extract

In the following there are two principal objectives. Firstly, I hope to show that what seems to be the usual view of Bradley prevalent amongst theologians and philosophers is inaccurate. Secondly, I shall attempt to set Bradley's thought, albeit briefly, in the wider context of our contemporary interests. I have been more concerned to consider the aspects of Bradley's work that are interesting and, I think, quite exciting for theologians than to give a more general account of his philosophy. Bradley's reactions to specific doctrines of Christianity were coloured a good deal by his reaction to an evangelical upbringing (he was the son of an evangelical clergyman), but on a more abstract level he has an interesting and striking philosophical approach to the notion of religious faith. It is with this latter that I am concerned here.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 371 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 In conformity with convention, I refer to Bradley's works using the following abbreviations: ES for Ethical Studies, second edition (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar, PL for The Principles of Logic, second edition, 2 vols (Oxford, 1922)Google Scholar, ETR for Essays on Truth and Reality (Oxford, 1914)Google Scholar, CE for Collected Essays, 2 vols (Oxford, 1935)Google Scholar, AR for Appearance and Reality, Muirehead Library edition (London, 1920).Google Scholar

2 Quine, W. V., Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 78.Google Scholar

3 See Green, T. H., ‘General Introduction to Volume II’ to Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, edited and introduced by Green, T. H. and Grose, T. H., 2 vols (London, 1874), pp. 7–8 and p. 52.Google Scholar

4 In Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar, Chapter Six, Section C.

5 See Ward, Keith, The Development of Kant's View of Ethics (Oxford, 1972).Google Scholar

6 Being and Nothingness, translated by Hazel E. Barnes (London, 1957), p. 257.Google Scholar

7 Rashdall, Hastings, The Theory of Good and Evil, second edition, 2 vols (Oxford, 1924), ii, p. 93.Google Scholar

8 Chekhov, Anton, ‘On Official Business’ in The Oxford Chekhov, translated and edited by Hingley, R., 9 vols (Oxford, 1968–1980), IX (1975), p. 122.Google Scholar

9 See in particular Taylor, A. E., ‘F. H. Bradley’, Mind, XXXIV (1925), 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Bradley, F. H., ‘An Unpublished Note on Christian Morality’, ed. and introd. by Kendal, G., Religious Studies, XIX (1983), 175–83.Google Scholar

10 This divergence from Hegel was noted during Bradley's lifetime. See Mackenzie, J. S., ‘Mr Bradley's View of the Self’, Mind, III (1894), 305–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 322–3. More recently it has been noted by, amongst others, Quinton, A. in ‘Absolute Idealism’, in Proceedings of the British Academy, LVII (1971), 302–29Google Scholar, especially p. 326.

11 See Philosophical Studies (London, 1922), pp. 276–309.Google Scholar

12 Rorty, Richard, ‘Nineteenth-Century Idealism and Twentieth-Century Textualism’, in Consequences of Pragmatism (Brighton, 1982), p. 140.Google Scholar