Between Immanence and Transcendence: A Contradiction?

The Thought-Reality Relationship in F. H. Bradley's Metaphysics

Abstract

F. H. Bradley’s philosophy originates from the debate on the relativity of knowledge that engaged leading British philosophers during the 19th century. This debate dealt with the relationship between thought and reality, and developed into three main stances: agnosticism, empiricism and idealism. In his metaphysics, Bradley seeks to overcome the shortcomings of those stances, while preserving the truth of each one. Against agnosticism, he holds that it is possible to know unquestionable truths about reality, thus endorsing the rationalism of the idealists: reality is immanent to thought as a known object. However, thought is relation, and the relational form is self-contradictory: reality, which is subjected to the principle of non-contradiction, cannot therefore be relational; its form is closer to immediate experience (feeling), in which the unity of differences does not appear as a relation between terms. Reality is, then, also transcendent to thought: Bradley makes the case for a moderate agnosticism and a radical empiricism – non-atomistic, unlike classical empiricism – against idealism, whose reduction of reality to a system of ideas he does not share. The problematic cohabitation of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism in Bradley’s philosophy was attacked by, among others, J. Dewey, who denounced its inconsistency. The goal of this essay is to defend Bradley against such charges by investigating both the structure of the thought-reality relationship (Chapter XV of Appearance and Reality) and the logico-metaphysical status of contradiction.