Notwithstanding these and many other differences, in Process and Reality Whitehead recognises his debt towards Bradley. He emphasises the importance of the doctrine of feeling and goes so far as to qualify his whole cosmological system as an approximation to Bradley.

My principal purpose in writing this article is to explore some key elements in the thought of Bradley and Schopenhauer, and to do so by using their respective views on death, and more specifically the relation of those views to Epicureanism, as a focal point. The article divides into three main sections. First I outline the Epicurean position, and discuss how it manifests within the work of Schopenhauer and Bradley. Secondly, I attempt to show how these two philosophers’ thoughts on (...) death cohere with their overall metaphysics. And, thirdly, I draw attention to the hedonic component in the Epicurean argument, and discuss an objection to the argument that has been proposed by Thomas Nagel on anti-hedonic grounds. In my concluding remarks I highlight the most significant ways in which Bradley and Schopenhauer divert from the central Epicurean claim, and from one another. (shrink)

One way out to avoid this tension is to adopt what legal theorists call a “mixed theory,” which presents the different penal elements as answering to different concerns. For example, one could hold that the justification of the institution of punishment requires a consequentialist answer focussed on various types of deterrence aimed at promoting social well-being, but that the distribution of actual punishments is decided in terms of desert and the degree of moral culpability of the criminal. This is the (...) type of mixed theory A. J. Milne claimed to have found in Green’s Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. By contrast, Bradley is often interpreted as holding the converse mixed theory, according to which a right to punish is established via some retributive argument but, once this right is established, consequentialist considerations can then be introduced to determine the actual punishments doled out. The passage usually cited includes this sentence: “Having once the right to punish, we may modify the punishment according to the useful and the pleasant.”. (shrink)

A striking feature of Bradley’s thought is its dialectical structure. This is evident in all his writings especially Ethical Studies in which he investigates the topic of self-realization within the larger context of the question of the nature of morality. In the Ethical Studies Bradley looks at different accounts of morality vis-à-vis the demand of self realization and finds none of them absolutely adequate albeit one is relatively adequate than the other. For this reason he condemns the “ethics of pleasure (...) for pleasure sake” and rates it lower than “ethics of duty for duty sake” even though from a larger standpoints he finds “ethics of duty for duty sake” equally inadequate whereas it takes it that the “ethics of my stations and duties” fares better than “ethics of duty for duty sake” even if it does not offer us any resting place. Although the structure of Bradley’s Ethical Studies is dialectical and to this extent is Bradley’s most Hegelian writing it is a mistake not to pay attention to Bradley’s divergence from Hegelianism which is already evident in Ethical Studies especially with regard to what he makes of the relationship between morality, religion and philosophy. What this means that despite his sympathy to dialectical thinking, Bradley’s relation to dialectics in the end is ambivalent. (shrink)

The fact that Peirce names Royce as that thinker in whom Idealism and his own Pragmatic Critical Common-sensism come together into a new complex thought system or a new semiotic method of inquiry, is rarely commented upon. Still less often do we find links connecting Peirce with Bosanquet, or the latter’s “world of all sorts” and Peirce’s “pluralism.” Charles Morris is exceptional in his connecting of Bosanquet and Peirce in his 1932 study, Six Theories of Mind. This paper will, in (...) the main, provide extrapolations from Morris at this juncture, and from thence: 1) look at the thought of Bosanquet and Peirce separately, and 2) attempt to bring them together again in a new perspective. (shrink)

This new volume is of exceptional value to scholars because of the editors’ success in placing the work in its philosophical context. The introduction provides the reader with a synopsis of British Idealism and a context for understanding this thinker. For example, since Bosanquet thought his beliefs almost identical to Green’s, it is useful to have the editors pointing out that Green pressed Bosanquet to publish them, implying that Green knew otherwise. Similarly, Bosanquet’s defense of economic individualism earns the editors’ (...) description as “communitarian,” hardly what one would expect of a devotee of positive liberty. (shrink)

This new volume is of exceptional value to scholars because of the editors’ success in placing the work in its philosophical context. The introduction provides the reader with a synopsis of British Idealism and a context for understanding this thinker. For example, since Bosanquet thought his beliefs almost identical to Green’s, it is useful to have the editors pointing out that Green pressed Bosanquet to publish them, implying that Green knew otherwise. Similarly, Bosanquet’s defense of economic individualism earns the editors’ (...) description as “communitarian,” hardly what one would expect of a devotee of positive liberty. (shrink)

Inference ‘gives us something new’. The view is common enough. ‘We should not say,’ writes a contemporary philosopher, that a man ‘had inferred q from p unless he came to believe or know something which he did not believe or know before.’ The ignorance of the conclusion before we deduce it, is the epistemic condition of Inference.

In regard to the former, Professor Connelly’s primary concerns are to demonstrate the unity of Collingwood’s work, and to exonerate Collingwood of the twin charges of historicism and relativism.

In regard to the former, Professor Connelly’s primary concerns are to demonstrate the unity of Collingwood’s work, and to exonerate Collingwood of the twin charges of historicism and relativism.