Abstract

It is perhaps fitting that some of Brand Blanshard’s last writings were on F.H. Bradley for they brought his career, and to some extent his philosophy, full circle. When Blanshard died on November 18, 1987, the last surviving person to have talked philosophy with Bradley, and one of only a handful to have conversed face-to-face with him at all, departed this world. Blanshard met Bradley twice while he was completing a B.S. degree at Merton College, Oxford. Until that time, Blanshard really had nothing to do with Bradley at Oxford, aside from struggling, like so many other students, with his Appearance and Reality and the first edition of the Principles of Logic. His tutor was Harold Joachim and his B.S. thesis, entitled “Some Metaphysical Implications of Judgment,” was a critical examination of the theories of judgment of Bosanquet, Russell, and the pragmatists. The examiners were Sir William Ross and H.W.B. Joseph. F.C.S. Schiller, the Oxford exponent of pragmatism who was almost alone in his irreverence for Bradley and issued the famous comic edition of Mind depicting in its frontpiece a portrait of the Absolute as a large blank circle of pale pink, also read the thesis and inserted some complimentary comments at the end.