Abstract

In the second edition of his Principle of Logic, Bradley recognised, in a long footnote, that it would have been better if he had acknowledged his indebtedness to Hegel; but he excused himself for not so doing, in part, by saying that he did not either at the time of the first, or of the second, edition know the limits of his indebtedness. With curiosity piqued, it was decided to try to answer, in some measure, the intriguing question of this indebtedness to Hegel. From the outset, it was hypothesized that one need not go farther than the Sense Certainty and Perception of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit to find close parallels with key concepts in Bradley's work. Thus effort was restricted to comparative examination of this material. This document is the result of three years spent in a detailed examination of notions in Bradley's Principles of Logic and those two sections in Hegel's Phenomenology. It is the thesis of this work that Bradley's concept of Judgment can be closely linked with Hegel's Consciousness as Sense Certainty in his Phenomenology of Spirit; similarly Bradley's concept of Inference can be closely linked with Hegel's Consciousness as Perception in that same work. In the body of the main text can be found a section by section comparison of concepts in Bradley's work those in Hegel's Sense Certainty and Perception. In the summary section can be found some eighty findings from this investigation