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James and Bradley on Understanding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Robert Stern
Robert Stern
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Extract

In trying to reach some view regarding the philosophical exchanges that went on between F. H. Bradley and William James at the turn of the century, it is in some respects tempting to endorse Bradley's view that ‘our differences may perhaps on the whole be small when compared with the extent of our agreement’. Indeed, in most of the articles, letters and books in which the debate between these two men was carried on, one finds the protagonists claiming to be mystified as to the grounds of the dispute, and to see no great distinction in their respective outlooks.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 68 , Issue 264 , April 1993 , pp. 193 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1993

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References

1 For a list of relevant works by James and Bradley, see below, note 45.

2 Bradley, , Essays on Truth and Reality, 241, note.Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Bradley, , Essays on Truth and Reality, 234–5Google Scholar and James, , ‘Bradley or Bergson?’.Google Scholar

4 For an insightful discussion of this issue, see Mandelbaum, Maurice, History, Man and Reason (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 273–372.Google Scholar

5 Craig, Edward, The Mind of God and The Works of Man (Oxford University Press, 1987), 13–68 and 223–81.Google Scholar

6 James, , ‘Pragmatism’ and ‘The Meaning of Truth’, 172–3 [6–7].Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 173 [7].

8 Cf. also James, , Essays in Radical Empiricism, 22–23.Google Scholar

9 For further details, see my Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object (London: Routledge, 1990), 7–29.Google Scholar

10 Cf. James, , Essays in Radical Empiricism, 23–27.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 46.

12 Ibid., 17–18.

13 Ibid., 46.

14 For further details of the relationship between James and Bergson, see Perry, , The Thought and Character of William James II, 599–636.Google Scholar For an accessible work by Bergson in which the affinities with James are clear, see ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’, in The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Andison, M. L. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946).Google Scholar

15 James, , A Pluralistic Universe (Cambridge Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1977), 113.Google Scholar

16 James, , Essays in Radical Empiricism, 45.Google Scholar

17 James, , Principles of Psychology, I, 233–4.Google Scholar

18 Bradley, , Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, 1897), 460.Google Scholar

19 Ibid.

20 James, , Essays in Philosophy, 151–2.Google Scholar

21 See Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object, 7–29.Google Scholar

22 Perry, , The Thought and Character of William James, II, 643.Google Scholar

23 Bradley, , ‘A Disclaimer’.Google Scholar

24 Cf. for example, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, translated by Wallace, William and Miller, A. V. (Oxford University Press, 1971) §406 Z, 110:Google Scholar ‘But in so far as I am at first only a feeling soul, not as yet awakened, free self-consciousness, I am aware of this actuality of mine, of this world of mine, in a purely immediate, quite abstractly positive manner, since, as we have already remarked, at this stage I have not as yet posited the world as separate from me, not as yet posited it as an external existence, and my knowledge of it is therefore not as yet mediated by the opposition of subjectivity and objectivity and by the removal of this opposition.’

25 Cf. Letter to Bradley, from James, , 01 1910Google Scholar; in Kenna, , ‘Ten Unpublished Letters’, 329–30.Google Scholar

26 This phrase is used by Bradley: cf. Perry, , The Thought and Character of William James, II, 489.Google Scholar

27 Hegel, G. W. F., Lectures on the History of Philosophy, translated by Haldane, E. S. and Simson, F. H., 3 vols (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1892–1896), I, xiii (translation modified).Google Scholar

28 Bradley, , Appearance and Reality, 458.Google Scholar

29 Craig, , The Mind of God and the Works of Man, 37–44.Google Scholar

30 As Craig puts it: ‘… causal connections had to be “intelligible”. There had to be something, in principle detectable by reason, which made that effect suited to that, that lawlike relationship between those two variables appropriate rather than any other. If it were not so, there would be facts about the course of events which were intrinsically inexplicable; and this thought, because of its position in the complex of ideas composing the epistemological version of the Image of God doctrine, was in the seventeenth century widely felt to be intolerable’ (Ibid., 39–40).

31 Bradley, , Appearance and Reality, 414–5.Google Scholar

32 For a discussion of Hegel's position, see my Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object, 54–57.Google Scholar

33 Bradley, , Essays on Truth and Reality, 230–1.Google Scholar The view that the unity- in-difference of reality is hard for us to grasp is nicely put by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his notebook for October 1803: ‘I would make a pilgrimage to the Deserts of Arabia to find the man who could make me understand how the one can be many! Eternal universal mystery! It seems as if it were impossible, yet it is—and it is every where’.

34 James, , ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’, in The Will to Believe, (Cambridge Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1979), 65.Google Scholar

35 James, , A Pluralistic Universe, 96.Google Scholar

36 James, , ‘Pragmatism’ and ‘The Meaning of Truth’, 206–7 [40–1].Google Scholar

37 Cf. Skorupski, John, ‘The Legacy of Modernism’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XCI, 1990–1991, 1–19.Google Scholar

38 James, , ‘Pragmatism’ and ‘The Meaning of Truth’, 208 [42].Google Scholar

39 Cf. James, Ibid., 209 [43]: ‘… we respond [to experience in its pristine purity] by ways of thinking which we call “true” in proportion as they facilitate our mental or physical activities and bring us outer power and inner peace. But whether the Other, the universal That, has itself any definite inner structure, or whether, if it have any, the structure resembles any of our predicted whats, this is a question which humanism leaves untouched. For us, at any rate, it insists, reality is an accumulation of our own intellectual inventions, and the struggle for “truth” in our progressive dealings with it is always a struggle to work in new nouns and adjectives while altering as little as possible the old.’

40 Cf. James, , A Pluralistic Universe, 114Google Scholar: ‘What makes you call real life confusion is that it presents, as if they were dissolved in one another, a lot of differents which retrospective conception breaks life's flow by keeping apart. But are not differents actually dissolved in one another? Hasn't every bit of experience its quality, its duration, its extension, its intensity, its urgency, its clearness, and many aspects besides, no one of which can exist in the isolation in which our verbalized logic keeps it? They can only exist durcheinander’.

41 James, ibid., 131.

42 Letter from Bradley, to James, , 04 28, 1905Google Scholar; in Perry, , The Thought and Character of William James, II, 489.Google Scholar

43 James, , The Will to Believe, 64.Google Scholar

44 James, , ‘Bradley or Bergson?’, 154Google Scholar. Cf. Bergson, Henri, ‘On the Pragmatism of William James. Truth and Reality’, in The Creative Mind, 211Google Scholar: ‘Our reason is less satisfied [by James's radical empiricism]. It feels less at ease in a world where it no longer finds, as in a mirror, its own image. And certainly the importance of human reason is diminished. But the importance of man himself—the whole of man, will and sensibility quite as much as intelligence—will thereby be immeasurably enhanced!’ (This essay was originally written as an introduction to the French translation of James's Pragmatism: see Perry, , The Thought and Character of William James, II, 634–6.)Google Scholar

45 The main items in the exchange between James and Bradley are as follows

(in chronological order):

James, W., Principles of Psychology, 3 vols (Cambridge Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1981), I, 499–503.Google Scholar

Bradley, F. H., ‘On Professor James's Doctrine of Simple Resemblance’, Mind, n.s. 2 (1893), 83–88Google Scholar; reprinted in Collected Essays, 2 vols (Oxford University Press, 1935), I, 287–94.Google Scholar

James, , ‘Mr Bradley on Immediate Resemblance’, Mind, n.s. 2 (1893), 208–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Essays in Philosophy (Cambridge Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1978), 65–68.Google Scholar

Bradley, , ‘Professor James on Simple Resemblance’, Mind, n.s. 2 (1893), 366–369CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Collected Essays, I, 295–300.Google Scholar

James, , ‘Immediate Resemblance’, Mind, n.s. 2 (1893), 509–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Essays in Philosophy, 69–70.Google Scholar

Bradley, , ‘Reply’, Mind, n.s. 2 (1893), 510CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Collected Essays, I, 301–2.Google Scholar

Bradley, , ‘On Truth and Practice’, Mind, n.s. 13 (1904), 309–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Essays on Truth and Reality (Oxford University Press, 1914), 65–106.Google Scholar

James, , ‘Humanism and Truth’, Mind, n.s. 13 (1904), 457–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in ‘Pragmatism’ and ‘The Meaning of Truth’ (Cambridge Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1978), 203–226 [37–60].Google Scholar

James, , ‘The Thing and Its Relations’, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 2 (1905), 29–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Essays in Radical Empiricism (Cambridge Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1976), 45–59.Google Scholar

Bradley, , ‘On Truth and Copying’, Mind, n.s. 16 (1907), 165–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Essays on Truth and Reality, 107–26.Google Scholar

Bradley, , ‘On the Ambiguity of Pragmatism’, Mind, n.s. 17 (1908), 226–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Essays on Truth and Reality, 127–42.Google Scholar

James, , ‘Bradley or Bergson?’, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 7 (1910), 29–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Essays in Philosophy, 151–56.Google Scholar

Bradley, , ‘A Disclaimer’, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 7 (1910), 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Collected Essays, II, 695.Google Scholar

Bradley, , ‘On Prof. James's “Meaning of Truth”’, Mind, 20 (1911), 337–41Google Scholar; reprinted in Essays on Truth and Reality, 142–49.Google Scholar

Bradley, , ‘On Prof. James's “Radical Empiricism”’, Essays on Truth and Reality, 149–158.Google Scholar

See also the following collections of letters:

Kenna, J. C., ‘Ten Unpublished Letters from William James, 1842–1910 to Francis Herbert Bradley, 1846–1924’, Mind, 75 (1966), 309–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Perry, Ralph Barton, The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols (Oxford University Press, 1936), II, 485–93, 637–44.Google Scholar