Finding a Way into Bradley’s Metaphysics

Abstract

This section is intended for those readers largely unfamiliar with Bradley’s work, so that those to whom this description does not apply may move immediately to the one following.

‘I made little of [my father’s philosophy books], but I remember in particular Bradley’s [ppearance and Reality. The work bewildered me; there were hardly any words I did not know, and the sentences were simply constructed, but I could not tell what it all meant. However, I formed the general impression that the author was a wicked man who worshipped a false God called the Absolute … My adult views of Bradley are not so very different. Reading a few pages of [ppearance and Reality now makes me feel as if I had drunk several pints of beer …’

Peter Geach, ‘A Philosophical Autobiography’, in Lewis (1991), pp. 2–3