F. H. Bradley Quotes on Knowledge
F. H. Bradley (1846–1924), the Oxford idealist whose Principles of Logic (1883), Appearance and Reality (1893), and Essays on Truth and Reality (1914) gave British philosophy of the late Victorian and Edwardian period one of its dominant systematic voices, defended an explicit absolute idealism according to which the categories on which ordinary thought relies — relations, qualities, substances, time, space, causation — are irremediably contradictory and so accessible to genuine knowledge only when they are seen through to the non-relational absolute experience that supplies their underlying truth. The corresponding coherentist theory of truth and the systematic regress argument against external relations are the aspects of Bradley's position the early analytic philosophy of Russell and Moore would explicitly target.
Quotes
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Attributed to F. H. Bradley:
“Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst.”
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“Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.”
Appearance and Reality , preface (1893). -
“Appearance and Reality , preface (1893).”
Of Optimism I have said that "The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil. -
“Appearance and Reality , preface (1893).”
Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct. -
“Reported by Brand Blanshard in 'Francis Herbert Bradley', Journal of Philosophy (1925).”
The man whose nature is such that by one path alone his chief desire will reach consummation will try to find it on that path, whatever it may be, and whatever the world thinks of it; and if he does not, he is contemptible. -
“The Limits of Individual and National Self-Sacrifice.”
I will begin with the self-styled "Christian" party, who profess to base their morality on the New Testament. But whether it is really more Christian to follow or to ignore the teachings of the Gospels I shall not discuss. -
“The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind.”
No. 8. -
““Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.” It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.”
Aphorisms(1930) | No. 94. -
“It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.”
Aphorisms(1930) | No. 22. -
“The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge.”
Aphorisms(1930) | No. 68.