Appearance and Reality
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~260,000 words · 1,258 passages
Cite this work
- APAF. H. Bradley. (n.d.). Appearance and Reality. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/f-h-bradley/appearance-and-reality
- MLAF. H. Bradley. "Appearance and Reality." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/f-h-bradley/appearance-and-reality.
- ChicagoF. H. Bradley. Appearance and Reality. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/f-h-bradley/appearance-and-reality.
What it is about
The central work of British idealism: Bradley argues that almost everything we take to be real — things, space, time, cause, the self — turns out contradictory under examination and is therefore appearance; what is real is the Absolute, a whole in which distinctions do not hold.
Context and history
Published in 1893. The first part dismantles, the second builds, and the decisive argument is the one about relations: no way of relating two things survives analysis without generating another relation. Reading it explains why Russell and Moore founded analytic philosophy — they founded it against this book, and without knowing what it said one cannot see what they were reacting to.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
"One of the most important books that have been published during the last twenty-five years."— J. H. Muirhead in Literary Guide. " This is a truly great book. It is one of supreme interest and importance to the student of Ethics, as well as to the student of Metaphysics. Every particular thing in it is delightful. The style, though often paradoxical, is singularly bright and attractive. It is hardly too much to say that the book is altogether the most important independent work on Metaphysics that has ever been written in English." — International Journal of Ethics. "This book must be studied and reckoned with by all students of Metaphysics."— Guardian. APPEARANCE AND REALITY 1 H metaphysical lEssa? BY F. H. BRADLEY, LL.D. Glasgow Fellow of Merton College, Oxford SIXTH IMPRESSION (CORRECTED) LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. First Edition, June, 1893 ; Second Edition (with an Appendix), February, 1897 Third Impression, June, 1899; Fourth Impression, February, 1906; Fifth Impression (corrected), November, 1908; Sixth Impression (corrected), June, 1916. TO MY FRIEND E R THIS UNWORTHY VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. PREFACE. I have described the following work as an essay in metaphysics. Neither in form nor extent does it carry out the idea of a system. Its subject indeed is central enough to justify the exhaustive treatment of every problem. But what I have done is incomplete, and what has been left undone has often been omitted arbitrarily. The book is a more or less desultory handling of perhaps the chief questions in metaphysics. There were several reasons why I did not attempt a more systematic treatise, and to carry out even what I proposed has proved enough for my powers. I began this book in the autumn of 1887, and, after writing the first two fifths of it in twelve months, then took three years