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This chapter examines the logical foundations of F. H. Bradley's philosophy, focusing on his account of the relation between thought and reality as well as his core beliefs about the basic logical structure of reality. Bradley's own theory about the nature of truth and some of the other accounts that are commonly attributed to him, and how he in fact stands to them, are first discussed. His views on the identity theory of truth, the coherence theory of truth, the correspondence theory of truth, and the pragmatic theory of truth are then considered. Bradley's position on negation, abstract identity, non-contradiction, and identity-in-difference is also analysed.

It is almost inevitable that anyone schooled in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy will feel a not inconsiderable sense of dislocation should they turn to consider such a topic as the metaphysical theories of F. H. Bradley. For, notwithstanding the possibility that a deeper understanding of his thought may yield significant similarities with modern approaches, the initial impression at least is one of a great difference. His subject-matter, metaphysics, even if it is no longer something to dismiss out of court, is a subject that, to this day, is rarely undertaken in such a bold and speculative fashion. The net result is that, although only one hundred years old, his chief metaphysical work, Appearance and Reality, seems more distant to those unfamiliar with it than numerous works many times its age. This chapter discusses Bradley's approach to philosophy and his metaphysics, focusing on his views about the link between truth and satisfaction, immediate experience, and his use of the so-called ideal experiment in his philosophy. The relation between metaphysics and logic is also considered.

This chapter examines F. H. Bradley's view of the nature of thought and why it is so different from reality. In calling thought abstract or universal, Bradley wishes to bring to the fore the fact that it is essentially divisive. Thought works by taking reality and carving off, or abstracting, some aspect from it. For Bradley, no system of thought can ever be identical with reality. The consequence of this situation is that no thought in principle can ever be wholly and ultimately true. Bradley tries to demonstrate this fact by showing that the pluralist or relational way of thought is unavoidably subject to internal incoherence and self-contradiction. As such, he claims it could never be adequate, or true of reality. The subject-predicate schema is to be found in two separate but parallel forms—that is, as a thesis about the nature of thought and as a thesis about the nature of reality. Bradley argues against both of these.

The pluralist world-view involves not just a multiplicity of separately existing subjects, individuated by their differing properties or arrangements of properties, but also a system of relations between them. They may be bigger or wiser than one another, they may be next to or after one another, they may cause or love one another, or stand to one another in any one of an infinity of other possible relations. F. H. Bradley was a no less savage critic of this picture than of its subject-predicate partner. His arguments against relations captured the attention of philosophers for many years, and are still today the most widely known part of his work. Whatever its level of acceptance among his own philosophical generation, Bradley's whole doctrine of relations was severely criticised by that which followed. This chapter discusses Bradley's position on terms and relations, internal and external relations, qualities with and without relations, relations with and without qualities, the unreality of relations, and monism.

F. H. Bradley's philosophical system involves the condemnation of the entire world of common-sense experience and reflection. Things and their properties, terms and their relations, space, and time, and the whole host of things whose analysis involves these notions are all claimed to belong, not to reality, but to the realm of appearance. This is a strange and counter-intuitive position which has not as yet been fully elucidated. Bradley's reasons for denying the ultimate reality of these things have already been discussed, but it is not clear what he means by calling them ‘appearance’. The concept of appearance plays a very important role in Bradley's thought; however, his use of the term is somewhat technical and idiosyncratic. This chapter explores Bradley's account of the Absolute and its appearances, phenomenalism and things-in-themselves, and degrees of truth and reality. A solution to the problem of appearance and reality is considered.

Ricketts treats shifts in Russell’s views about truth and judgment between 1905 and 1910, a period during which Russell attempted to articulate an atomistic, pluralist, and realist metaphysical alternative to the Idealistic Monism of Bradley in which reality is constituted by a plurality of mind-independent entities standing in relations external to them. Russell did not simply dismiss Idealism; significant aspects of the development of his alternative stem from his attempt to answer Bradley’s criticisms. Ricketts focuses on three elements of Russell’s early metaphysics: propositions not facts are metaphysically fundamental; a proposition is not a mere list of its components; and propositions are not representational, so that truth of propositions is not analyzed in terms of relations to truth-makers. Russell’s problem was to explain the unity of the proposition in face of Bradley’s challenge such that unity cannot be accounted for by external relations. Since for Russell truth is not explained by relation to fact, he was driven to a view in which truth and falsity are two irreducible ways in which propositional constituents are related by a relation that is itself one of these constituents. Unfortunately this position is self-thwarting; any attempt to state that truth is a quality of the relation holding the proposition together will, on Russell’s view, express a proposition in which truth is a constituent independent of that relation. This incoherence, on Ricketts’s reading, is what motivates Russell to a metaphysics in which facts are fundamental, in order to serve the role of truth-makers of propositions.

The harmonious reconciliation of difference and identity provides F. H. Bradley with the abstract skeleton or pattern which reality must possess. However, there is much more to the Absolute than just this. Bradley claims that the Absolute is one system, and its contents are nothing but sentient experience. It has been argued that idealism, rather than something Bradley seriously argued for, needs to be seen as one of his initial and most basic assumptions. This chapter explores what Bradley means by claiming that reality is experience by considering the arguments that he advances in favour of this position. It also examines his metaphysical views about objective and subjective idealism and the connection between relations and idealism.

This chapter considers some general questions concerning the interpretation of F. H. Bradley's philosophy and demonstrates how his philosophy reconciles sceptical epistemology and constructive metaphysics. Two important questions concern Bradley's main influences and the relative roles of logic and metaphysics in his philosophy. It has been remarked that Bradley's philosophy contains an unusual combination of cautious scepticism about the faculty of human thought and courageous system-building in the grand style. Initial evidence of this combination of scepticism and system-building is not hard to find. Many of the same Hegelian system-building tendencies are to be found in Bradley's own thought. Although there are significant differences between Bradley and David Hume, the similarities between them are far greater than has usually been noticed.

This chapter examines F. H. Bradley's arguments against the reality of space and time from a philosophical point of view. Bradley's arguments against space and time are connected with his attack on relations. Space and time involve relations, relations are unreal, therefore space and time are unreal. His arguments are also interesting, not simply in connection with his views on relations, but also in themselves as arguments about the nature of space and time. They are not, as has sometimes been supposed, mere confusions about the correct mathematical or scientific treatment of space and time, but raise some serious points and puzzles in the philosophy of space and time to which modern mathematics or science have no easy answers.

Bertrand Russell recognizes the epistemological importance of testimony at the common‐sense level and also recognizes its significance in making the public/private distinction with respect to objective reality. He considers, however, that direct reliance on testimony is displaced at the higher levels of science by an analogical principle. Coady argues that Russell is unclear about the role of this principle, but that neither Russell's version, nor something similar that can be extracted from F. H. Bradley, provides a satisfactory resolution of the epistemological problem posed by testimony.