Reading Notes: March 16th, 2022

“For, if the qualities impart themselves never except under conditions, how in the end are we to say what they are when unconditioned? Having once begun, and having been compelled, to take their appearance into the account, we cannot afterwards strike it out. It being admitted that the equalities come to us always in a relation, and always as appearing, then certainly we know them only as appearance. And the mere supposition that in themselves they may really be what they are, seems quite meaningless and self-destructive.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 13-14) 

“For what is possible, and what a general principle compels us to say must be, that certainly is.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 196) 

“The Absolute has no history of its own, though it contains histories without number.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 500) 

“The Absolute has no seasons, but all at once bears its leaves, fruit, and blossoms. Like our globe it always, and it never, has summer and winter.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 500)

“The actual starting point and basis of this work is an assumption about truth and reality. I have assumed that the object of metaphysics is to find a general view which will satisfy the intellect, and I have assumed that whatever succeeds in doing this is real and true, and that whatever fails is neither. This is a doctrine which, so far as I see, can neither be proved nor questioned. The proof or the question, it seems to me, must imply the truth of the doctrine, and, if that is not assumed, both vanish.” (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 553-554) 

“And this brings us, lastly, to ask how the position of absolute idealism, that Reality is one Experience, individual and perfect, is found to be absolute truth. Mr. Bradley’s answer, as it seems to me, is: By the ontological argument. Of this argument, he says: “It is used of the Absolute, and if confined to that, will be surely legitimate. We are, I think, bound to admit this claim. The idea of the Absolute, as an idea, is inconsistent with itself; and we find that, to complete itself, it is internally driven to take in existence…And, whether you begin from the side of Existence [the cosmological argument] or of Thought, the process will remain essentially the same” (p. 396). “The principle underlying these arguments—that given one side of a connected whole, you can go from this to the other sides—is surely irrefragable” (p. 396)….Whatever the universe may be, we must say it is; and however contingent—externally determined—the existence of any part may be, the existence of the Whole, ex vi termini, can be contingent on nothing. Again, if we take the logical conception of universe, it will yield us, “individuality or the idea of complete system” (p. 542).” (Ward, Review of Bradley’s “Appearance and Reality”, 113-114)