F. H. Bradley (Francis Herbert Bradley) Biography

British philosopher, born at Clapham, the brother of A. C. Bradley; he was educated at University College, Oxford. In 1870 he was elected a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, where he remained in somewhat reclusive residence until his death. With T. H. Green (1836–82), he was Oxford's leading proponent of Hegelian thought, which forms the basis for his Ethical Studies (1876) and The Principles of Logic (1883); the works were in part repudiations of the utilitarianism of J. S. Mill (1806–73) and demonstrated Bradley's ‘polemical irony and his obvious zest in using it’, to quote from T. S. Eliot's 1927 review of a reissue of Ethical Studies. Eliot, who produced a doctoral thesis on Bradley's philosophy in 1916, was deeply impressed by his ability to combine a high degree of metaphysical scepticism with a belief in the ultimate unity of all phenomena. His work on metaphysics is principally contained in Appearance and Reality (1893) and Essays on Truth and Reality (1914). R. Wollheim's F. H. Bradley was published in 1959.