Abstract

F. H. Bradley, while not alone in securing idealism its standing in British thought for several generations of philosophers, was by far the ablest exponent of the position. He was by far the ablest critic, too, of the “school of experience,” the empiricist philosophers. In particular, he criticized the doctrines of the associationist psychology of Hume, Hartley, and the Mills. This criticism was metaphysically based, arguing that the psychology was inadequate because of its “atomism,” that is, because it presupposed an inadequate account of relations. Bradley proposed an alternative account of relations that led to a very different view of such psychological phenomena as inference. Since there were many controversies internal to introspective psychology concerning the status of relations, Bradley’s views can be seen as part of a movement that eventually forced the science to deal more adequately with relational facts. Nonetheless, Bradley’s metaphysics was decidedly antiempiricist, and was in the end antagonistic to the idea that an empirical science could provide any ultimate sort of explanation of human being. In that respect, Bradley’s critique stood apart from those that were internal to the science.