Studies in the Metaphysics of Bradley (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 193 pretation of Hegel rests in no small part upon the image he so effectively conveys of the harried professor wrestling to the point of despair with near-unmanageable bulks of material and enlisting the aid of friends to try to bring a semblance of order and intelligibihty into his manuscripts. In addition, the reader is treated to comparisons between Hegel and virtually everybody of importance from Parmenides to Proust. He finds a large number of vivid anecdotes, some pertinent (e.g., the Hegel-Schelling relation, pp. 177f.), some of dubious pertinence but just as fascinating (e.g., the meeting between the young Fichte and the old Kant, pp. 121ft.). If he is sharp-eyed, he may discover (p. 332 n.) what Kaufmann thinks of Jaspers on Nietzsche. Even without sharp eyes he can hardly help noting which fellow Hegel scholars, critics, and translators Kaufmann likes (Haym, J. M. Knox, Lasson, Rosenkranz, Rosenzweig) and which ones he doesn't like (BailLie, Findlay, Kuno Fischer, R. S. Hartman, G. R. G. Mure, Popper, Stace, Wallace). One leaves this book with the sense that although much can be learned from it, there is neither "a comprehensive reinterpretation of Hegel" nor yet a satisfactory translation of his crucial Preface. Kaufmann is very good when practising the historian's craft of demythlogizing , of looking behind the legend. He is at his best when he is showing us a Hegel who was, after all, human. But the reader is advised to take to heart the author's remark at the outset that this study "is plainly not the place for an effort to demonstrate philosophical acuity" (p. 15). Though one might have supposed that a comprehensive reinterpretation of Hegel would require a great deal of philosophical acuity, an attempt to undermine some of the English-speaking world's attitudinal reflexes toward Hegel no doubt requires much less. The measure of the book's success should, I think, be taken with an eye to the latter concern. P~.~ Fuss University o] Cali]ornia, Riverside Studies in the Metaphysics o] Bradley. By Sushil Kumar Saxena. (London: George Allen & Univen; New York: Humanities Press, 1967.Pp. 276. $/.50.) So much has happened to F. H. Bradley. He was "refuted" by Moore, who missed the core of the argument; he was attacked, and misunderstood, by Russell, whom he nonetheless encouraged to stay in philosophy and not leave it for politics; he has been assigned (by a new generation of English philosophers, like Wamock) to a place in history as the end of the old order, before the new order began in Moore and Russell--a Duccio to Cimabue and Giotto. But with it all, Bradley reappears from time to time and is occasionally defended , as in this book, against all comers. As a guess, Bradley's continual attraction is due to the fact that he was a genuine metaphysician , and many of us lust after its forbidden fruit. Of course, Bradley lived in a time of metaphysicians---MeTaggart, Bosanquet, etc.---but he was its great representative, wit, and stylist. Now that no one is permitted, on pain of professional neglect, to engage in metaphysics explivitly, there is the constant temptation to intellectual sin and, since Bradley was the last important sinner, it is not Aristotle or Spinoza or Hegel who titillate us, but this near contemporary who, in conditions closer to ours, tried to sin greatly and succeeded at least in sinning brilliantly. Mr. Saxena finds Bradley more persuasive than Carnap or Ayer or Reichenbach and defends him vigorously against their strictures, and even against the criticism in WoUheim's careful study, F. H. Bradley. The eontemporaneity of this book is such that although William James and G. E. Moore are mentioned in passing, they are never considered, despite their serious concern with Bradley and their crossing of swords with him. Morris Raphael Cohen's views on metaphysics, especially on logic as ontology, are quoted approvingly, and one remembers that in Cohen's official academic portrait he has a copy of Appearance and Reality in his hand. Brand Blanshard is cited and quoted often, 194 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and properly, in a consideration of Bradley, although it...