Studies in the Metaphysics of Bradley by Saxena Sushil Kumar Sushil Kumar;

Author:Saxena, Sushil Kumar, Sushil Kumar;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1702336
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

e. The relational form—a necessary ‘appearance’

It indeed seems necessary to emphasize that Bradley’s formulation of thought’s characteristic plight is by no means as forced as at first sight it may appear to be. If it be protested that qualities and relations may, with impunity, be accepted as the original disposition of content in given reality, and that his entire dialectic is (therefore) a mere web conjured up in wilful deviation from the real as it actually is, Bradley would answer readily as follows:

Our task in metaphysics is not merely to accept the given as a relatedness of distinct parts, but to understand how the two aspects of unity and diversity—heightened in their distinctness by the emergence, or accentuation, of new differences in the given— could be held intelligibly together. And it is precisely when we attempt this task that difficulties emerge. Specially because it itself is an attempt to hold differences as one, thought can ignore neither the unity or relatedness nor the ‘qualitied’ or differentiated character of the given. But when, in response to its own inner impulse, as also with a view to understanding what is given, it tries to see if (or how) the one and the many can self-consistently be held as one, it is kept tossing without respite from one set of terms and relations to another in unending incomprehension. What is more, its inability consistently to hold unity and diversity can perhaps be realized even without indulging in dialectical subtleties. In fact, a mere look at the way in which thought actually works is here enough. In practice it habitually ignores one of the two aspects, unity or diversity, just as it suits its purpose of the moment, caring little for consistency. Thus, when we speak generally of things as related, their individuality may be merely skimmed; and when we dwell upon one object, the tendency is to blink its unity with what it seems merely to exclude.1

This brings us to a consideration of Bradley’s explicit view that the relational form is a necessary appearance. Its necessity should by now be obvious, provided we accept Bradley’s conception of the metaphysician’s attempt to ‘understand’ given reality. But, that it is still an ‘appearance’ is no less patent. We have seen how a collision between its relational way of working and the goal which it pursues infects the very essence of thought. This, however, is not the only way to show that the relational form is a self-contradiction, and a passing reference may be made to the following other remarks of Bradley which are here relevant:

(a) A relation gets its terms, necessarily distinct, by discarding the manner of feeling. But on the other hand, the assurance—no less essential for the existence of a relation—that the differences are actually held as one is provided by feeling, not by thought which (we have seen) cannot in its own distinctive way hold diversities together. And in so far as the distinctness and the unity of the terms are both

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