Of intellectualist logic Francis Herbert Bradley[142] (b. 1846) and
Bernard Bosanquet[143] (1848) may be taken as typical exponents. The
philosophy of the former concludes to an Absolute by the annulment of
contradictions, though the ladder of Hegel is conspicuous by its
absence. His metaphysical method, however, is like Herbart's, not
identifiable with his logic, and the latter has for its central
characteristic its thorough restatement of the logical forms traditional
in language and the text-books, in such a way as to harmonize with the
doctrine of a reality whose organic unity is all-inclusive. The thorough
recasting that this involves, even of the thought of the masters when it
occasionally echoes them, has resulted in a phrasing uncouth to the ear
of the plain man with his world of persons and things in which the
former simply think about the latter, but it is fundamentally necessary
for Bradley's purpose. The negative judgment, for example, cannot be
held in one and the same undivided act to presuppose the unity of the
real, project an adjective as conceivably applicable to it and assert
its rejection. We need, therefore, a restatement of it. With Bradley
reality is the one subject of all judgment immediate or mediate. The act
of judgment "which refers an ideal content (recognized as such) to a
reality beyond the act" is the unit for logic. Grammatical subject and
predicate necessarily both fall under the rubric of the adjectival, that
is, within the logical idea or ideal content asserted. This is a meaning
or universal, which can have no detached or abstract self-subsistence.
As found in judgment it may exhibit differences within itself, but it is
not two, but one, an articulation of unity, not a fusion, which could
only be a confusion, of differences. With a brilliant subtlety Bradley
analyses the various types of judgment in his own way, with results that
must be taken into account by all subsequent logicians of this type. The
view of inference with which he complements it is only less satisfactory
because of a failure to distinguish the principle of nexus in syllogism
from its traditional formulation and rules, and because he is hampered
by the intractability which he finds in certain forms of relational
construction.
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