Why the Bradley/Russell dispute matters

Mohan encountered Bradley's Appearance and Reality at St. Stephen's College in Delhi in the Summer of 68. Perhaps this suggests that the "moral and spiritual mission" of "British imperialism's late phase," with which Bradley's work had been associated (Candlish The Russell/Bradley Dispute, 183) ended late in some parts of India? For anybody interested in Mohan's intellectual trajectory, it might be worth learning more about the intellectual background of The Head of Philosophy at St. Stephen's and the visions with which he (she?) tried to instill in his young recruits to philosophy. It is probably no accident that Mohan encountered Bradley in Delhi and that once encountered, the alternative was Russell for a man with a physics background. For, in his philosophic prophecies, Russell systematically set himself against "Hegel's modern disciples” and as preparing the way for a scientific philosophy (“On Scientific Method In Philosophy”).

Anyway, Mohan reports that Candlish's book

is a curious kind of professional history of philosophy—a book that wishes to "set the record straight". At the same time, it lacks a clear account of why a non-historian should care about the Russell-Bradley dispute—of why straightening the record seems so urgent. Candlish himself seems angry that Bradley got bad press. (For instance, he suddenly slams Russell's Cambridge as the university that produced "spies".) Why does it matter 100 years later if he did? Was Bradley right about what he was attacked for? Did he say something to which we should now pay attention? Would we have been paying attention, but for the 18 myths?

Now, while most professional historians of philosophy are animated by a Ranke-ean ideal of historical truth (i.e., getting the facts of the past right), few would identify with Candlish, who has an earnest desire, to "redress" the balance: "at least in the central matter of relations, terms and the nature of propositions, Bradley's eventual reputation was the result of the effect of rhetoric, propaganda and external historical argument." (185) Most historians of philosophy do not see themselves in the business of restoring reputations. (Having said that, some of our very best -- e.g., Beiser, Melamed, Darwall, etc -- have made efforts to help restore reputations of unfairly overlooked thinkers.) So, why does renewed attention to the Russell/Bradley dispute matter? Here are a few reasons:

1. The non-trivial idea that it is unsettling that we have inherited shared myths that are constitutive of analytic philosophy. Such shared myths also structure our relations with Continental philosophy.
2. The "question-begging" (Candlish, 176) nature of Moore's arguments can't be called out enough.
3. Candlish himself is not interested in a "Bradley revival," but he is attracted to the idea that his history offers a "lesson." (Again, most professional historians of philosophy recoil from being such moralizers.) In particular, he seems to think that the views of the late Wittgenstein suffer from the same kind of distorting processes that cause stereotyping. (188) (I return to this "lesson" below.)
4. As Candlish points out, the nature of relations and propositions are crucial to the way we do metaphysics. Candlish describes this as "comfortable pluralism" (185). I think I understand what he is trying to get at in so far as the methods and constraints of our metaphysics (and I am a friend of it) frequently lead to impasse(s) and are accompanied by appeals to arbitrarily invoked scientific virtues, by an inadequately constrained method of intuitions/thought-experiments, and all the faddish-ness that has led to a burgeoning field of methodological writings in metaphysics. (Again recall my satire.)
5. As Michael Della Rocca emphasizes, Russell was instrumental in the demise of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), which some think does offer principled constraints on metaphysics. (Candlish pays little attention to this aspect of the Bradley/Russell dispute, pp. 46-8) With the demise of PSR there are no bedrocks, except, perhaps, brute facts that can be taken for granted.
6. Without something like a PSR metaphysics (and philosophy more generally) is always vulnerable to having science provide the contingent facts that become the final arbiter within philosophy. (This is what I call "Newton's Challenge to Philosophy.)" Moreover, by giving science such a role within philosophy we also import some of the problematic aspects of science into philosophy--attempted consensus formation, the significance of grant-funding, etc.
7. Even if ceding one's foundations to science were itself not problematic, by doing so one also cedes to science a cultural significance that science cannot bear--we need some autonomy for philosophy because science without wisdom can become the height of human folly. (Of course, philosophy as it is currently organized around the intellectual division of labor of specialized experts is in no better position to offer wisdom.) But at least within philosophy we can still question, when necessary, the inflated claims that present science (but not the scientific ideal) sometimes makes on its own behalf.
8. Russell's idea that philosophy could be transformed into the resolution of technical problems did gain traction. (Candlish discusses this on 178-9.) Basically what's happened is that the *technical apparatus itself* became the source of the interesting problems and their resolution. (Given the so-called topic neutrality of the technical apparatus it would be strange if it could really end philosophic problems.) In fact, we have even witnessed that the credibility of working with the technical apparatus has also allowed *old* problems, which had been taken to be dissolved (e.g., the ontological argument), to be renewed.