Collected Essays in Speculative Philosophy

305 Pages·2021·1.387 MB·English

by  James Bradley

‘This important book represents a sea-change in our understanding of T O N
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Schelling. Das shows how Schelling’s positive philosophy is already part of N E
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Schelling’s thought from early on, and his interpretation develops Schelling’s T W
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“actuality without potentiality” in the context of modern and contemporary o O
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political theology. A major achievement!’ l L
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Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas t O E
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A study of Schelling in the light of issues about l Y P

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contemporary political theology
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Saitya Brata Das rigorously examines the theologico-political works of l I
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F.W. J. von Schelling and sets his thought against his contemporary, V
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G.W. F. Hegel. He argues that Schelling inaugurates a new thinking y E
outside of Occidental metaphysics, by a paradoxical manner of exit, which S
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prepares for the post-metaphysical philosophy of Martin Heidegger, f
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Franz Rosenzweig and Jacques Derrida. S N
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This groundbreaking work contests the universal, homogenising world e
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politics of modernity through its rereading of Schelling’s later works and its l
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rethinking of religious eschatology. Intervening in contemporary debates n
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concerning the post-secular, the return of religion and political theology, C o l l e c t e d
Das shows that religion, in an essential sense, can open up infinitude from
the heart of finitude to an irreducible outside of the profane order of worldly E s s a y s i n
hegemonies. Religion here assumes a negative political theology of exception S
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without sovereign power. Schelling’s late political theology − far from being a I
T S p e c u l a t i v e
conservative relic of the nineteenth century, as critics have sometimes Y
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suggested − opens up avenues for thinking our common being-together and
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for forming a political theology worthy of the new millennium. R
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T P h i l o s o p h y
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Saitya Brata Dasis Associate Professor of English Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru

University, New Delhi, India. D
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Cover image: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling © ullstein bild/Getty Images
Cover design: www.hayesdesign.co.uk
ISBN 978-1-4744-1690-0
J A M E S B R A D L E Y
E D I T E D B Y S E A N J . M C G R A T H
edinburghuniversitypress.com
Collected Essays in
Speculative Philosophy
New Perspectives in Ontology
Series Editors: Peter Gratton, Southeastern Louisiana
University, and Sean J. McGrath, Memorial University of
Newfoundland, Canada
Publishes the best new work on the question of being and the history of metaphysics
After the linguistic and structuralist turn of the twentieth century, a renaissance
in metaphysics and ontology is occurring. Following in the wake of speculative
realism and new materialism, this series aims to build on this renewed interest
in perennial metaphysical questions, while opening up avenues of investigation
long assumed to be closed. Working within the Continental tradition without
being confined by it, the books in this series will move beyond the linguistic turn
and rethink the oldest questions in a contemporary context. They will challenge
old prejudices while drawing upon the speculative turn in post-Heideggerian
ontology, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of religion.
Editorial Advisory Board
Maurizio Farraris, Paul Franks, Iain Hamilton Grant, Garth Green, Adrian
Johnston, Catherine Malabou, Jeff Malpas, Marie-Eve Morin, Jeffrey Reid, Susan
Ruddick, Michael Schulz, Hasana Sharp, Alison Stone, Peter Trawny, Uwe Voigt,
Jason Wirth, Günter Zöller
Books available
The Political Theology of Schelling, Saitya Brata Das
Continental Realism and its Discontents, edited by Marie-Eve Morin
The Contingency of Necessity: Reason and God as Matters of Fact, Tyler Tritten
The Problem of Nature in Hegel’s Final System, Wes Furlotte
Schelling’s Naturalism: Motion, Space and the Volition of Thought, Ben Woodard
Thinking Nature: An Essay in Negative Ecology, Sean J. McGrath
Heidegger’s Ontology of Events, James Bahoh
The Political Theology of Kierkegaard, Saitya Brata Das
The Schelling–Eschenmayer Controversy, 1801: Nature and Identity,
Benjamin Berger and Daniel Whistler
Hölderlin’s Philosophy of Nature, edited by Rochelle Tobias
Affect and Attention After Deleuze and Whitehead: Ecological Attunement,
Russell J. Duvernoy
The Philosophical Foundations of the Late Schelling: The Turn to the Positive,
Sean J. McGrath
Schelling’s Ontology of Powers, Charlotte Alderwick
Collected Essays in Speculative Philosophy, by James Bradley and edited
by Sean J. McGrath
www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/epnpio
Collected Essays
in Speculative
Philosophy
JAMES BRADLEY
Edited by Sean J. McGrath
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© James Bradley, 2021
© editorial matter and organisation Sean J. McGrath, 2021
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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Typeset in Garamond and Gill Sans
by R. J. Footring Ltd, Derby, UK, and
printed and bound in Great Britain.
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ISBN 978 1 4744 8586 9 (hardback)
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The right of James Bradley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and
Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Cover credit: Wassily Kandinsky, Succession, 1935. Oil on canvas, 31 7/8 × 39 3/8 in,
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1944.
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Preface: Creative Order – James Bradley’s Speculative Metaphysics xi
Peter Harris
Introduction: James Bradley’s Path to the Trinity 1
Sean J. McGrath
1 F. H. Bradley’s Metaphysics of Feeling and its Place in the
History of Philosophy 36
2 Whitehead, Heidegger and the Paradoxes of the New 50
3 From Presence to Process: Bradley and Whitehead 82
4 The Speculative Generalisation of the Function:
A Key to Whitehead 100
5 Triads, Trinities and Rationality 115
6 The Triune Event: Event Ontology, Reason and Love 133
7 What is Existence? 149
8 Beyond Hermeneutics: Peirce’s Semiology as a Trinitarian
Metaphysics of Communication 173
9 A Key to Collingwood’s Metaphysics of Absolute
Presuppositions: The Trinitarian Creed 189
10 Philosophy and Trinity 245
vi | contents
Postscript: My Friend James Bradley 264
Helmut Maaßen
Appendix A: James Bradley’s Tables of Triads and Trinities 268
Appendix B: Complete List of James Bradley’s Publications 272
Index 276
At the request of James Bradley, this book is dedicated to his children: Sonia,
Julian, Isobel and Adrian
Acknowledgements
This book has been eight years in preparation and many people were
involved at different stages of its production. The editor’s thanks go Emily
Jean Gallant, Michelle Mahoney and Jennifer Dyer. Helmut Maaßen,
William Hamrick, Brian Henning, James Scott Johnston and Douglas
Hedley each reviewed the manuscript, offered helpful comments to the
editor, and unequivocally supported its publication. My heartfelt thanks
to each of them for supporting Bradley’s work and advancing speculative
philosophy in their own ways. Special acknowledgement is due to the late
Peter Harris, who eagerly awaited the publication of this book, and who
was always available to discuss with me issues related to Bradley’s work.
Peter Harris was Bradley’s oldest friend and colleague from his Cambridge
days, and, like him, an inspired teacher of philosophy at Memorial. He
read everything Bradley wrote, and on more than one occasion Bradley’s
writings emerged out of discussions with him. The two were planning on
co-authoring a work in speculative philosophy, but life had other plans for
both of them. Together Bradley and Harris made the MUN Department of
Philosophy a true university in the medieval sense, ‘a community of teachers
and scholars’ (universitas magistrorum et scholarium).
My final thanks go to my wife, Esther Squires. She has been key to
getting this project off my desk and into press, both by assisting me with
the final manuscript and putting up with my preoccupation with it in its
final days of completion.
I would like to acknowledge the support of Memorial University in
covering the costs of indexing this book.
acknowledgements | ix
The Introduction, Chapters 5, 7, 9, the Postscript and the Appendices are
published here for the first time.
• Chapter 5 is an unpublished paper read at the Winter Colloquium
of the Department of Philosophy of Memorial University, St John’s,
Newfoundland, in 2003.
• Chapter 7 is an unpublished paper prepared as chapter 1 of a book
on ontology Bradley planned in 2011 but never completed. Bradley
lectured on ‘Strong and Weak Theories of Existence’ in the 1996 Winter
Col loquium at Memorial and again at the meeting of the Canadian Phil-
osophical Association held in St John’s, Newfoundland, in June 1997,
and published some of this material in Bradley (1999). See Appendix B.
• Chapter 9 is a significantly extended version of material which Bradley
published in 2011. See Appendix B, p. 275.
The other chapters were previously published as follows. Careful readers
will notice the repetition of certain passages in these essays. I have retained
these repetitions where they are essential to the flow of the argument.
• Chapter 1, ‘F. H. Bradley’s Metaphysics of Feeling and its Place in
the History of Philosophy’, first appeared in A. Manser and G. Stock
(eds), The Philosophy of F. H. Bradley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984),
227–42.
• Chapter 2, ‘Whitehead, Heidegger and the Paradoxes of the New’, first
appeared in Process Studies 20.3 (1991), 127–50.
• Chapter 3, ‘From Presence to Process: Bradley and Whitehead’, first
appeared in James Bradley (ed.), Philosophy After F.H. Bradley (Bristol:
Thoemmes Press, 1996), 147–68.
• Chapter 4, ‘The Speculative Generalisation of the Function: A Key to
Whitehead’, first appeared in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 64 (2002), 253–71.
• Chapter 6, ‘The Triune Event: Event Ontology, Reason and Love’, first
appeared in Roland Faber, Henry Krips and Daniel Pettus (eds), Event
and Decision: Ontology and Politics in Badiou, Deleuze and Whitehead
(Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 97–114.
• Chapter 8, ‘Beyond Hermeneutics: Peirce’s Semiology as a Trinitarian
Metaphysics of Communication’, first appeared in Analecta Hermeneu-
tica 1 (2009), 45–57.
• Chapter 10, ‘Philosophy and Trinity’, first appeared in Symposium:
Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16.1 (2012), 155–77. It originated in a
paper Bradley read at the meeting of the Canadian Society for Continen-
tal Philosophy in St John’s in the fall of 2011. Bradley’s paper was part of
a panel on the relevance of the late Schelling for Continental Philosophy.
• Peter Harris’s preface first appeared in Analecta Hermeneutica 4 (2012)
under the title, ‘Creative Order: The Case for Speculative Metaphysics’.