Appearance and Reality

Appearance and Reality, which was first published in 1893, is the most important English contribution to metaphysical speculation. In keeping with the philosophical character of its author, it is an intriguingly ambiguous work. Concerned to probe the ultimate nature of Reality, it is nevertheless committed to experience as the ground of all knowledge, and to scepticism as the proper philosophical attitude. For all its scope, Appearance and Reality remains, as its author intended, an 'essay': an essay conceived in a style that is at once passionate, ironical and subtle. The philosophy of Bradley is the meeting-point of Hegel, Hume and Spinoza. To an age increasingly interested in the origins of metaphysical speculation, Appearance and Reality is a work of inexhaustible fascination.

F. H. Bradley (1856-1924) was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Among his other publications were Ethical Studies (also available in Oxford Paperbacks), The Principles of Logic, and Essays on Truth and Reality.

This reprint contains an Introduction by Richard Wollheim, Grote Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Logic in the University of London.