VI Mr. Bradley's Understanding explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• The Limits of Conceptual Thought

  James argues that Bradley's intellectualism, which defines intellect as the power to perceive separations but not unions, is a maimed and amputated power that cannot account for the conjunctions of experience.

• The Primacy of Experience

  James defends radical empiricism by asserting that the conjunctions given in pure experience are sufficient and that Bradley's demand for an abstract union is a duplication of what is already present.

Characters to notice

• F. H. Bradley

  James critiques Bradley's view that the intellect cannot unite diversity, arguing that Bradley's dialectic fails to invalidate the conjunctions of experience.

Key passages

• “To understand a complex AB, I must begin with A or B. And beginning, say with A, if I then merely find B, I have either lost A, or I have got beside A, [ the word 'beside' seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction 'external' and therefore unintelligible ] something else, and in neither case have I understood.”

  Bradley claims that to understand a complex whole, one must start with a part, but then the other part appears as an external addition, making true understanding impossible.

  James quotes Bradley to illustrate his view that the intellect cannot unite diversity.

• “All that I can verify in the transitions which Mr. Bradley's intellect desiderates as its proprius motus is a reminiscence of these and other sensible conjunctions (especially space-conjunctions), but a reminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized.”

  The intellectual transitions Bradley seeks are merely vague memories of the sensible conjunctions already present in experience, which he fails to recognize.

  James argues that Bradley's desired intellectual transitions are actually derived from sensible experience.