Baking with Kant and Bradley

Thomas, Emily; Leech, Jessica

Abstract

This paper compares the views of Kant and F.H. Bradley on the nature of judgment or experience. We argue that, while there are many differences between their idealist systems, Kant and Bradley agree on a basic issue: there is a sense in which a whole judgment or experience is prior to its parts. Through the extended metaphor of cake baking, we show that for Kant there is an important sense in which a judgment --in spite of resulting from the synthesis of a manifold --is prior to its parts; and, for Bradley, immediate experience is prior to the very notion of parts. Kant and Bradley disagree over the nature of the idealist cake, but they agree that the cake is prior to its slices.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2013-01
• Deposit Date: Oct 21, 2016
• Journal: Collingwood and British Idealism Studies
• Print ISSN: 1744-9413
• Publisher: Imprint Academic
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 75-94
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1395098
• Publisher URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/col/2013/00000019/00000001/art00004