Collected Essays in Speculative Philosophy: (New Perspectives in Ontology)

Collects the essays of James Bradley (1947 2012) for the first time, showcasing his speculative cosmology of the Trinity Reinvigorates the debate about the role and significance of speculative philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition Reveals the depth and breadth of Bradley's philosophical thought Presented in chronological order, following the movement of Bradley's thought Includes a preface by Peter Harris and a contextualising introduction by Sean McGrath This collection of essays by James Bradley presents his unique vision: a speculative cosmology of the Trinity, drawing on the vast history of Western philosophy. This journey led him into an intensive study of a number of different thinkers, ancient and modern, including Plato, John Scotus Eriugena, Duns Scotus, Hegel, Schelling, Peirce, Whitehead and Collingwood. James Bradley was Professor of Philosophy at Memorial University, Newfoundland from 1988 to 2012. His work was a lifelong examination of themes in speculative metaphysics within a broad historical context. Throughout these investigations, Bradley remained focussed on a single project: the elaboration of the triadic structure of speculative logic, expressed in both Christian theology and more metaphysical terms. Bradley was convinced that he had discovered the key to ontology and the history of philosophy, theology and science in the logic of the Trinity.

Table of Contents:
Preface; Creative Order: James Bradley’s Speculative Metaphysics, Peter Harris; Acknowledgments; Introduction: James Bradley’s Path to the Trinity, Sean J. McGrath; 1. F. H. Bradley’s Metaphysics of Feeling and its Place in the History of Philosophy; 2. Whitehead, Heidegger and the Paradoxes of the New; 3. From Presence to Process: Bradley and Whitehead; 4. The Speculative Generalization of the Function: A Key to Whitehead; 5. Triads, Trinities, and Rationality; 6. The Triune Event: Event Ontology, Reason, and Love; 7. What is Existence?; 8. Beyond Hermeneutics: Peirce’s Semiology as a Trinitarian Metaphysics of Communication; 9. A Key to Collingwood’s Metaphysics of Absolute Presuppositions: The Trinitarian Creed; 10. Philosophy and Trinity; Postscript: My Friend James Bradley, Helmut Maassen.

About the Author :
James Bradley was Professor of Philosophy at Memorial University of Newfoundland from 1988-2012, and Head of the Department from 2003 until his death in 2012. Sean J. McGrath is Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and a Member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of The Philosophical Foundations of the Late Schelling: The Turn to the Positive (EUP, 2021), Thinking Nature. An Essay in Negative Ecology (EUP, 2019), The Dark Ground of Spirit: Schelling and the Unconscious(Routledge, 2012), Heidegger. A Very Critical Introduction (William B. Eerdmans, 2008) and The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy (Catholic University of America Press, 2006). He is editor of The Palgrave Macmillan Handbook to Schelling (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2020), Rethinking German Idealism (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016) and A Companion to Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Religious Life (Rodopi, 2010).

Review :
Weaving together published articles with never-before published materials, Essays in Speculative Philosophy reveals for the first time the depth and breadth of James Bradley’s philosophical thought, and how much was lost with his untimely death. These essays are valuable not only for the insightful and novel contributions they make to the understanding of often-overlooked aspects of the thought of philosophers such F. H. Bradley, A. N. Whitehead and C. S. Peirce, but because, taken together, they reveal an eminent thinker making novel advances in metaphysics. In the standard analytic historiography, philosophy was transformed in the 17th century from the handmaiden of theology into the handmaiden of the natural sciences. Bradley challenges this pervasive narrative by exploring the persisting theological dimension, especially the ontological–trinitarian structures, of much modern metaphysics, and boldly defends the contemporary relevance of philosophical Idealism. These are learned, brilliant and provocative essays that illuminate the thought of an unjustly neglected British–Canadian philosopher. Bradley deftly weaves through the traditions of British, American and Continental philosophy on his way to establishing a speculative metaphysics that places emphasis on the Trinity and Trinitarian thinking. Along the way, Bradley encounters figures such as Plato, Plotinus, F.H. Bradley, Martin Heidegger, R.G. Collingwood and, of course, C.S. Peirce. Each of these and others serve to move Bradley’s arguments inexorably towards a metaphysics from a Trinitarian standpoint. A superb reading of the history of metaphysics.