ABSTRACT
British philosophy has usually been too anchored in common sense to permit much scope for speculative metaphysics, but during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth there occurred a great flowering of constructive philosophy. This period saw the creation of several original philosophical systems, but chief of these in terms of its renown and influence was that put forward by the Oxford philosopher F. H. Bradley. A useful way to understand his system is to observe that for Bradley there are three distinct levels or orders of experience: immediate experience, relational experience, and absolute experience. Bradley is a firm adherent of a principle that most of us would accept, the coherence of reality. “Immediate experience” and “feeling” are the technical terms Bradley uses to designate the basic experiential state in which reality is given or encountered. Appearance then for Bradley is a distorted vision or perspective on reality.
