Bradley, Francis Herbert (1846-1924), was a British idealistic philosopher. His chief work, Appearance and Reality (1893), outlined his idea that reality is essentially a suprapersonal Being, or Absolute. He believed reality can best be described as a harmonious whole, in which all the contradictions of personal experience are overcome. It cannot be known by rational analysis, but, by analogy, can be vaguely distinguished from human experience. Bradley’s version of absolute idealism is a controversial adoption of the philosophy of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Bradley was born at Glasbury, in Wales.
