Gabriel Marcel and F. H. Bradley: Enemies of Abstraction

This book is the first sustained scholarly treatment of the influence of the famed British idealist F. H. Bradley (1846-1924) on the work of the French existentialist and playwright, Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973). The author argues that studying the philosophical work of Gabriel Marcel together with that of F. H. Bradley is mutually illuminating for our understanding of each philosopher. Marcel's more dramatic, existential, and phenomenological work illustrates the significance and relevance of what seems, at first glance, to be the dry metaphysics of Bradley. Bradley's philosophy helps explain the metaphysical relevance of Marcel's thought, as well as supply the needed theoretical elaboration of key concepts that Marcel left underdeveloped. The author takes the reader through a series of fundamental metaphysical issues, including truth, the nature of immediate experience, abstraction, identity, personhood, and God. The book concludes by suggesting that a synthesis of the insights of Marcel and Bradley yields a novel version of philosophical personalism - the view that persons are the most metaphysically fundamental and morally valuable beings that exist.