Among the Riddles of Existence

Among the riddles of existence are the riddles that are artifacts of the attempts of thinkers to unravel the riddle of existence. This is one way into philosophy. It is the way of G. E. Moore. What riddled him was not the world so much as the strange things philosophers such as F. H. Bradley said about it.  

If the Moorean way were the only way, there would be no philosophy. Moore was very sharp but superficial. Yet you cannot ignore him if you are serious about philosophy.  For you cannot ignore surfaces and seemings and the sense that is common. Bradley, perhaps not as sharp, is deep.  I am of the tribe of Bradley. Temperament and sensibility play major roles in our tribal affiliation as our own William James would insist and did insist in Chapter One of his Pragmatism with his distinction between the tender-minded and the tough-minded.

The entry to which I have just linked has it that the tender-minded are dogmatic as opposed to skeptical. Bradley, though tender-minded, is not. He is avis rara, not easily pigeon-holed. He soars above the sublunary in a manner quite his own.  On wings of wax like Icarus?  Like Kant's dove?  Said dove soars through the air  and imagines it could soar higher and with less effort if there were no air to offer resistance.  But the dove is mistaken.  The dove on the wing does not understand the principle of the wing, Bernoulli's principle.  Is the metaphysician  like the dove? The dove needs the air to fly. Can the metaphysician cut loose from the sensible and sublunary and make the ascent to the Absolute?

In the face of temperament and sensibility argument comes too late. 

Bradley and James seem to agree on the latterliness of argument. In the preface to Appearance and Reality, Oxford 1893, Bradley quotes from his notebook:

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct. (p. x)

But why 'bad'? If I could speak to Bradley's shade I would suggest this emendation:  

Metaphysics is the finding of plausible, though not rationally compelling, reasons for what we believe upon instinct . . . .

Nietzsche too can be brought in: "Every philosophy is its author's Selbsterkenntnis, self-knowledge." 

As for Moore, is he the real deal? My young self scorned him. No true philosopher! He gets his problems from books, not from the world! The young man was basically right, but extreme in the manner of the young.   I have come to appreciate Moore's subtlety and workmanship.