Russell’s Transcendental Argument Revisited

This paper seeks to delineate some of the significant modes of philosophical resistance to, and subversion of, British Idealism already operational in Russell’s earliest work. One key tactic employed in An Essay On the Foundations of Geometry (1897) is to reorient the findings of the ‘modern logic’ of Bradley and Bosanquet by employing some ‘transcendental’ or neo-Kantian strategies. Russell thereby arrives at a number of conclusions with a metaphysical or epistemological import at wide variance with the approach of the British Idealists. Yet, despite this divergence, Russell does retain a basic commitment to at least one of their fundamental logical dogmas: the unity of analysis and synthesis. Should this reading prove fruitful, philosophical analysis in Britain, from its earliest strivings and first manifestations, can be seen as deriving significant sustenance from both Idealist and neo-Kantian