British philosophy

British philosophy refers to the philosophical tradition of the British people. The universities of Cambridge and Oxford both have long philosophical traditions since medieval times.

British philosophy includes medieval philosophers like Saint Anselm of Canterbury and William of Ockham, and includes schools of modern philosophy like British empiricism and utilitarianism. Since the 20th century, British philosophy has been dominated by analytic philosophy.

Characterizations

According to one author "The native characteristics of British philosophy are these: common sense, dislike of complication, a strong preference for the concrete over the abstract and a certain awkward honesty of method in which an occasional pearl of poetry is embedded".

According to American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce: "From very early times, it has been the chief intellectual characteristics of the English to wish to effect everything by the plainest and directest means, without unnecessary contrivance...In philosophy, this national tendency appears as a strong preference for the simplest theories, and a resistance to any complication of the theory as long as there is the least possibility that the facts can be explained in the simpler way. And, accordingly, British philosophers have always desired to weed out of philosophy all conceptions which could not be made perfectly definite and easily intelligible, and have shown strong nominalistic tendencies since the time of Edward I, or even earlier."

Bertrand Russell wrote: "The British are distinguished among the nations of modern Europe, on the one hand by the excellence of their philosophers, and on the other hand by their contempt for philosophy. In both respects they show their wisdom."

Medieval

Medieval philosophy was very much a part of Christian philosophy and theology. It was also much concerned with the problem of universals, inherited from antiquity.

Platonism

The Old English Boethius translation was attributed in one manuscript to King Alfred (r. 870–899), and this was long accepted, but the attribution is now considered doubtful. The Roman neoplatonist Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy and influenced medieval philosophy with his dictum to "join faith to reason".

John Scotus Erigena

John Scotus Erigena (c. 800 – c. 877) was a mystical neoplatonist from Ireland, who translated and made commentaries upon the work of Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite. He succeeded Charlemagne's scholar Alcuin of York (c. 735–804) as head of the Palace School at Aachen. Bertrand Russell dubbed him "the most astonishing person of the ninth century". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that "He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm".

Anselm of Canterbury

A colourised 16th-century portrait of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury

Saint Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 1109) was an important philosopher and theologian of the Catholic Church, who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. Anselm is famed as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God and of the satisfaction theory of atonement. This is found in the Proslogion (c. 1078). Anselm's works are considered philosophical as well as theological since they endeavour to render Christian tenets of faith, traditionally taken as a revealed truth, as a rational system.

Before Canterbury, Anselm was at the French abbey of Bec. The followers of William the Conqueror supported the abbey, enriching it with extensive properties in England following the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Adelard of Bath

Adelard of Bath (c. 1080 – c. 1150) may be the first philosopher from England. He is best known as the translator of Euclid's Elements, and also was one of the first to introduce the Arabic numeral system to Europe. He also translated the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi. Robert of Chester also translated al-Khwarizmi.

Adelard was a follower of French philosopher Walter of Mortagne (c. 1100 – 1174), leader of the "indifferentists", a type of platonist who attempts to avoid the more extreme forms of platonism, and according to whom the universal it itself indifferent, changing according to points of view.

John of Salisbury

16th century depiction of John of Salisbury teaching.

John of Salisbury (late 1110s – 1180) was one of the most notable figures of the twelfth century Renaissance. He was made Bishop of Chartres and advocated Cicero's academic skepticism. John of Salisbury wrote the Policraticus and the Metalogicon.

Aristotelianism

Daniel of Morley (c. 1140 – c. 1210) and Michael Scot (c. 1175–c. 1232) traveled to Toledo, known for its school of translators of Greek and Arabic sources, which included Alfred of Sareshel. Michael Scot translated Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes, and was the greatest public intellectual of his day.

John Blund

John Blund (c. 1175–1248) is called by medieval historian Maurice Powicke the "first English Aristotelian." Blund wrote Tractatus de Anima (c. 1200), one of the first works of western philosophy to make use of the recently translated De Anima by Aristotle, and also Avicenna's work on the soul, also called De Anima.

Alexander Neckam

Alexander Neckam (1157 – 1217) was an abbot of Cirencester Abbey, who was influenced by Blund. According to one author, he was one of the first Western scholars to know the translations of Aristotle. Neckam was also interested in Platonism. In his Speculum speculationum (c. 1215), Alexander combats the Cathar heresy, particularly its belief in dualism, and he applies dialectic logic to the study of theology. He also contributed the earliest European description of the compass.

Oxford's Adam of Bockenfield (c. 1220 – 1293) and Richard Rufus of Cornwall (d. c. 1260) also wrote on Aristotle.

Alexander of Hales

Robert Grosseteste from an early 14th-century portrait.

Alexander of Hales (c. 1185 – 1245) given the scholastic accolade of Doctor Irrefragibilis, or "Irrefutable Teacher", influenced scholasticism and wrote a commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences (c. 1150).

Robert Grosseteste

Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170 – 1253) played a key role in the development of the scientific method, emphasizing experiments. A. C. Crombie called him "the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford, and in some ways, of the modern English intellectual tradition". Grosseteste studied optics and believed in the "metaphysics of light", writing De Luce (On Light) and De Colore (On Colour).

A friend of Grosseteste was Adam Marsh (c. 1200–1259). Oxford's Richard Fishacre (c. 1200–1248) was influenced by Grosseteste, and wrote a commentary of Peter Lombard's Sentences. Bartholomaeus Anglicus (1202–1272) is also believed to have studied under Grosseteste.

William of Sherwood

William of Sherwood (c. 1200 – c. 1272) was a medieval English scholastic philosopher, logician, and teacher. Little is known of his life, but he is thought to have studied in Paris and he was a master at Oxford in 1252. He was the author of two books which were an important influence on the development of scholastic logic: Introductiones in Logicam (Introduction to Logic), and Syncategoremata. These are the first known works to deal in a systematic way with what is now called supposition theory, and were influential on the development of logic in both England and on the continent. Syncategoremata were terms like "and", "or", and "not" which merely combine other terms, while categoremata such as man, Socrates, and animal, could genuinely act as predicates. A treatise on "insolubles" or paradoxes like the Liar Paradox was also attributed to William of Sherwood.

Roger Bacon

Statue of Roger Bacon at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1294), also known as Doctor Mirabilis (Latin: "Wondrous Doctor"), was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar, who was influenced by Marsh, and commented on Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes.

Bacon was highly influenced by Aristotle's Metaphysics, but his view on universals is debated among scholars, and so is resolved as "both ‘extreme-realism’ and proto-nominalism". He is also the great British contributor to Aristotle's logic of the period, along with William of Sherwood. Bacon's views are found in works like the Opus Majus, the Opus Minus, and the Opus Tertium. Bacon also wrote The Art and Science of Logic.

Bacon placed considerable emphasis on optics and empirical methods. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest advocates of the modern scientific method. He was an alchemist and is the first European with a description of gunpowder. Bacon also proposed early flying machines like balloons and an ornithopter. Bacon influenced John Peckham (c. 1230 – 1292) .

Duns Scotus

Duns Scotus

John Duns Scotus (c. 1265 – 1308) also known as Doctor Subtilis ("the subtle doctor") was an important philosopher and theologian of the High Middle Ages. Scotus was born around 1265, at Duns, in Berwickshire, Scotland. In 1291 he was ordained as a priest in Northampton, England. A note in Codex 66 of Merton College, Oxford, records that Scotus "flourished at Cambridge, Oxford and Paris". He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 20 March 1993.

Scotus is well known for the "univocity of being," the formal distinction, and the idea of haecceity. The univocity of being is contrasted with the Thomist view of the equivocity of being and analogia entis. The univocity of being holds that existence is the most abstract concept we have and is applicable to everything that exists.

The formal distinction is a way of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing such that the distinction is intermediate between what is merely conceptual, and what is fully real or mind-independent. Haecceity (from the Latin haecceitas) is the idea of "thisness," a concept which denotes the discrete qualities, properties or characteristics of a thing which make it a particular thing.

Thomas Wilton studied under Scotus. Walter Burley (c. 1275 – 1345) studied under Wilton. Burley was a noted logician.

Oxford Calculators

Thomas Bradwardine (c. 1300 – 1349) was a follower of Scotus who with Richard Swineshead (fl. c. 1340 – 1354), William Heytesbury (c. 1313 – 1373) , and John Dumbleton (c. 1310 – 1349) formed the Oxford Calculators, who were influenced by Burley. As well as using logic in philosophical and theological disputes, they studied mathematics and physics. Influenced by French thinkers Gerard of Brussels and Nicole Oresme, they studied acceleration or "uniform difform motion."

William of Ockham

Ockham depicted on a stained glass window.

William of Ockham (c. 1288 – c. 1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher. Ockham advocated nominalism as a solution to the problem of universals in such works as Summa Logicae (1323).

He is perhaps most well known for his principle of parsimony, famously known as Occam's razor. This actual term is claimed not to appear in his writings, but rather summarizes the principle he expressed in passages such as Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate [Plurality must never be posited without necessity] and Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora (It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer). Generally it refers to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar conclusions.

Ockham had followers like Robert Holcot (c. 1290 – 1349), Adam of Wodeham (1298–1358), and William Crathorn (fl. c. 1330). Holcot was known as the Doctor firmus et indefatigabilis, the "strong and tireless doctor." Holcot died of the Black plague. Walter Chatton (c. 1290–1343) was Ockham's intellectual rival. Crathorn and Chatton both criticized Aristotelian notions of space.

Ockham's followers influenced Pelagians like Thomas of Buckingham and Uthred of Boldon (c. 1320–1397). Ockham spent his final years taking refuge with Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor at the Alter Hof in Munich, and his work also influenced German philosophy.

John Wycliffe

John Wycliffe (1328 – 1384) was one of the last scholastics, and an important predecessor of Protestantism. Martin Luther accepted in his Assertio that Wycliffe taught that "all events occur by absolute necessity." However, other scholars now dispute this characterization: according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy he maintained "simultaneously the necessity of all that happens and human freedom (cf. Tractatus de universalibus, ch. 14, pp. 333–47); and many times he affirms that it would be heretical to say that all things happen by absolute necessity..."

Modern

Renaissance and Reformation

Thomas More

Thomas More

Renaissance humanist Thomas More (1478 – 1535) wrote Utopia (1516), which describes the political system of an imaginary island state. More opposed the Protestant Reformation and Henry VIII's separation from the Catholic Church. He was convicted of treason and beheaded at Tower Hill. Pope Pius XI canonised More in 1935 as a martyr.

Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker (1554 – 1600) was a Thomist who believed the world was governed by natural law. His defense of redeemed reason informed the theology of the Anglican, seventeenth-century Caroline Divines.

Thomas Wilson, the first logic writer in English.

Logic

There were Renaissance logicians like Thomas Wilson (1524–1581), John Seton (c. 1498 - 1567), Ralph Lever (d. c. 1585), John Sanderson (died 1602), and Richard Crakanthorpe (1567–1624). Wilson's Logique (1551) and The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), have been called "the first complete works on logic and rhetoric in English". Lever is the author of The Arte of Reason, rightly termed, Witcraft (1573). Seton's work was recognised as the standard treatise on logic for nearly a century.

Ramism

Sir William Temple defended Ramus.

At Cambridge, William Temple (1628 – 1699) defended French logician, educational reformer, and Protestant convert Ramus against the attacks of Aristotelian and Neoplatonist Everard Digby (c. 1550 – c. 1592). Another Ramist was William Ames (1576 – 1633), who was especially influential in New England and Colonial America. Ramism also influenced poet John Milton.

Mysticism

Digby influenced mystic Robert Fludd (1574 – 1637) and Neoplatonist Robert Greville (1607 – 1643), who was a Parliamentarian general in the English Civil War (1642 – 1651) killed by a Royalist sniper at the Siege of Lichfield. Another mystic was English dissenter John Pordage (1607 – 1681), who was inspired by the ideas of German mystic and theosophist Jakob Böhme. Shortly after his death Jane Leade (1624 – 1704) founded the Philadelphian Society. Other members include Roger Crab (1621 – 1680), Ann Bathurst, and Richard Roach (1662 – 1730).

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was an Englishman who was a statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist and author in addition to being a philosopher. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his philosophical works.

Bacon has been called the father of empiricism, and was a pivotal figure in the Scientific Revolution. In works like Novum Organum, Bacon argued against Aristotelian approaches to logic and science (the old Organon). Bacon rejected pure a priori deduction and so established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry. This is often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method.

Bacon's demand for experiment and a planned procedure for investigating all things natural marked a new insight, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. His New Atlantis presents his vision of the future.

His dedication probably led to his death. He famously contracted pneumonia while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat, so bringing him into a rare historical group of scientists killed by their own experiments.

The Royal Society

John Wilkins was Oliver Cromwell's brother-in-law.

The Royal Society was founded in 28 November 1660, when a meeting of twelve natural philosophers influenced by Bacon's philosophy at Gresham College decided to commence a "Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning". Remarkably it included both Parliamentarians (Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, William Petty, Jonathan Goddard, and Abraham Hill) and Royalists (William Ball, William Brouncker, Alexander Bruce, 2nd Earl of Kincardine, Christopher Wren, Robert Moray, and Sir Paul Neile). Lawrence Rooke alludes classification.

Robert Boyle, a founder of modern chemistry.

Bacon's philosophy had also influenced the Royal Society's predecessors like at Gresham College and the Invisible College around 1645. Shortly after the end of the First English Civil War, John Wilkins (1614 – 1672) wrote Mathematicall Magick (1648), and then moved to Oxford, where Wilkins started the Oxford Philosophical Club, active in the period from 1649 to 1660. Not to be confused with the Oxford Philosophical Society, which Robert Plot (1640 – 1696) started in 1683 at the Ashmolean Museum.

Wilkins was Oliver Cromwell's brother-in-law. William Petty travelled with Cromwell's army in Ireland as physician-general and is best known for his work on early economics. Jonathan Goddard was also a physician for Cromwell, one of those attending to him at his death. Alexander Bruce served as a captain with the Royalist cavalry, fighting at the Battle of Worcester.

Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691) wrote The Sceptical Chymist (1661) and is considered one of the founders of modern chemistry. He is the namesake of Boyle's law. Boyle rejected the scholastic hylomorphism inherited from Aristotle. He also criticized German hermeticist and alchemist Paracelsus.

The Great Fire of London depicted by an unknown painter (1675)

In 1662, Parliamentarian Henry Oldenburg (c. 1618 – 1677) became secretary of the Royal Society. Royalist Walter Charleton (1619 – 1707) joined in 1663. Charleton was influenced by French Epicurean Pierre Gassendi and was "the main conduit for the transmission of Epicurean ideas to England". John Evelyn (1620 – 1706) was another Royalist who joined in 1663, perhaps best known for his diary.

The Royal Society's journal the Philosophical Transactions was established in 1665. Christopher Wren (1632 – 1723) is best known for his architecture done in the English Baroque style after the Great Fire of London (1666), which came soon after the Great Plague (1665-1666). Wren was responsible for rebuilding 52 churches including St Paul's Cathedral. Wren was also a natural philosopher. His friend Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703) commented: "Since the time of Archimedes there scarce ever met in one man in so great perfection such a mechanical hand and so philosophical mind."

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English philosopher, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory. Hobbes argued for a sovereign absolute monarch to save man from the state of nature wherein life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

Although Hobbes was a champion of monarchy, he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.

Hobbes was a materialist, a nominalist, and an egoist, who had an intellectual rivalry with French philosopher and "founder of modern philosophy" and Cartesianism René Descartes (1596 – 1650). Hobbes influenced Bernard Mandeville (1670 – 1733), famous for The Fable of the Bees (1714).

Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of fields, including history, geometry, physics of gases, theology, ethics, general philosophy, and political science. His account of human nature as self-interested cooperation has proved to be an enduring theory in the field of philosophical anthropology.

Cambridge Platonism

Benjamin Whichcote

Ralph Cudworth

Henry More

The Cambridge Platonists like Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More, were an influential group of Neoplatonists. They influenced the likes of Peter Sterry, Nathanael Culverwel, Joseph Glanvill, Richard Cumberland, Anne Conway, George Rust, John Smith, and John Norris.

Benjamin Whichcote (1609 – 1683) disagreed with total depravity. He was also a Platonist who called reason "the very voice of God." Ralph Cudworth (1617 – 1688) was a leading opponent of Hobbes, known for his The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678). Cudworth challenged Hobbes' determinism, believing in free will and a hegemonikon or command center of the mind and soul connecting it to the body, a notion borrowed from the Stoics.

Perspective View with a Woman Reading a Letter by Samuel van Hoogstraten. This painting is often thought to depict Anne Conway, though that attribution has been disputed.

Henry More (1614 – 1687) was a leading critic of Descartes and Cartesianism. More rejected Cartesian dualism, arguing that spirit, like matter, must be extended in space. He coined the term fourth dimension and introduced the concept of essential spissitude to describe the spatial extension of immaterial substance. He opposed the Cartesian view that animals were mere machines, asserting instead that they possess immaterial but mortal souls.

Assertion of Liberty of Conscience by the Independents of the Westminster Assembly of Divines by John Rogers Herbert

Peter Sterry (1613 – 1672) was a Puritan follower of Whichcote and was the chaplain for Robert Greville. Sterry was then the chaplain for Oliver Cromwell and a member of the Westminster Assembly.

Nathanael Culverwell (1619–1651) was an opponent of Herbert of Cherbury, who wrote De Veritate (1624) which positioned him as the "father of English Deism". Culverwell in response wrote An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (1654).

Joseph Glanvill (1636–1680) has been called "the most skillful apologist of the virtuosi", or in other words the leading propagandist for the approach of the English natural philosophers of the later 17th century. Glanvill's posthumously published Saducismus Triumphatus (1681) affirms the existence of witches.

Richard Cumberland (1631–1718) was a critic of Hobbes who can be considered the founder of utilitarianism. Cumberland was also a member of the Latitudinarian movement.

Isaac Newton

Anne Conway (1631–1679) was a critic of Descartes and advocate of vitalism. She wrote The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (c. 1677). Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper called her "England's greatest female philosopher." Another was John Norris's correspondent Mary Astell, considered "the first English feminist".

British Empiricism

The three 'classic' British empiricists in the early modern era were John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. The term "British empiricism" refers to the philosophical tradition in Britain that was epitomised by these thinkers.

A heavy influence on British empiricism and the Enlightenment was the philosophy of Newtonianism, the work of natural philosopher and Royal Society fellow Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727). His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1686) included his laws of motion, introducing classical mechanics in physics.

Newton had obtained his degree at Cambridge just before the university temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague. Soon after, he invented the infinitesimal calculus. In religion, Newton was a kind of Nontrinitarian Arian, who read John Biddle, "the father of English Unitarianism."

John Locke

John Locke

John Locke (1632–1704) was a physician and an empiricist who advocated religious tolerance at the beginning of the modern period of philosophy. Newton's influence on Locke was mediated by Dutch natural philosopher Christiaan Huygens, who assured Locke that Newton's mathematics was sound, leading to Locke's acceptance of a corpuscular-mechanical physics.

Locke held to representationalism, believing all of the objects of the understanding are ideas, where ideas exist in the mind. One of his goals in his work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is to trace the origin of ideas. Locke also believed in the association of ideas.

While there are innate capacities for Locke, there are no innate ideas “stamped upon the mind” from birth, and all knowledge is rooted in experience. This is known as the tabula rasa or blank slate. Further, there are also simple ideas and complex ideas. Simple ideas enter by the senses, and they are simple and unmixed. Complex ideas are simple ideas that have been combined and related together using the abstracting activity of the mind.

Locke is also responsible for an early theory of personal identity. He thought that our being the same person from one time to another consists, not in our having the same soul or the same body, but rather the same series of psychological connections. For Locke, to be a person is to be an intelligent thinking being that can recognize or memorize being the same thinking thing in different times and places.

The Prince of Orange landing at Torbay, part of the Glorious Revolution, as depicted in an illustration by Johan Herman Isings

Religion and Revolution

John Locke wrote Two Treatises of Government (1689) to justify the Glorious Revolution (1688). It states government required the consent of the governed, and that an unjust ruler could be overthrown. His work influenced the American Revolution and the French Revolution. In America, Locke most notably influenced Thomas Jefferson. In France, Locke most notably influenced Voltaire and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac.

Locke's patron's grandson was moral philosopher Lord Shaftesbury (1671 – 1713) , who was also influenced by the Cambridge Platonists. Shaftesbury influenced Joseph Butler (1692 – 1752), who along with Richard Bentley (1662 – 1742) and William Warburton (1698 – 1779), were opponents of deism.

Samuel Clarke

Samuel Clarke (1675 – 1729), the major figure in British philosophy between Locke and Berkeley, was an ethical rationalist who opposed deism. Clarke was taught by Newton's friend and Cartesian John Ellis (c. 1634 – 1716). Clarke was a Unitarian, some of whom still use Clarke's altered, Nontrinitarian revision of the Book of Common Prayer (1662).

Edmund Burke

Butler and Clarke influenced conservative and Counter-Enlightenment figure Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797), writer of A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) and Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Burke distinguishes the beautiful and the sublime, and opposed the French Revolution, claiming it was distinct from the Glorious Revolution (and the American Revolution) which had been wrongly perceived as radical.

The deists included Irish philosopher John Toland, Matthew Tindal, William Wollaston, Anthony Collins, and Henry St. John Viscount Bolingbroke. John Toland's best known work, Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), opposed hierarchy in both church and state. In Ireland, copies were burned by the public hangman, and he was forced to flee the country never to return. Anthony Collins dubbed himself a "freethinker" in A Discourse of Freethinking (1713). William Wollaston's book on natural religion The Religion of Nature Delineated (1722) was influential in both Britain and New England. Matthew Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation (1730) was influential in England and on the Continent. Bolingbroke was criticized by Warburton, and quoted by the French atheist Baron D'Holbach.

The laboratory at Lord Shelburne's estate, Bowood House in Wiltshire, in which Priestley discovered oxygen

There were also the materialist philosophers David Hartley (1705 – 1757) and Joseph Priestley (1733 – 1804). Hartley was an associationist and early psychologist who wrote Observations on Man (1749). He believed the faculties arise from material processes in the nervous system rather than from an immaterial soul. Priestley was a Unitarian and natural philosopher best known for discovering oxygen, and who also wrote Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768). Abraham Tucker (1705 – 1774) and anarchist William Godwin (1756 – 1836) were influenced by Hartley. Tucker wrote The Light of Nature Pursued (1777).

Botanist John Ray (1627 – 1705), William Derham (1657 – 1735), and William Paley (1743 – 1805) were parson-naturalists who advanced natural theology. Derham and Paley put forward the argument from design with the watchmaker analogy. Paley's was in his book Natural Theology (1802).

Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679 – 1749) defended Locke's philosophy. Locke's educational views influenced Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797), known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Wollstonecraft married William Godwin.

George Berkeley

Bishop Berkeley

George Berkeley (1685–1753) was an Irish philosopher who served as Bishop of Cloyne from 1734 until his death. He was a British empiricist, and a subjective idealist best known for the argument from illusion. The question If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? is taken to exemplify the thought of Berkeley. Berkeley is famous for his motto "esse est percipi aut percipere", or otherwise, "to exist is to be perceived, or to perceive". This means that there are no things other than ideas and the minds that house them. There is no such thing as matter or a mind-independent entity.

Many of his most important ideas were first put forth in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), a work which was critical of Locke's philosophy. Berkeley agreed with Locke that there was an outside world which caused the ideas within the mind, but Berkeley sought to prove that the outside world was also composed solely of ideas. This world was given regularity by some other force, which Berkeley concluded was the mind of God.

Berkeley also criticized the infinitesmal calculus in The Analyst (1734). After Berkeley, metaphysics was temporarily abandoned in Britain, with the exception of James Burnett.

David Hume

David Hume, an influential 18th-century Scottish philosopher

David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian, and the founder of Humeanism. His major works, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), the An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748), An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) remain widely influential.

Hume famously described the problem of induction. He argues that inductive reasoning cannot be rationally employed, since, in order to justify induction, one would either have to provide a sound deductive argument or an inductively strong argument. But there is no sound deductive argument for induction, and to ask for an inductive argument to justify induction would be to beg the question.

Hume's problem of causation is related to his problem of induction. He held that there is no empirical access to the supposed necessary connection between cause and effect. In seeking to justify the belief that A causes B, one would point out that, in the past, B has always closely followed A in both space and time. But the special necessary connection that is supposed to be causation is never given to us in experience. One only observes a constant conjunction of events, with no necessity whatsoever. Hume's attack on causality was famously credited with waking German philosopher Immanuel Kant from his "dogmatic slumber."

In personal identity, Hume was a bundle theorist. He said that there is no robust self to which properties adhere. Experience shows that there is only a bundle of perceptions. Hume also pointed out how one cannot deduce an 'ought' from an 'is'.

Scottish Enlightenment

Adam Smith

The Scottish Enlightenment saw a series of influential Scottish philosophers, read widely in both Britain and America.

Adam Smith

Adam Smith (1723–1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of political economics. Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is notable for its description of the invisible hand and is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics.

Francis Hutcheson

Smith studied moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow and the University of Oxford. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with David Hume. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow teaching moral philosophy, and during this time he wrote and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Francis Hutcheson

Francis Hutcheson's (1694–1746) moral philosophy emerged as a reaction to Hobbes' egoism, and Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston's rationalism. In A System of Moral Philosophy, in Three Books (1755) Hutcheson advocated utilitarianism, and inner senses of morality and aesthetics akin to physical external senses like sight and hearing.

Hutcheson was also an early advocate of animal rights, and an influence on Gulliver's Travels (1726) author Jonathan Swift.

Thomas Reid

Thomas Reid

Thomas Reid (1710–1796) was the most famous critic of David Hume. Reid advocated common sense and direct realism in works like An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764) and two Essays: Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788). This school of thought influenced thinkers such as Dugald Stewart (1753 – 1828), Thomas Brown (1778 – 1820), Sir William Hamilton (1788 – 1856) , and H. L. Mansel (1820 – 1871).

According to Reid, Hume's skepticism and Berkeley's idealism were intolerable consequences of Descartes and Locke's dogma of representationalism, which he called the "Way of Ideas." Reid states in any moment of veridical perception there is an object, a subject, and the act of perception. Reid doubts there is some further, fourth thing, the idea of the object in the subject's mind.

Midlands Enlightenment

Erasmus Darwin (1731 – 1802) was a key figure of the Midlands Enlightenment, which influenced both natural philosophy and British romanticism. Erasmus Darwin was a founding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which held meetings at his house. Other members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham included Joseph Priestley, potter and business magnate Josiah Wedgwood, silversmith Matthew Boulton and his business partner James Watt, clockmaker John Whitehurst, chemist James Keir and The History of Sandford and Merton author Thomas Day. Lexicographer Samuel Johnson is also considered part of the Midlands Enlightenment.

A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in place of the Sun, by Joseph Wright of Derby

Erasmus Darwin also founded the Derby Philosophical Society. The Darwin and Wedgwood families intermarried. Wedgwood proposed the obsolete Wedgwood scale. Watt's steam engine was fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution.

19th century

The 19th century is notable as seeing the end of the Georgian era and nearly all of the Victorian era.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory of normative ethics which holds that an act is morally right if and only if that act maximizes happiness or pleasure, or some other sense of utility or well-being. The British utilitarians were highly influenced by British empiricism.

Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) is well known for beginning the tradition of classical utilitarianism in Britain. Classical utilitarianism is said to be hedonistic because it regards pleasure as the only intrinsic good and pain as the only intrinsic evil. Bentham was influenced by Priestley. He derided natural law and natural rights as "nonsense upon stilts".

Utilitarianism was described by Bentham as "the greatest happiness or greatest felicity principle". Bentham's utilitarianism is known for arguing that the felicific calculus should be used to determine the rightness and wrongness of acts. It does this by measuring the amount of pain and pleasure for various acts. Bentham thought that pleasure and pain could be broken down into distinct units called hedons and dolors.

His students were James Mill, John Austin, and American John Neal. On his death, Bentham left instructions for his body to be dissected and then permanently preserved as an "auto-icon" (or self-image), which would be his memorial. This was done, and the auto-icon is now on public display in the entrance of the Student Centre at University College London (UCL).

John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) the son of James Mill, was an influential philosopher. Mill continued Bentham's tradition of advancing and defending utilitarianism in works like On Liberty (1859) and Utilitarianism (1863). Mill was also influenced by French philosopher Auguste Comte, and so rejected Bentham's egoism.

Mill also proved influential in social theory, political theory, and political economy. His conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.

The most notable of Mill's many followers were Scotsman Alexander Bain and Henry Sidgwick. Bain advocated Mill's associationist theory of mind in works such as The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859). Bain started the journal Mind. There was also Mill's wife, Harriet Taylor Mill.

Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900) also focused on utilitarian ethics and was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, was a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women. The Methods of Ethics (1874) is a book on utilitarianism written by Sidgwick that was first published in 1874. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy indicates that The Methods of Ethics "in many ways marked the culmination of the classical utilitarian tradition." Well-known contemporary utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer has said that the Methods "is simply the best book on ethics ever written."

Evolution

Herbert Spencer advocated Darwinism

The release of Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood's grandson Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in his publication of On the Origin of Species (1859) influenced many philosophers, such as Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903), Metaphysical Society member T. H. Huxley (1825 – 1895), George Henry Lewes (1817 – 1878), Metaphysical Society member Leslie Stephen (1832 – 1904), Metaphysical Society member W. K. Clifford (1845 – 1879), and Karl Pearson (1857 – 1936). Polymath and scientist William Whewell (1794 – 1866) opposed evolution, but persuaded Darwin to become secretary of the Geological Society of London.

Herbert Spencer coined the term "survival of the fittest", and advocated social darwinism and classical liberalism. Spencer's father had been secretary of the Derby Philosophical Society.

T. H. Huxley became known as "Darwin's bulldog" and wrote Evolution and Ethics (1893), which states the task of morality is to counter the cruel natural order. He also coined the term agnosticism.

George Henry Lewes lived with George Eliot. Leslie Stephen joined the ethical movement. W. K. Clifford was a kind of panpsychist who coined the term "mind-stuff". Karl Pearson was a eugenicist and a biographer of Darwin's cousin Sir Francis Galton.

British logic

George Boole

British philosophy in the nineteenth century saw a revival of logic in reaction to the anti-logical aspects of British empiricism. This was started by Richard Whately (1787 – 1863), who wrote Elements of Logic (1826). The major figure of this period is mathematician George Boole (1815 – 1864). Other figures include Sir William Hamilton, mathematician and laws namesake Augustus De Morgan (1806 – 1871), economist William Stanley Jevons (1835 – 1882), diagram namesake John Venn (1834 – 1923), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898), Scottish mathematician Hugh MacColl (1831 – 1909), and American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 – 1914).

Augustus De Morgan

Boole is best known as the author of The Laws of Thought (1854), which contains Boolean algebra. Boolean logic, essential to computer programming, is credited with helping to lay the foundations for the Information Age. Jevons built a logical machine known as the logic piano. Lewis Carroll has a famous paper on logic and infinite regress called "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" (1895).

Whately's work led to controversy. On the one hand, argued by Whewell, logic, particularly syllogism as emphasized by Whately, could not arrive at "new truths" and was therefore inferior to and distinct from scientific reasoning; on the other hand, argued by Hamilton, Whately's effort to equate logic to a "grammar for reasoning" was wrong and reductive. It was De Morgan who saw the utility of Whately's logic, both in its emphasis on the syllogism and in its grammar-like abstraction, and it was De Morgan who demanded inclusion of logic in the Cambridge curriculum.

British idealism

Samuel Taylor Coleridge introduced German idealism to Britain.

Romanticist Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834) introduced Kant's philosophy and German idealism to Britain in his Biographia Literaria (1817). Another ambassador was Scotsman Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881), whose Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1839) introduced many English speakers to German philosophy, and he also parodied German idealism in Sartor Resartus (1834). Whately assistant John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890) and Unitarian James Martineau (1805 – 1900) put forward idealist views, as did Sir William Hamilton, who studied German philosophy at Heidelberg with his friend J. F. Ferrier (1808 – 1864); and there was also John Grote (1813 – 1866), the brother of utilitarian George Grote (1794 – 1871).

F. H. Bradley

British philosophy was influenced by Hegel's absolute idealism from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, called British idealism. Scotsman James Hutchison Stirling's (1820 – 1909) study of Hegel influenced the movement. Important representatives included Benjamin Jowett's (1817 – 1893) student at Oxford T. H. Green (1836 – 1882), F. H. Bradley (1846 – 1924), Bernard Bosanquet (1848 – 1923), J. M. E. McTaggart (1866 – 1925), H. H. Joachim (1868 – 1938), J. H. Muirhead (1855 – 1940), and G. R. G. Mure (1893 – 1979).

Green was an influential social liberal. The school's most notable work was Bradley's Appearance and Reality (1893). McTaggart's work The Unreality of Time (1908) is still influential today in philosophy of time. McTaggart distinguishes between the dynamic or tensed A-theory of time (past, present, future), in which time flows; and the static or tenseless B-theory of time (earlier than, simultaneous with, later than). Aesthete Walter Pater was influenced by British idealism, as was Oscar Wilde.

Two Cambridge Apostles, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, were brought up in this tradition and then reacted against it, pioneering analytic philosophy and leading the "revolt against idealism." According to Russell, by the end of the nineteenth century, "the leading academic philosophers, both in America and Britain, were largely Hegelian". There was also Canadian idealism.

20th century and beyond

The 20th century saw the Edwardian era, World War I, World War II, and the decline of the British Empire.

Analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy sought to accommodate the new developments in philosophy of language (known as the linguistic turn) and logic and mathematics pioneered by German professor and platonist Gottlob Frege, who argued against psychologism. It has dominated philosophy in the English-speaking world since the early 20th century.

G. E. Moore

G. E. Moore

George Edward Moore (1873–1958) "led the way" in the 'revolt against idealism'. Moore is best known today for his defence of ethical non-naturalism, his emphasis on common sense in philosophical method, and the paradox that bears his name. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1918 to 1919.

Moore was admired by and influential among other academic philosophers, and also by the Bloomsbury Group. Moore is known for his clear style and methodical approach to philosophical problems. He was critical of philosophy for its lack of progress, which he believed was in stark contrast to the dramatic advances in the natural sciences since the Renaissance.

Moore advances ethical non-naturalism, which is the idea that "good" is sui generis and irreducible. He does this in Principia Ethica (1903), a work notable for the open question argument. Moore propounds anti-idealism and common sense in his essays, "The Refutation of Idealism", "A Defence of Common Sense" (1925), and "A Proof of the External World". Moore is notable for his here is one hand argument.

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) joined Moore in the 'revolt against idealism.' Russell and Moore contributed to the philosophy of perception a naïve realism and sense-data theory. Russell was also influenced by Frege, and was the mentor of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Russell is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians, with influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, and philosophy. He co-authored, with Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a set of axioms using rules of inference in symbolic logic, the classic statement of the logicist project which started with Frege. Russell used a theory of types to overcome the paradox bearing his name.

The symbol for nuclear disarmament is now widely known as the "peace sign".

Russell's theory of descriptions has been profoundly influential in the philosophy of language and the analysis of definite descriptions. His theory was first developed in his paper "On Denoting" (1905) which has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy." Russell distinguished between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. In philosophy of mind, he advanced neutral monism.

As well as an academic philosopher, Russell was a prominent advocate of social reform and an anti-war activist who championed free trade and anti-imperialism. Russell was sent to Brixton Prison for his pacifist activism during World War I. While in prison, he wrote Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919). Russell controversially advocated free love in Marriage and Morals (1929).

Russell was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." Russell became an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1958, Russell was president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; their symbol is now widely known as the peace sign (semaphore for "N" and "D"). Russell opposed America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

Process philosophy

Whitehead was an advocate of what is called process philosophy or the "philosophy of organism" in works like Process and Reality (1929), which sees the world as made up of events or processes, rather than substances or things.

A. J. Ayer

A. J. Ayer

Wittgenstein had left Britain and served in World War I, subsequently writing the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with its picture theory of meaning. His ideas were influential on the Vienna Circle. A. J. Ayer (1910 – 1989) was the first British philosopher to promote the Vienna Circle's philosophy of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956). Ayer also advocated the ethical theory of emotivism.

Frank Ramsey

Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929. Among others, Frank Ramsey influenced Wittgenstein's radical shift to his later philosophy and his theory of meaning as use exemplified by the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953). Ramsey died of jaundice in 1930. Wittgenstein's later philosophy was propounded by the likes of John Wisdom and Rush Rhees.

Ordinary language philosophy

Influenced by the later Wittgenstein, Oxford ordinary language philosophy is a philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings that philosophers develop by forgetting what words mean in their everyday use. It was a major philosophic school between 1930 and 1970.

Wedding of George III and Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, oil sketch by Sir Joshua Reynolds (c. 1761).
According to Austin's theory, when couples at a wedding say "I do", they are not using language to describe a wedding; they are using it to indulge in a wedding.

This approach typically involves eschewing philosophical theories in favour of close attention to the detail of everyday language. Sometimes also called "Oxford philosophy", it is generally associated with the work of a number of mid-century Oxford professors: mainly J. L. Austin, but also Gilbert Ryle, and P. F. Strawson. There was also H. L. A. Hart.

Gilbert Ryle (1900 – 1976) in The Concept of Mind (1949), criticized Cartesian dualism, arguing in favor of disposing of "Descartes' myth" of the ghost in the machine by recognizing "category errors". Ryle sees Descartes' error as similar to saying one sees the campus, buildings, faculty, students, and so on, but still goes on to ask "Where is the university?"

P. F. Strawson (1919 – 2006) first became well known with his article "On Referring" (1950), a criticism of Russell's theory of descriptions. On Strawson's account, the use of a description presupposes the existence of the object fitting the description. In his book Individuals (1959), Strawson examines our conceptions of basic particulars.

J. L. Austin (1911 – 1960) in the posthumously published How to Do Things with Words (1962), articulated the theory of speech acts and emphasized the ability of words to do things (e.g. "I promise") and not just say things. In Sense and Sensibilia (1962), Austin criticized sense-data theories.

Paul Grice (1913 – 1988) developed the theory of the cooperative principle and implicature in pragmatics.

Contemporary times

Graham Priest

Recent figures in the British analytic tradition have focused on fields such as metaphysics, philosophy of mind, logic, and the philosophy of language.

Logic

Casimir Lewy (1919 – 1991) was a logician from Poland taught by John Wisdom. Wilfrid Hodges (b. 1941) is known for his work in model theory. Graham Priest (b. 1948) advocates dialetheism, the view that the law of non contradiction is false. Priest's An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic (2001) is a textbook in non-classical logic. Alexander Paseau is a logical monist. Dorothy Edgington (b. 1941) is notable for her work on conditionals.

Metaphysics

Charlie Broad

Charlie Broad (1887 – 1971) endorsed the growing block theory in philosophy of time. John Lucas (1929 – 2020) believes in a branching future. Hugh Mellor (1938 – 2020) was a B theorist.

Anthony Quinton (1925 – 2010) defended nominalism. David Wiggins (b. 1933) proposed conceptualist realism, a position according to which our conceptual framework maps reality. Adrian William Moore (b. 1956) argues it is possible to represent the world from no point-of-view. Ray Brassier (b. 1965) pioneered speculative realism. Accelerationist Nick Land was influenced by speculative realism.

Stephen Mumford (b. 1965) argued for dispositionalism.

Philosophy of mathematics

Crispin Wright (b. 1942), along with Bob Hale (1945–2017), advocated neo-Fregean platonism in Frege's Conception of Numbers as Objects (1983), where he argues that Frege's logicist project could be revived and avoid Russell's Paradox by removing the axiom schema of unrestricted comprehension (sometimes referred to as Basic Law V) from the formal system. Wright instead emphasizes Hume's principle.

James F. Thomson (1921–1984) devised the thought experiment of Thomson's lamp. He was the husband of Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929–2020)

Philosophy of language

Michael Dummett

Charles Kay Ogden (1889–1957) founded the Heretics Society, which included McTaggart and Ramsey. Ogden with I. A. Richards (1893–1979) wrote The Meaning of Meaning (1923).

Anthony Kenny

Gareth Evans (1946–1980) criticized the causal theory of reference. Mark Sainsbury (b. 1943) defends an "originalist" theory of concepts. Michael Dummett (1925–2011) argues for semantic anti-realism and prioritized philosophy of language.

Philosophy of mind

H. H. Price (1889–1984) worked in the philosophy of perception. The paper of Ullin Place (1941 – 2009) "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?" (1956) launched the identity theory of mind.

Anthony Kenny (1931–2026) criticized Cartesian dualism. Ted Honderich (1933–2024) defended physicalism. Tim Crane (b. 1962) defends anti-physicalism.

Andy Clark (b. 1957) is notable for the extended mind thesis, which he proposed with Australian philosopher David Chalmers. Colin McGinn (b. 1950) advocates new mysterianism. Christopher Peacocke (b. 1950) is a philosopher of mind.

Timothy Sprigge (1932 – 2007) defended a panpsychist version of British idealism. P. F. Strawson's son Galen Strawson (b. 1952) is a panpsychist. Philip Goff (b. 1978) defends panpsychism.

Christian philosophy

Richard Swinburne

Recent British philosophers have been particularly active in the philosophy of religion. Antony Flew (1923 – 2010) notably converted to Christianity from atheism. The Handbook of Anglican Theologians, described existentialist John Macquarrie (1919 – 2007) as "unquestionably Anglicanism's most distinguished systematic theologian in the second half of the 20th century." John Hick (1922 – 2012) advocated religious pluralism. Don Cupitt (1934 – 2025) was a "radical theologian".

Lay theologian C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963) wrote Mere Christianity (1952), including Lewis's trilemma of "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord." Lewis also penned The Abolition of Man (1943).

Richard Swinburne (b. 1934) is an Oxford professor and Eastern Orthodox convert who wrote a trilogy of books arguing for God, The Coherence of Theism (1977), The Existence of God (1979), and Faith and Reason (1981). He is notable for his belief that God's existence is contingent rather than necessary (it is possible God does not exist), but that nonetheless He does exist as a brute fact.

Eleonore Stump (b. 1947) is a Catholic Thomist, as is John Haldane. A student and friend of Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Anscombe (1919 – 2001) and her husband Peter Geach (1916 – 2013) were also Catholics. Geach defends relative identity so as to defend the Trinity. Anthony Kenny worked with Geach. Kenny was introduced to Wittgenstein's work by Anscombe, and became a leading scholar, the executor of Wittgenstein's literary estate.

Swansea school

Timothy Williamson

The analytic philosophy of religion has been preoccupied with Wittgenstein, as well as his interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard. Wittgenstein fought for the Austrian army in World War I and came upon a copy of Leo Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief (1896). He subsequently underwent some kind of religious conversion. "Swansea school" philosophers such as Peter Winch (1926 – 1997) and D. Z. Phillips (1934 – 2006), among others, founded a school of religious thought based on Wittgenstein. The name "contemplative philosophy" was coined by Phillips in Philosophy's Cool Place (1999), after a passage quoted in Wittgenstein's Culture and Value (1980).

Epistemology

Timothy Williamson (b. 1955) argues knowledge is sui generis and for a "knowledge first" epistemology in Knowledge and Its Limits (2000). Duncan Pritchard advances Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology, which stems from Wittgenstein's writings in the months before his death, On Certainty (first published 1969). John Hawthorne (b. 1964) defends a view according to which knowledge is dependent on the subject's interests; he calls this view "subject-sensitive invariantism". Miranda Fricker (b. 1966) coined the term epistemic injustice.

Ethics

After Moore's work, not much was done in analytic philosophy with ethics until the 1950s and 1960s, when there was a renewed interest in traditional moral philosophy. Exceptions include H. A. Prichard (1871 – 1947) whose ethical intuitionism in "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" (1912) and W. D. Ross (1877 – 1971) in The Right and the Good (1930).

Alasdair MacIntyre

Philippa Foot (1920 – 2010) defended naturalist moral realism and contributed several essays attacking other theories. Foot introduced the famous "trolley problem" into the ethical discourse. Elizabeth Anscombe wrote a monograph Intention (1957) with an influential treatment of action. Her article "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) criticized consequentialism. In action theory, Stuart Hampshire also wrote Thought and Action (1959). Anscombe, Foot, and Alasdair Macintyre (1929 – 2025) with After Virtue (1981) sparked a revival of Aristotle's virtue ethical approach.

Derek Parfit

Reasons and Persons (1984) by Derek Parfit (1942 – 2017) has been described as the most significant work of moral philosophy since the 1800s. It is also influential in discussions of personal identity, with thought experiments on teleportation and the fission and fusion of persons. Bernard Williams (1929 – 2003) was also a moral philosopher, who coined the term moral luck and advocated a kind of moral relativism. Williams also influentially challenged Locke's view on personal identity in "The Self and the Future" (1970).

J. O. Urmson (1915 – 2012) gave his own "grading theory" in "On Grading" (1950) and was admiring but critical of emotivism in The Emotive Theory of Ethics (1968). R. M. Hare (1919 – 2002) is best known for his development of emotivism into prescriptivism and for his defence of preference utilitarianism.

G. J. Warnock (1923 – 1995) wrote The Object of Morality (1971). His wife was Mary Warnock (1924 – 2019). Onora O'Neill (b. 1941) is both a moral philosopher and a politician. Iris Murdoch (1919 – 1999) was another notable author of ethical works.

Simon Blackburn

Simon Blackburn (b. 1944) is a proponent of quasi-realism in meta-ethics. Jonathan Dancy (b. 1946) advances moral particularism. Roger Crisp (b. 1961) is a utilitarian. John Gray (b. 1948) attacks progress and humanism in Straw Dogs (2002). Stephen R. L. Clark (b. 1945) is an advocate for animal rights. So was Mary Midgley (1919 – 2018).

Aesthetics

Clive Bell (1881 – 1964) of the Bloomsbury Group propounded the theory of significant form. British idealist R. G. Collingwood (1889 – 1943) developed a theory of aesthetic expressivism in The Principles of Art (1938). The British Society of Aesthetics was founded in 1960. Nick Zangwill (b. 1957) has defined his position as 'moderate formalism'. According to Kant scholar Paul Guyer, "After Wollheim, the most significant British aesthetician has been Roger Scruton." Roger Scruton (1944 – 2020) contributed to the philosophy of architecture.

Philosophy of science

Roy Bhaskar (1944 – 2014) initiated the school of critical realism in science. John Worrall (b. 1946) advocates structural realism.

See also

• List of British philosophers
• British Philosophical Association
• The Philosophical Society of England