British philosophy
British philosophy refers to the philosophical tradition of the British people. The universities of Cambridge and Oxford both have long philosophical traditions.
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
John Scotus Erigena
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 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 of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm".Anselm of Canterbury
Saint Anselm of Canterbury 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. 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.Adelard of Bath
may be the first philosopher from England. He tried to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, and is known as the translator of Euclid's Elements, and also was one of the first to introduce the Arabic numeral system to Europe.John of Salisbury
was one of the most notable figures of the twelfth century Renaissance. He was made Bishop of Chartres and advocated Cicero's moderate skepticism.Robert Grosseteste
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".Alexander of Hales
was instrumental to the development of scholasticism. He wrote a commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences.William of Sherwood
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, 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.Roger Bacon
, also known as Doctor Mirabilis, was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who was a pupil of Grosseteste and placed considerable emphasis on empirical methods. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by the works of Plato and Aristotle via early Islamic scientists such as Avicenna and Averroes.Duns Scotus
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 died in Cologne in 1308. He is buried in the "Minoritenkirche", the Church of the Franciscans in Cologne. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 20 March 1993.Nicknamed Doctor Subtilis, he is well known for the "univocity of being," the formal distinction, and the idea of haecceity. 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 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 studied under Wilton. Thomas Bradwardine was a follower of Scotus who with Richard Swineshead and others formed the Oxford Calculators.
William of Ockham
was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher. Ockham advocated nominalism.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 and Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora . Generally it refers to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar conclusions.
The words often attributed to Occam: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem are absent in his extant works; This particular phrasing comes from John Punch who used it in describing a "common axiom" of the Scholastics.
Ockham had followers like Robert Holcot and Adam of Wodeham. They influenced Pelagians like Thomas of Buckingham and Uthred of Boldon. Ockham also influenced German philosophy.
John Wycliffe
was one of the last scholastics, and an important predecessor of Protestantism. He was influenced by Richard FitzRalph.Modern
There were Renaissance logicians like John Sanderson, Richard Crakanthorpe, Thomas Wilson, and Ralph Lever. At Cambridge, William Temple defended Ramus against Everard Digby. Digby influenced mystic Robert Fludd and Neoplatonist Robert Greville.Thomas More
wrote Utopia, which describes the political system of an imaginary island state.Richard Hooker
believed the world was governed by natural law.Francis Bacon
was an Englishman who was a statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist and author in addition to being a philosopher. He famously died of pneumonia contracted while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method and pioneer in the Scientific Revolution.Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. His works established and popularized deductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. His dedication probably led to his death, so bringing him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.
Bacon had a major influence on scientist Robert Boyle.
Thomas Hobbes
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 was a champion of absolutism for the sovereign but 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 ; 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 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. He was one of the key founders of philosophical materialism.
Hobbes influenced Bernard Mandeville.