Sir Peter Strawson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Peter Frederick Strawson 23 November 1919 Ealing, London, England |
| Died | 13 February 2006(2006-02-13) (aged 86) London, England |
| Burial place | Wolvercote Cemetery |
| Children | 4, includingGalen |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | St John's College, Oxford |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic |
| Notable students | Gareth Evans,John Searle,Paul Snowdon |
| Main interests | Philosophy of language · Philosophy of mind |
| Notable ideas | Ordinary language philosophy Personal reactive attitudes[1] The distinction betweensortal and characterisinguniversals[2] The distinction betweenparticularindividuals (such as historical events, material objects and persons) and non-particular individuals (such as qualities, properties, numbers, species)[3] The "descriptive metaphysics" and "revisionary metaphysics" distinction[4] |
Sir Peter Frederick StrawsonFBA (/ˈstrɔːsən/;[5] 23 November 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an Englishphilosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Oxford. He was theWaynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy atMagdalen College, Oxford from 1968 to 1987. He had previously held the positions of college lecturer and tutorial fellow atUniversity College, Oxford, a college he returned to upon his retirement in 1987, and which provided him with rooms until his death.[6]
Paul Snowdon and Anil Gomes, in theStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, comment that Strawson "exerted a considerable influence on philosophy, both during his lifetime and, indeed, since his death."[7]
Strawson was born inEaling, west London, and brought up inFinchley, north London, by his parents, both of whom were teachers.[8] He was educated atChrist's College, Finchley, followed bySt John's College, Oxford, where he readPhilosophy, Politics and Economics.
During the Second World War, Strawson served first with theRoyal Artillery from 1940, and then with theRoyal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. He was demobilised in 1946, with the rank of captain.[9]
After his military service, he went initially to the (then)University College of North Wales at Bangor, as an assistant lecturer. After winning the John Locke scholarship in 1946, and the support ofGilbert Ryle, he went to University College, Oxford, initially as a lecturer, and then, from 1948, as a fellow.[6] Strawson was a pupil ofPaul Grice, who later became his colleague and collaborator.[10] In 1968 he succeededGilbert Ryle as theWaynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in Oxford.[11]
Strawson was made a Fellow of theBritish Academy in 1960 and a Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971. He was president of theAristotelian Society from 1969 to 1970. He wasknighted in 1977,[7] for services to philosophy.
Strawson first became well known with his article "On Referring" (1950), a criticism ofBertrand Russell'stheory of descriptions (see alsoDefinite descriptions) that Russell explained in the famous "On Denoting" article (1905).
In philosophical methodology, there are (at least) two important and interrelated features of Strawson's work that are worthy of note.[12] The first is the project of a 'descriptive' metaphysics, and the second is his notion of a shared conceptual scheme, composed of concepts operated in everyday life. In his bookIndividuals (1959), Strawson attempts to describe various concepts that form an interconnected web, representing (part of) our common, shared, human conceptual scheme. In particular, he examines our conceptions of basicparticulars, and how they are variously brought under general spatio-temporal concepts. What makes this a metaphysical project is that it exhibits, in fine detail, the structural features of our thought about the world, and thus precisely delimits how we, humans, think about reality.
Strawson'sIndividuals played a role in reviving the field of metaphysics following its unpopularity during the period following thelinguistic turn, although the metaphysics which followed Strawson was different, Strawson was only concerned in describing the logical structure of our thinking about the world.[13]
Strawson was a collaborator of his former tutor Paul Grice, together they published a famous paper titled "In Defence of a Dogma" in reply toW. V. O. Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". Grice was reluctant to commit his ideas to print, and according to Strawson "it was only after persistent bullying on my part that he brought himself, some years after its composition, to publish his own highly original, ingenious, and justly celebrated first article on Meaning (1957)".[14]
Strawson distinguished between 'revisionary' and 'descriptive metaphysics', he wrote: "Descriptive metaphysics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, revisionary metaphysics is concerned to produce a better structure".[15] The purpose of the former is to "lay bare the most general features of our conceptual scheme" and to understand structures which do not "readily display itself on the structures of language but lies submerged" by analysing those metaphysical concepts which have always existed. He listsAristotle andKant as descriptive andDescartes andLeibniz as revisionary.[16]
After serving as a captain in theRoyal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers duringWorld War II, Strawson married Ann Martin in 1945. They had four children, including the philosopherGalen Strawson.
P. F. Strawson lived in Oxford all his adult life and died in hospital on 13 February 2006 after a short illness. He was the elder brother ofMajor General John Strawson.
His obituary inThe Guardian noted that "Oxford was the world capital of philosophy between 1950 and 1970, and American academics flocked there, rather than the traffic going the other way. That golden age had no greater philosopher than Sir Peter Strawson."[8]
In its obituary,The Times of London described him as a "philosopher of matchless range who made incisive, influential contributions to problems of language and metaphysics".[17] The author went on to say:
Few scholars achieve lasting fame as dramatically as did the philosopher Sir Peter Strawson. By 1950 Strawson, then a Fellow of University College, Oxford, was already a respected tutor and a promising member of the group of younger Oxford dons whose careful attention to the workings of natural languages marked them out as 'linguistic' philosophers. [He published] extraordinary papers, which are still read and discussed more than 50 years later and which are prescribed to tyros as models of philosophical criticism.[17]
His portrait was painted by the artistsMuli Tang andDaphne Todd.[18]
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