A. C. Ewing
Encyclopedia
Alfred Cyril Ewing was a British
philosopher and a sympathetic critic of Idealism
.
Ewing studied at Oxford, where he gained the John Locke Lectureship and the Green Prize in Moral Philosophy. He taught for four years in Swansea/Wales, and became lecturer in Moral Science at Cambridge in 1931, based at Trinity Hall, and reader in Moral Science in 1954. He was an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and one of Wittgenstein's foremost critics. He was responsible for Karl Popper's invitation to Cambridge.
Ewing believed that the study of the history of philosophy
was important to philosophical practice, and paid particular attention to this in his studies of Kant
.
He was a defender of traditional metaphysics (as opposed to post–modern ethics) and developed what may be termed an 'analytical idealism'. He was a 20th century pioneer in the philosophy of religion, one of the foremost analysts of the concept "good," and a distinguished contributor to justificatory theorizing about punishment
.
He was president of the Aristotelian Society
from 1941 to 1942 and was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1941.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
philosopher and a sympathetic critic of Idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
.
Ewing studied at Oxford, where he gained the John Locke Lectureship and the Green Prize in Moral Philosophy. He taught for four years in Swansea/Wales, and became lecturer in Moral Science at Cambridge in 1931, based at Trinity Hall, and reader in Moral Science in 1954. He was an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and one of Wittgenstein's foremost critics. He was responsible for Karl Popper's invitation to Cambridge.
Ewing believed that the study of the history of philosophy
History of philosophy
The history of philosophy is the study of philosophical ideas and concepts through time. Issues specifically related to history of philosophy might include : How can changes in philosophy be accounted for historically? What drives the development of thought in its historical context? To what...
was important to philosophical practice, and paid particular attention to this in his studies of Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
.
He was a defender of traditional metaphysics (as opposed to post–modern ethics) and developed what may be termed an 'analytical idealism'. He was a 20th century pioneer in the philosophy of religion, one of the foremost analysts of the concept "good," and a distinguished contributor to justificatory theorizing about punishment
Punishment
Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....
.
He was president of the Aristotelian Society
Aristotelian Society
The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Square which resolved "to constitute a society of about twenty and to include ladies; the society to meet fortnightly, on Mondays at 8 o'clock, at the rooms of the Spelling...
from 1941 to 1942 and was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1941.
Books
- Value and Reality: The Philosophical Case for Theism (George Allen & Unwin, London 1973)
- Non-linguistic Philosophy (George Allen & Unwin, London 1968)
- Second Thoughts in Moral Philosophy (London 1959)
- The Idealist Tradition: From Berkeley to Blanshard (editor, London 1957)
- Ethics (London 1953, ten reimpressions)
- The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy (Routledge, London 1951)
- The Definition of Good (Routledge, London 1947)
- The Individual, the State, and World Government (Macmillan, New York 1947)
- Reason and Intuition (London 1941)
- A Short Commentary on Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" (London 1938)
- Idealism: A Critical Survey (New York 1936)
- The Morality of Punishment (London 1929)
- Kant's Treatment of Causality (London 1924)