Background
Blanshard, Brand was born on August 27, 1892 in Fredericksburg, Ohio, United States. Son of Francis G. and Emily (Coulter) Blanshard.
(Originally given in 1953 as the Adamson Lecture at Manche...)
Originally given in 1953 as the Adamson Lecture at Manchester University, On Philosophical Style has become the classic presentation of the thesis that profundity and clarity are not opposed philosophical virtues but rather required companions. Blanshard begins with the question: Why is it that philosophers of great perception sometimes confess a failure to comprehend certain of their colleagues? He ends with the assertion "that the problem of style is not a problem of words and sentences merely, but of being the right kind of mine." In between, there is much offered, in fine style and short compass, for those who both write and read philosophy.
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(With impeccable clarity and elegance, Blanshard presents ...)
With impeccable clarity and elegance, Blanshard presents a fair-minded yet withering characterization of the schools of philosophy dominant in the Anglophone world from the 1920s to the 1960s: logical atomism, logical positivism, and 'ordinary language' philosophy. Most of the objectionable features which Blanshard attacked have now disappeared from analytic philosophy, in part due to the influence of this book. Yet his acute observations retain their freshness and relevance.
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Blanshard, Brand was born on August 27, 1892 in Fredericksburg, Ohio, United States. Son of Francis G. and Emily (Coulter) Blanshard.
Bachelor of Arts Michigan, 1914. AM, Columbia University, 1918. Bachelor of Science, Oxford (England) University, 1920.
Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1921. Doctor of Letters, Swarthmore College, 1947. Doctor of Letters, Concord College, 1962.
Doctor of Letters, Albion College, 1966. Doctor of Humane Letters, Bucknell University, 1954. Doctor of Humane Letters, Colby College, 1956.
Doctor of Humane Letters, Trinity College, 1957. Doctor of Humane Letters, Roosevelt University, 1959. Doctor of Humane Letters, Simpson College, 1961.
Doctor of Humane Letters, Kenyon College, 1961. Doctor of Humane Letters, University New Mexico, 1968. Doctor of Laws, Oberlin College, 1956.
Doctor of Laws, University St. Andrew's, Scotland, 1959.
Assistant professor philosophy University Michigan, 1921-1925. Associate professor Swarthmore College, 1925-1928, professor, 1928-1945, Yale University, 1945-1961, chairman department philosophy, 1945-1950, 59-61. Dudleian lecturer Harvard University, 1945, Noble lecturer, 1948, Whitehead lecturer, 1961.
Gifford lecturer St. Andrews University, 1952-1953. Hertz lecturer British Academy, 1952. Adamson lecturer University Manchester, England, 1953.
Howison lecturer University California, Berkeley, 1954. Matchette lecturer Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1957, Brooklyn College, 1962. Carus lecturer American Philosophical Association, 1959.
Visiting professor University Minnesota, 1962.
(With impeccable clarity and elegance, Blanshard presents ...)
(Originally given in 1953 as the Adamson Lecture at Manche...)
(First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylo...)
(Book by Blanshard, Brand)
(Book by Blanshard, Brand)
(Book by Blanshard, Brand)
(First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylo...)
(First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylo...)
(First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylo...)
(451 pp.)
Author: The Nature of Thought, 2 vols., 1939, On Philosophical Style, 1954, Reason and Goodness, 1961, Reason and Analysis, 1962, The Uses of a Liberal Education, 1973, Reason and Belief, 1974, The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard, 1980, Four Reasonable Men: Aurelius, Mill, Renan, Sidgwick, 1984. (with others) Philosophy in American Education, 1945, Preface to Philosophy, 1946.Editor: Education in the Age of Science, 1959.
The hallmarks of Blanshard’s philosophy are idealism and rationalism. In The Nature of Thought (1939) he presented a systematic theory of mind, knowledge and reality. Epistemologically he defined the relation between an idea and its object as teleological, and he advanced a coherence theory of truth.
Metaphysically he upheld the theory of the concrete universal, the doctrine that all relations are internal and the thesis of cosmic necessity. He articulated these theories in an elegantly lucid style.
Blanshard responded to the rise of irrationalism in mid-twentieth century with the authorship of an imposing trilogy in defence of reason. His Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews in 1951 and 1952 engendered two parts of the
trilogy.
Presenting a thorough critique of noncognitivism and relativism in ethics. Reason and Goodness (1961) offers constructively a teleological rationalist moral philosophy. Trenchantly criticizing religious pragmatism and existentialism, neo-orthodoxy in theology, and Roman Catholicism, Reason and Belief (1974) advocates a religious rationalism.
While Blanshard did not reject ontological idealism, he nevertheless denied that God, or absolute reality, is good in the human sense.
Blanshard’s 1959 Carus lectures before the American Philosophical Association came to fruition in Reason and Analysis (1962). A critical polemic against analytic philosophy, logical positivism and linguistic analysis, it reaffirms the epistemology and metaphysics of The Nature of Thought. Blanshard restated the sovereignty of reason, defending it against the strictures of such thinkers as Ernest Nagel.
Secretary British Young Men’s Christian Association, Mesopotamia and India, 1915-1917. With United States Army, 1918-1919. Advertising Educational Foundation in France.
Recipient Humanist Pioneer award, 1979. Rhodes scholar, 1913-1915, 1919-1920. Guggenheim fellow, 1929-1930.
Fellow Center Advanced Studies, Wesleyan University, 1961-1962. Recipient Senior award American Council Learned Societies, 1959. Medal of Honor Rice University, 1962.
Honorary fellow Merton College, Oxford University. Corresponding fellow British Academy. Member American Theological Society (president 1955-1956), American Philosophical Association (president Eastern division 1942-1944), American Philosophical Society, American Academy Arts and Sciences, Aristotelian Society (London, honorary), Phi Beta Kappa.
Epistemol- ?®Ist: metaphysician. Moral philosopher.
Joachim. Bradley. Dewey, H. W. B. p°sePh and C. I. Lewis.
Married Frances Bradshaw, November 3, 1918 (deceased 1966). Married Roberta Yerkes, June 6, 1969.