Background

Alfred Henry Lloyd was born on January 3, 1864 in Montclair, New Jersey, United States, the son of Henry H. and Anna (Badger) Lloyd. The death of Henry Lloyd in 1868 left his widow and five children in financial difficulties, from which they were temporarily saved by the assistance of her father, Daniel Badger. Upon his death in 1874, the family sank to the brink of penury. Alfred and his twin brother, Arthur, were sent to their uncle, Myrom Lloyd, principal of a school in Westfield, Massachusetts.

Education

Lloyd attended high school in Andover, Massachusetts. He completed his preparatory work at St. Johnsbury Academy. At this time Alfred intended to enter the Congregational ministry and a friend offered to pay his expenses through Dartmouth if he would pledge himself to do so, but the lad refused to mortgage his right to change his mind. Instead, he virtually worked his own way through Harvard by means of tutoring and scholarships. Elected president of the college Young Men's Christian Association, he resigned because of the organization's refusal to admit Unitarians. This experience, and similar ones, revealing the narrowness of many devout Christians, along with a growing interest in philosophy, finally dissuaded him from entering the ministry. He graduated from Harvard in 1886 with Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. Later he returned to the college for graduate work in philosophy. In 1889 he gained the Walker Fellowship, which took him abroad for two years of study at Göttingen, Berlin, and Heidelberg.

Career

Lloyd started his career as a teacher at Phillips Academy, Andover. Later he became instructor in the department of philosophy under John Dewey at the University of Michigan in 1891. Here he remained for the rest of his life, as assistant professor from 1894 until 1899, associate professor until 1906, and full professor thereafter. In 1915 he became dean of the graduate school, and on the death of President Marion L. Burton in February 1925 he was made acting president, in which capacity he served during the trying period that preceded the coming of President Clarence C. Little in October 1925.

His sound judgment, unfailing tact, and irenic disposition caused him to be pushed inevitably into the administrative work for which he was so well fitted. Nevertheless this work equally inevitably deflected him from his even more important productive work as a philosopher. His early books included: Citizenship and Salvation (1897), Dynamic Idealism (1898), and Philosophy of History (1899). The Will to Doubt, which he published in 1907, may be taken as an impersonal answer to William James's The Will to Believe, but, though much more profound, it never obtained a fraction of the influence of that far-reaching essay.

Both Lloyd's thought and terminology were too original to be easily grasped, his reasoning was difficult to follow, and his fondness for paradox often rendered him obscure. His one easily understood work was the least important, Leadership and Progress (1922), a study of the post-war psychology from the standpoint of a political liberal.

Achievements

• Lloyd was an author of five books. His publications laid the foundations of an activist idealism, which in many respects foreshadowed the famous filosofia del atto of Croce and Gentile, although Lloyd's method was at once more cursory and more objective than that of either of the great Italians. He was also contibutor to various philosophical, scientific and historical journals.

Works

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• book

  • Citizenship and Salvation: Or Greek and Jew, a Study in the Philosophy of History (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Citizenship and Salvation: Or Greek and Jew,...)

  • Dynamic Idealism: An Elementary Course in the Metaphysics of Psychology

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Will to Doubt: An Essay in Philosophy for the General Thinker

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Pamphlets And Reprints; Volume 2

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Philosophy of History; An Introduction to the Philosophical Study of Politics

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Leadership and Progress, and Other Essays of Progress, The Newspaper Conscience, Ages of Leisure

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Pamphlets and reprints Volume 5

    (This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)

Views

Lloyd concerned himself almost entirely with the implications of relationship, in which he found proof of the activity, intelligibility, and ultimate intelligence of the universe.

Membership

He was a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Philosophical Association, and the American Historical Association.

Connections

Lloyd was married, December 28, 1892, to Margaret E. Crocker of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Father:

Henry H. Lloyd

Mother:

Anna (Badger) Lloyd

Spouse:

Margaret E. Crocker

Brother:

Arthur lloyd

Uncle:

Myrom Lloyd

References

• History of the University of Michigan