Background
PEARS, David was born on August 8, 1921 in London. Son of Robert Pears and Gladys Meyers.
PEARS, David was born on August 8, 1921 in London. Son of Robert Pears and Gladys Meyers.
Westminster School and Balliol College, Oxford.
1948-1950, Research Lecturer, Christ Church, Oxford. 1950-1960, Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 1960-1988, Tutor in Philosophy, Christ Church.
1972-1985, Reader in Philosophy, Christ Church. 1985-1988, Professor of Philosophy, then Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford.
Main publications:(1951) ‘The problem of universals’, Philosophical Quarterly 1: 218-27.(1953) ‘Incompatibilities of colours’, in A. Flew (ed.) Logic and Language, second series, Oxford: Blackwell.(1957) (ed.) The Nature of Metaphysics, London: Macmillan.(1963) (ed.) David Hume: A Symposium. London: Macmillan.(1963) (ed.) Freedom and the Will, London: Macmillan.(1963) ‘Is existence a predicate?’, Ac/uinas Papers 38, London: Aquinas Press.(1967) Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy, London: Fontana.(1971) What is Knowledge?, London: Allen & Unwin. (1971) Wittgenstein, London: Fontana.(1972) (ed.) Bertrand Russell. New York: Doubleday. (1972) (ed.) Russell’s Logical Atomism. London: Fontana.(1975) Questions in the Philosophy of Mind, London: Duckworth.(1979) ‘A comparison between Ayer’s view about the privileges of sense-datum statements and the views of Russell and Austin’, in G. F. Macdonald (ed.), Perception and Identity, London: Macmillan.(1980) Aristotle’s analysis of courage’ in A. O. Rorty (ed.). Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, Berkeley: University of California Press.(1984) Motivated Irrationality, Oxford: Oxford University Press.(1987-1988) The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein's Philosophy, vols 1 and 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.(1990) Hume's System: An Examination of the First Book of His Treatise, Oxford: Oxford University Press.(1990) ‘Wittgenstein’s holism’, Dialectica 44:165-73.Having been Oxford-educated and primarily Oxford-based throughout his professional career, David Pears is very much an Oxford philosopher
but with a central interest in those two great Cambridge philosophers Russell and Wittgenstein, he is perhaps equally well described as an Oxbridge philosopher. He has also been a frequent visitor to the United States and has held many visiting professorships there.
Pears is responsible for some of the best scholarship in recent years on the three philosophers on whom he has concentrated his scholarly attention: David Hume, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. To professionals, university students and, in some cases, the educated public alike Pears has helped to make the thought of these three seminal thinkers exciting and accessible whilst in no way disguising difficulty and depth. In 1961 he produced, together with Brian McGuiness, a translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, rendering the original in more straightforward prose than the earlier translation of C. K. Ogden and correcting some of its mistakes.
This was followed in 1971 by a translation of the Prototractatus.
Solipsism is identified as ‘the dominant issue in the Tractatus’ and Pears has provided the most extended treatment of the ins and outs of Wittgenstein's changing stance on this topic. In The False Prison, two ‘stabilizing resources’ required for possessing a language are distinguished: appeal to standard objects and appeal to the judgements of other people. The most popular interpretation of Wittgenstein’s private-language argument, the so-called social or community interpretation, is found inadequate in concentrating only on the latter.
Motivated Irrationality explores the idea of acting irrationally in a motivated manner, as expressed primarily in the cases of irrational belief formation and acting against one’s better judgement.
It is contended that philosophers, perhaps because of their professionally cool use of reason, have tended, unlike psychologists, to exaggerate human rationality. The more recent book, on Hume, sees him as having rejected not only rationalism but also naive empiricism. The remaining more sophisticated empiricism embraces both theory of belief and theory of meaning, achieving remarkable results despite deficiencies in a method working from ideas.
Pears finds a kinship between the naturalism of Hume and that of Wittgenstein.
Pears lists as non-philosophical interests entomology and the visual arts. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1970, and was President of L’lnstitut International de Philosophic from 1988 to 1991.
Institute Institute de Philosophie.
Entomology, visual art.
Literary influencew include Aristotle, Hume, Russell and Wittgenstein.
Married Anne Drew in 1963.