Background
Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane was born on May 18, 1922 in Portsmouth, England.
Classical philosopher philosopher of language
Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane was born on May 18, 1922 in Portsmouth, England.
Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
1950-1953, Research Fellow in Arts at the University of Durham. 1953-1966, Lecturer, then Reader in Ancient Philosophy, then Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Oxford University. 1966-1973, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Philosophy and the Classics at Harvard University.
1973-1982, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University.
Main publications:
(1960) (ed. with A. Düring) Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century, Göteborg: Elanders Boktryckeri Actiebolag.
(1968) (ed.) Aristotle on Dialectic: The Topics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(1982) Logic. Science and Dialectic (Owen’s collected papers in Greek philosophy), ed. Martha Nussbaum, London: Duckworth.
Secondary literature:
Schofield, M. and Nussbaum, M. (eds) Language and Logos: Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy presented to G. E. L. Owen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (contains bibliography of Owen’s publications).
Although he wrote no book and only a relatively modest number of published papers, G. E. L.
Owen exerted through these, lectures, seminars, graduate supervision and conferences a profound influence on postwar scholarship in ancient philosophy. As well as having a central interest in both Plato and Aristotle, Owen also exercised his impressive array of erudition, insight and analytic skills on the pre-Socratics and the science of the ancient world.
Owen took a keen interest in the dating of Plato’s dialogues and the works of Aristotle, and correlatively in developments in the views of these philosophers, perhaps above all in the vicissitudes of the theory of Forms. His unorthodox, and still highly controversial, contention that Plato s Timaeus should be classified as a middle-period rather than a late dialogue—on the grounds of its uncritical acceptance of the theory of Forms—projected Owen right to the forefront ot classical scholarship, where he remained.
His happy knack of simultaneous engagement with classical scholarship and live philosophical issues is illustrated by his discussions of Aristotle s conception of focal meaning, in relation to such words as ‘medical’, ‘good’, ‘being’ and ‘exists’. Sources: Who’s Who 1982. Obituary. The Times, 12 Jul 1982: Contemporary Authors 107, 1983.