John Laird

Background

John Laird was born on May 17, 1887, Durris, Kincardineshire, United Kingdom. He was the son of Rev. D.M.W. Laird and Margaret Laird (née Steward).

Education

John Laird studied at the University of Edinburgh where he received a Master of Arts degree in philosophy in 1908. He also attended Trinity College where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts degree in 1920.

John Laird received an honorary degree of a Doctor of Laws from the University of Edinburgh in 1935 and a Doctor of Letters degree from Queens University Belfast in 1945.

Career

John Laird started his career as an assistant lecturer at the University of St Andrews in 1911 and held this post for one year. In 1912, he became a professor at Dalhousie University and one year after he took up a post of a professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Queen's University Belfast. Laird became Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen in 1924 and held this post until his death in 1946. He also worked as a Mills Lecturer at the University of California from 1923 to 1924 and as Gifford Lecturer at Glasgow University from 1939 to 1940.

John Laird published his first book Problems of the Self in 1917. He also wrote such books as A Study in Realism, Knowledge, Belief and Opinion, Mind and Deity and On Human Freedom.

Achievements

• John Laird was an English educator, philosopher and writer who was famous for his books Theism and Cosmology, Mind and Deity and On Human Freedom.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An Enquiry into Moral Notions

    (First published in 1935, this book compares and examines ...)

    1935
  • Mind and Deity

    (Complementary to Theism and Cosmology, this book begins w...)

    1941
  • Problems of the Self 1917
  • A Study in Realism 1920
  • The Idea of the Soul 1924
  • Knowledge, Belief and Opinion 1930
  • On Human Freedom 1947

Views

John Laird was a supporter of the Scottish Common Sense tradition of philosophy initiated nearly two hundred years earlier by Thomas Reid. He also was interested in the history of philosophy and ethics.

Membership

John Laird was president of the Aristotelian Society. He also was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 1933.

• Aristotelian Society , United Kingdom

  1929 - 1930

Connections

John Laird married Helen Ritchie in 1919. The marriage produced one son who died in childhood.

Father:

Rev. D.M.W. Laird

Mother:

Margaret Laird

Wife:

Helen Ritchie

References

• Who Was Who 1941-1950
  1980