Background
Schiller, Ferdinand Cannlng Scott was born on August 16, 1864 in Ottenson, near Altona, Denmark.
Schiller, Ferdinand Cannlng Scott was born on August 16, 1864 in Ottenson, near Altona, Denmark.
Balliol College, University of Oxford.
1893-1897, Instructor in Philosophy, Cornell University. 1897-1926, Tutorial Fello, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 1929, Professor of Philosophy.
University of Southern California.
Schiller’s first work combined evolutionary metaphysics with a personal idealism advocating the individual as the key to the riddle of the world. Although broadly within the Darwin-Spencer tradition, this book was teleological rather than mechanistic and, although humanist, it was not naturalistic. Already he was strongly anti-rationalistic, dismissing the Hegelian system as ‘the most ingenious system of illusions that adorns the history of thought'. Although he shunned the word. Schiller was already inclined to the pragmatism of which he became renowned as the leading British exponent. His pragmatism was greatly reinforced by his personal association with William James during his time at Cornell. But Schiller was indebted to a range of British and European sources and should not be thought of simply as a disciple of James. He was part of a reaction against absolute idealism, against mechanistic psychology and against abstract inquiries generally that affected many philosophical figures in Britain around the turn of the century. When Schiller returned to Oxford, he became the champion in Britain of the pragmatic theory of truth. He opposed abstract metaphysics and wished to see the abolition of formal logic, proposing instead that logic should be conceived as a set of fallible rules aiming to aid the search for truth. In his Logic for Use (1929) and elsewhere Schiller applied the Darwinian principle of natural selection to rival theories, claiming that the fittest are the ones that survive. Although pragmatism never made much impact in Britain, Schiller's persistent criticisms of Bradley contributed to the waning of idealism as the dominant style of philosophy in Oxford. Sources: Dictionary of National Biography 1931-1940; Passmore 1957.