Herbert James Paton

Herbert James Paton FBA FSA Scot (30 March 1887 – 2 August 1969) was a Scottish philosopher. He was the son of the Reverend William Macalister Paton, B.D., Abernethy, Perthshire, Scotland, and Jean Robertson Millar.[1] He was educated at the High School of Glasgow, the University of Glasgow, and Balliol College, Oxford. At Oxford he gained a First in Classical Moderations, 1909, and a First in Literae Humaniores ('Greats', a combination of philosophy and ancient history) in 1911.[2]

He served in the Admiralty's Intelligence Division, 1914-1919, and became an expert on Polish affairs in which capacity he attended the Versailles conference in 1919. He did governmental work also in the Second World War in the Foreign Research and Press Service (after 1943 the Foreign Office Research Department), 1939-44. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the League of Nations Union, 1939-48.

From 1911 to 1927 he was Fellow and Praelector in Classics and Philosophy at [[The Queen's College, Oxford|Queen's College], and Dean of the College, 1917-22.[3] In 1920 he served as Junior Proctor at Oxford. He spent a sabbtical year in the United States of America, 1926-26, where he was Laura Spelman Rockefeller Research Fellow, University of California.[4] There he wrote his first philosophy book, The Good Will.[5] The year after his return to Oxford he resigned his Queen's Fellowship to take up the post of Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at the University of Glasgow, 1927-37.[6] He returned to Oxford as White's Professor of Moral Philosophy (1937–52), a post which carried with it a Fellowship at Corpus Christi College.[7]

In 1936 he married Mary Sheila (d.1959), daughter of Henry Paul Todd-Naylor, I.C.S. His second marriage was with Sarah Irene (d. 1964), daughter of Professor W. Macneile Dixon.

Paton was a notable Kantian scholar; in this he abandoned his earlier attraction to the philosophy of Benedetto Croce (1866-1952).[8] His works of Kantian commentary included Kant's Metaphysics of Experience (1936), The Categorical Imperative (1947), and The Moral Law (a translation of Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals], 1785] (1947). Paton delivered the Gifford Lectures at St Andrews, 1949–50; the lectures were published as The Modern Predicament (1955).

A short philosophical autobiography appears in 'Fifty Years of Philosophy',Contemporary British Philosophy, Third Series, ed. H.D. Lewis, London : George Allen & Unwin, 1st ed., 1956, 2nd ed., 1961, pp. 337–354.

Paton died on August 2, 1969, Perth and Kinross, Scotland.

References

  1. ↑ Who's Who, 1965, London, A. & C. Black, 1965, p. 2363.
  2. ↑ Oxford University Calendar 1911, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1913, 189, 220.
  3. ↑ Who's Who, 1965, London, A. & C. Black, 1965, p.2363.
  4. ↑ Who's Who, 1965, London, A. & C. Black, 1965, p.2363.
  5. ↑ W.H. Walsh, 'Herbert James Paton', Proceedings of the British Academy, 1970, London : Oxford University Press, 1972, p.294.
  6. ↑ W.H. Walsh, 'Herbert James Paton', Proceedings of the British Academy, 1970, London : Oxford University Press, 1972, p.294.
  7. ↑ Who's Who, 1965, London, A. & C. Black, 1965, p.2364.
  8. ↑ W.H. Walsh, 'Herbert James Paton', Proceedings of the British Academy, 1970, London : Oxford University Press, 1972, pp.294, 297.
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