Ralph Barton Perry

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This article is about the philosopher. For the poker player, see Ralph Perry (poker player).

Ralph Barton Perry (3 July 1876 in Poultney, Vermont - 22 January 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American philosopher. He was educated at Princeton (B.A., 1896) and at Harvard (M.A., 1897; Ph.D., 1899), where, after teaching philosophy for three years at Williams and Smith colleges, he was instructor (1902-05), assistant professor (1905-13), full professor (1913-30) and Edgar Pierce professor of philosophy (1930-46). He was president of the American Philosophical Association's eastern division in the year 1920-21.[1]

A pupil of William James, whose Essays in Radical Empiricism he edited (1912), Perry became one of the leaders of the New Realism movement. Perry argued for a naturalistic theory of value and a New Realist theory of perception and knowledge. He wrote a celebrated biography of William James, which won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, and proceeded to a revision of his critical approach to natural knowledge. An active member among a group of American New Realist philosophers, he elaborated around 1910 the program of new realism. However, he soon dissented from moral and spiritual ontology, and turned to a philosophy of disillusionment. Perry was an advocate of a militant democracy: in his words "total but not totalitarian". In 1946-8 he delivered in Glasgow his Gifford Lectures, titled Realms of Value.

[edit] References

  1. ^ "APA Presidents". http://www.pragmatism.org/dmap/apa_presidents.htm. Retrieved on 2008-10-01. 

[edit] Works

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
  • The Approach to Philosophy, (1905), New York, Chicago and Boston: Charles Scribner's Sons
  • The Moral Economy, (1909), New York: Charles Scribner's Son
  • Present Philosophical Tendencies: A Critical Survey of Naturalism, Idealism, Pragmatism, and Realism, together with a Synopsis of the Philosophy of William James, (1912), New York:Longmans, Green & Co.
  • Holt, EB; Marvin, WT; Montague, WP; Perry, RB; Pitkin, WB; Spaulding, EG, The New Realism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy, (1912), New York: The Macmillan Company
  • The Free Man and the Soldier, (1916), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
  • The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War, (1918), New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
  • Annotated Bibliography of the Writings of William James, (1920), Longmans, Green & Co.
  • The Plattsburg movement: A Chapter of America's Participation in the World War (1921), New York: E.P. Dutton & company
  • A Modernist View of National Ideals (1926) Berkeley: University of California Press, Howison Lectures in Philosophy, 1925
  • General Theory of Value (1926)
  • The Hope for Immortality (1935)
  • The Thought and Character of William James (1935)
  • Plea for an Age Movement (1942) New York: The Vanguard Press [Talk at 1941 Princeton and Harvard Reunions]
  • Puritanism and Democracy, (1944)
  • Characteristically American: Five Lectures Delivered on the William W. Cook Foundation at the University of Michigan, November-December 1948, (1949), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949
  • Realms of Value, (1954), Harvard University Press [Based on Gifford Lectures]
  • The Humanity of Man, (1956), New York: George Braziller

[edit] External links


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