Richard Aaron

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For the music photographer, see Richard E. Aaron.

Richard Ithamar Aaron
Blaendulais, Glamorgan, Wales
Died29 March 1987(1987-03-29) (aged 85)
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales
Occupations
Spouse
Rhiannon Morgan
​
(m. 1937)​
Children5, including Jane
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionBritish philosophy
Main interests
John Locke, Welsh literature

Richard Ithamar Aaron, FBA (6 November 1901 – 29 March 1987), was a Welsh philosopher who became an authority on the work of John Locke. He also wrote a history of philosophy in the Welsh language.

Early life and education

Born in

dissertation on "The History and Value of the Distinction between Intellect and Intuition".[2]

Career

In 1926 Aaron was appointed a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at

Garth Celyn.[1]

Although his early publications focused on

history of ideas, Aaron became fascinated with the work and life of John Locke. The interest was sparked by his discovery of unexamined information in the Lovelace Collection: notes and drafts left by John Locke to his cousin Peter King. There he found letters, notebooks, catalogues, and most pertinently, an early draft of Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", hitherto presumed missing. Aaron's research led to the 1937 publication of a book on the life and work of Locke that subsequently became an accepted standard work.[1] The proofs were read by Rhiannon Morgan, whom Aaron married in 1937. They had five children.[1] One of their children is Welsh literature specialist Jane Aaron, born in 1951.[3]

Aaron produced several more books and articles, including a book in

Hegel in 1932.[1] His attempts to boost interest in philosophy in Wales included establishing in that year a philosophy section at the University of Wales Guild of Graduates, which still conducts its proceedings in Welsh.[1]

Other notable publications of Aaron's include an essay, "Two Senses of the Word Universal", in

essences as he is of nominalism and conceptualism
as theories of universals.

In 1952–1953, Aaron was a Visiting Professor at

Pierpont Morgan Library, which led to a substantial addition to the second edition of John Locke, published in 1955. He became a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) and president of the Mind Association in the same year. In 1956, an annual lecture hosted by the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association (publisher of the journal Mind) was instituted in Aberystwyth, and Aaron invited to give the inaugural lecture. In 1957 he was elected President of the Aristotelian Society.[1]

In 1967, Aaron published a second edition of The Theory of Universals with a new preface and several additions and rewritten chapters. In 1971, he published a third edition of his Locke biography and the book Knowing and the Function of Reason, which includes broad discussion of the laws of non-contradiction, excluded middle and identity, of the use of language in speech and thought, and of substance and causality.[1]

After retiring in 1969, he taught for a semester at

Carlton College, Minnesota, before returning to Wales, where he helped to write articles for the 1974 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.[1] He began to feel the effects of Alzheimer's disease and died at his home in Aberystwyth on 29 March 1987.[1]

Selected works

See also

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65645. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) [also accessible in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1. 2004 – via Internet Archive
    .]
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0-415-06043-1
    .
  3. ^ "Aaron, Jane 1951-". WorldCat. OCLC. Archived from the original on 2 September 2021. Retrieved 11 March 2019.

Further reading

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