Timothy Sprigge
Timothy Sprigge | |
|---|---|
| Born | 14 January 1932 London, England, UK |
| Died | 11 July 2007 |
| Alma mater | Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge |
| Notable work | The Vindication of Absolute Idealism (1984) |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | British idealism |
Timothy Lauro Squire Sprigge (14 January 1932 – 11 July 2007), usually cited as T. L. S. Sprigge, was a British idealist philosopher who spent the latter portion of his career at the University of Edinburgh, where he was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, and latterly an Emeritus Fellow.
Biography
Sprigge was educated at the
Long concerned with the nature of experience and the relationship between mind and reality, Sprigge was the philosopher who first posed the question made famous by Thomas Nagel: "What is it like to be a bat?"[1] Throughout his career he argued that physicalism or materialism is not only false, but has contributed to a distortion of our moral sense. The failure to respect the rights of human beings and non-human animals is therefore largely a metaphysical error of failing to grasp the true reality of the first person, subjective perspective of consciousness, or sentience. The practice of vivisection, which gained wide acceptance with Descartes's view of animals as machines, would be an example of this failure. He was an advocate of animal rights and defended an environmental ethic.
The author of The Vindication of Absolute Idealism (1984), Sprigge defended a
A Festschrift for Sprigge appeared on the day he died, Consciousness, Reality and Value: Essays in Honour of T. L. S. Sprigge (Ontos Verlag).
He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1991 to 1992 and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The Timothy Sprigge Room at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh contains Sprigge's library. The Sprigge Archive is located at the Edinburgh University Library.
Works
- The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (1968)
- Facts, Words and Beliefs. International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method (1970)
- Santayana: An examination of his philosophy (The Arguments of the philosophers) (1974)
- The Vindication of Absolute Idealism (1984)
- Theories of Existence (1985)
- The Rational Foundation of Ethics (1988)
- The significance of Spinoza's determinism (Mededelingen vanwege het Spinozahuis) (1989)
- James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality (1994)
- The God of Metaphysics (2006)
- The Phenomenology of Thought ed by. L. McHenry (unfinished) (2009)
- The Importance of Subjectivity: Selected Essays in Metaphysics and Ethics ed by. L. McHenry (2011)
References
- ^ a b Jane O'Grady, "Timothy Sprigge", The Guardian, 4 September 2007.
- ^ Leemon McHenry, "Timothy L. S. Sprigge – The Last Idealist?", The Philosopher, LXXXXVII(2), 2009 ; also in Michel Weber et Pierfrancesco Basile (sous la direction de), Chromatikon III. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès — Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2007.
- ^ Leemon McHenry, "Timothy L. S. Sprigge," British Philosophers, 1800–2000, Volume 262 in the series Dictionary of Literary Biography, edited by Philip B. Dematteis, Peter S. Fosl, and Leemon McHenry, Detroit: Gale, 2002, pp. 266-274.
External links
- Career, bibliography, poems
- Obituary by Leemon McHenry
- Guardian obituary
- Telegraph obituary[dead link]
- Scotsman obituary
- Pierfrancesco Basile and Leemon McHenry (eds.), Consciousness, Reality and Value: Essays in Honor of T.L.S. Sprigge, 2007. (330 p. ; ISBN 978-3-938793-71-8)
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