Percy Brand Blanshard (August 27, 1892, Fredericksburg, Ohio – 1987) was an American philosopher known primarily for his defense of reason. A powerful polemicist, by all accounts he comported himself with courtesy and grace in philosophical controversies and exemplified the "rational temper" he advocated. August 27 is the 239th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (240th in leap years), with 126 days remaining. ... 1892 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... For the Warren County place of that name see Fredericksburg. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Reason is a term used in philosophy to refer to the higher cognitive faculties of the human mind. ... Polemic is the art or practice of disputation or controversy, as in religious, philosophical, or political matters. ...

Life

Most of the information below is taken from [1]. Blanshard's parents were Francis, a Congregational minister, and Emily Coulter Blanshard, both Canadians by birth and naturalized American citizens. The freethinker and sometime The Nation editor Paul Beecher Blanshard was his fraternal twin. In 1893, after his mother's death in a Toronto fire started by a kerosene lamp accident, the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, then in 1899 to Edinburg, Ohio. Upon being diagnosed with tuberculosis, his father was advised to seek the drier climate of the American West. Hence in 1902 the family moved again, first to Helena, Montana, then to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Francis died in 1904. Freethinkers strive to form their opinions on the basis of facts and reason. ... The Nation is the name of several newspapers, periodicals or magazines in different countries, including: The Nation, an Irish Nationalist newspaper founded by Thomas Davis and Charles Gavan Duffy in the 1840s. ... Paul Beecher Blanshard (1892-1980) was an American journalist of the mid-20th century, specializing in political topics. ... Motto: Nickname: Furniture Capital of the World Founded Incorporated 1850  County Kent County Borough Parrish Mayor George Heartwell Area  - Total  - Water 117. ... Tuberculosis is an infection caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs (pulmonary TB) but can also affect the central nervous system (meningitis), lymphatic system, circulatory system (Miliary tuberculosis), genitourinary system, bones and joints. ... Helena, Montana Helena is the capital of Montana, a state of the United States of America. ... Downtown Albuquerque Albuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. ...

The Blanshard brothers were then reared in near-poverty by their paternal grandmother, Orminda Adams Blanshard, first in Bay View, Michigan, later in Detroit. Blanshard nevertheless appears to have experienced a robust American boyhood, whose highlights included a variety of odd jobs, baseball, and debate, at which he excelled. Bear Creek Township is a township located in Emmet County in the U.S. state of Michigan. ... The Detroit skyline at night as seen from Canada Nickname: The Motor City, Motown Motto: {{{motto}}} Official website: http://www. ...

Blanshard studied at the University of Michigan, discovering philosophy while majoring in classics. After a mere three years at Michigan, he obtained a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University, where he studied under Horace W. B. Joseph, who greatly influenced him, and met F.H. Bradley and T. S. Eliot. Upon the outbreak of WWI, he interrupted his studies and joined the British Army YMCA, which sent him to Bombay and Amhara, where he witnessed poverty and the horrors of war at first hand. German submarine warfare forced him to return to the USA via Japan. He then obtained his M.A. at Columbia University, studying under W. P. Montague and meeting John Dewey. From Columbia, he went straight into the US Army, serving in France. Once demobilized, he returned to Oxford to complete his BA (Hons), then did his doctorate at Harvard under Clarence Irving Lewis. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (U-M, U of M, or U-Mich) is a public coeducational university in Michigan, United States. ... Rhodes House in Oxford The Rhodes Scholarships were created by Englishman Cecil John Rhodes and have been awarded to applicants annually since 1902 by the Oxford-based Rhodes Trust on the basis of academic qualities, as well as those of character. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Francis Herbert Bradley (30 January 1846 - 18 September 1924) was a British philosopher. ... T.S. Eliot (by E.O. Hoppe, 1919) Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was an American-born poet, dramatist, and literary critic, whose works, such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land and Four Quartets, are considered major achievements of twentieth... WWI may be an acronym for: World War I World Wrestling Industry This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... This article or section should be merged with Mumbai Mumbai (previously known as Bombay) is the worlds most populous conurbation, and is the sixth most populous agglomeration in the world. ... Amhara (አማራ) may refer to: Amhara, an ethnic group of Ethiopia. ... Columbia University is a private university in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. ... Democracy and Education (WikiSource) Works by John Dewey at Project Gutenberg Excerpts from Experience and Nature (pdf file) [http://geocities. ... Clarence Irving Lewis (April 12, 1883 Stoneham, Massachusetts - February 3, 1964 Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American academic philosopher. ...

After a short teaching stint at Michigan, he taught at Swarthmore College, 1925-44, then spent the remainder of his career until his 1961 retirement at Yale University, where he served as chairman of the Department of Philosophy for many years. In 1952, he delivered the Gifford Lectures in Scotland. Swarthmore College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, with an enrollment of about 1450 students. ... Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

In 1918, Blanshard married Frances Bradshaw; her 1966 death, which came as a great blow to him. He completed her book Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore, and published it in 1970. In 1969, after what he later described as "loneliness, failing health, and failing motives," he married Roberta Yerkes, a daughter of his Yale colleague Robert M. Yerkes. Robert M. Yerkes was born on May 26, 1876. ...

Philosophy

Blanshard was a rationalist who espoused and defended a strong conception of reason during a century when reason came under philosophical attack. Generally regarded as one of the last great absolute idealists and strongly influenced by British idealism (especially F.H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet), he nevertheless departed from absolute idealism in some respects; e.g., he was not much directly influenced by G.W.F. Hegel. The American philosophers whose ideas and temper were most similar to Blanshard's was probably Josiah Royce. Rationalism, also known as the rationalist movement, is a philosophical doctrine that asserts that the truth can best be discovered by reason and factual analysis, rather than faith, dogma or religious teaching. ... Reason is a term used in philosophy to refer to the higher cognitive faculties of the human mind. ... ... British idealism was a philosophical movement that was influential in Britain during the mid to late nineteenth century and the early days of the twentieth century. ... Francis Herbert Bradley (30 January 1846 - 18 September 1924) was a British philosopher. ... Bernard Bosanquet (July 14, 1848, Alnwick, Northumberland, England – February 8, 1923, London) was one of the chief philosophers in England who helped revive the idealism of G.W.F. Hegel. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Josiah Royce (November 20, 1855, Grass Valley, California. ...

Strongly critical of positivism, logical atomism, pragmatism, and most varieties of empiricism, he held that the universe consists of an Absolute in the form of a single all-encompassing intelligible system in which each element has a necessary place. Moreover, this Absolute -- the universe as a whole -- he held to be the only true "particular", all elements within it being ultimately resoluble into specific "universals" (properties, relations, or combinations thereof that might be given identically in more than one context). He regarded his metaphysical monism as essentially a form of Spinozism. Positivism can have several meanings. ... Logical Atomism is a philosophical belief that originated in the early 20th century with the development of Analytic philosophy. ... ... Empiricism (greek εμπειρισμός, from empirical, latin experientia - the experience), is the philosophical doctrine that all human knowledge ultimately comes from the senses and from experience. ... The Absolute is the totality of things, all that is, whether it has been discovered or not. ... In metaphysics, particulars are, one might say, identified by what they are not: they are not abstract, not multiply instantiated. ... Universals (used as a noun) are either properties, relations, or types, but not classes. ... ... Wikisource has original text related to this article: Baruch Spinoza Spinozism Liberalism Contributions to liberal theory Voorburg External links The Ethics - Split-screen Latin/English or Latin/French The EthicsA READABLE version with all the content still there. ...

Also strongly critical of reductionist accounts of mind (e.g. behaviorism), he maintained to the contrary that mind is the reality of which we are in fact most certain. Thought, he held, is that activity of mind which aims at truth, and the ultimate object of thought is full understanding of the Absolute. Such understanding comes about, in his view, through a grasp of necessity: to understand (or explain) something is to see it as necessitated within a system of which it is a part. Reductionism in philosophy describes a number of related, contentious theories that hold, very roughly, that the nature of complex things can always be reduced to (be explained by) simpler or more fundamental things. ... The mind is the term most commonly used to describe the higher functions of the human brain, particularly those of which humans are subjectivel // holaMedia:Example. ... JON S is a plague on the human race Within that broad approach, there are different emphases. ... When someone sincerely agrees with an assertion, they are claiming that it is the truth. ... In criminal law, necessity is a possible excuse for breaking the law. ...

On Blanshard's view, the Absolute is thus not merely consistent (i.e. noncontradictory) but positively coherent, shot through with relations of necessity and indeed operating purely deterministically. (Blanshard held the law of causality, properly understood, to be a logical law and believed that effects logically determine their causes as well as vice versa.) Strictly speaking, he admitted, we cannot prove that there are no atomic facts, bare conjunctions, or sheer surds in nature, but we can and do take it as our working hypothesis that relations of necessity are always to be found; until and unless this hypothesis meets with absolute defeat, we are justified in adopting it at least provisionally. (Blanshard might have argued, but did not, that this hypothesis is in fact indefeasible, since we could never know that two facts were really, rather than merely apparently, unconnected by any necessity at all.) Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. ... The philosophical concept of causality or causation refers to the set of all particular causal or cause-and-effect relations. ...

In his early work The Nature of Thought, he defended a coherence theory of truth. In his later years, however, he came to think that the relation between thought and object was sui generis and might be described, about equally inadequately, as either "correspondence" or "coherence"; at any rate, he admitted, the "coherence" between thought and its ideal object differs from the coherence that may obtain among thoughts. He also backed away from his early (more or less Bradleian) claim that the ultimate aim of thought was identification with its object. ...

He defended a strong doctrine of internal relations. He maintained, with longtime friend and philosophical colleague A.C. Ewing, that the doctrine would have caught on far better had it been more accurately described in terms of "relevance" rather than of "internality"; his doctrine on this point was that no relation is entirely irrelevant to the natures of the terms it relates, such relevance (and therefore "internality") being a matter of degree. (One of Blanshard's most important exchanges on this topic was with philosopher Ernest Nagel, who attacked the doctrine of internal relations -- indeed, Blanshard's entire conception of reason -- in his essay "Sovereign Reason". Blanshard's fullest published reply appears in his book Reason and Analysis.) Alfred Cyril Ewing (May 11, 1899 - May 14, 1973) was a British idealist philosopher. ... ...

Sympathetic to theism but skeptical of traditional religious and theological dogma, he did not regard his Absolute as having the characteristics of a personal God but nevertheless maintained that it was a proper subject of (rational) religious inquiry and even devotion. Defining "religion" as the dedication of one's whole person to whatever one regards as true and important, he took as his own religion the service of reason in a very full and all-encompassing metaphysical sense, defending what he called the "rational temper" as a human ideal (though one exceedingly difficult to achieve in practice). His admiration for this temper extended his philosophical loyalties across "party lines", especially to the one philosopher he regarded as exemplifying that temper to the greatest degree: Henry Sidgwick. (He also spoke highly of Bertrand Russell.) Theologically, Blanshard was raised Methodist but tended toward theological liberalism from an early age, a tendency that became more pronounced as he grew older. Beginning during his time at Swarthmore he maintained a lifelong connection with the Religious Society of Friends despite personal disagreements with some of Quakerism's generally accepted tenets (notably its pacifism). Theism is the belief in one or more gods or goddesses. ... God is the term used to denote the Supreme Being believed by the vast majority [1] [2] to be the creator, ruler and/or the sum total of, existence. ... Reason is a term used in philosophy to refer to the higher cognitive faculties of the human mind. ... Henry Sidgwick Henry Sidgwick (May 31, 1838–August 28, 1900) was an English philosopher. ... Wikisource has original works written by or about: Bertrand Russell Writings available online [http://www005. ... The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers or Friends, is a religious community who do not have a universal set of doctrines to which all members subscribe but who embrace certain concepts that have been adopted by consensus. ... Pacifism is opposition to war. ...

In ethics he was broadly utilitarian; however, he preferred the term "teleological" since the term "utilitarian" suggested that all goods were instrumental and he believed (with e.g. H.W.B. Joseph and W.D. Ross) that some experiences were intrinsically good. He also denied that pleasure is the sole good, maintaining instead (with T.H. Green) that experiences are good as wholes and that pleasure is not, strictly speaking, a separable element within such wholes. Disagreeing with G.E. Moore that the "naturalistic fallacy" is really a fallacy, he gave an entirely naturalistic analysis of goodness, holding that an experience is intrinsically good to the degree that it (a) fulfills an impulse or drive and (b) generates a feeling-tone of satisfaction attendant upon such fulfillment. He regarded the first of these factors as by far the more important and held that the major intrinsic goods of human experience answer to the basic drives of human nature; he maintained that these two factors together provide not merely a criterion for but the actual meaning of intrinsic goodness. (He defined all other ethical terms, including "right", in terms of intrinsic goodness, a right act, for example, being that act which tends to produce the greatest amount of intrinsic goodness under the relevant circumstances.) ... Teleology is the supposition that there is design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the works and processes of nature, and the philosophical study of that purpose. ... W. D. Ross is an Oxford philosopher whose ethics is a well-known form of deontology which sprung from a response to G.E. Moore. ... Thomas Hill Green (April 7, 1836 - March 26, 1882) was an English philosopher, political radical and temperance reformer, and a member of the British idealism movement. ... George Edward Moore George Edward Moore, also known as G.E. Moore, (November 4, 1873 - October 24, 1958) was a distinguished and hugely influential English philosopher who was educated and taught at the University of Cambridge. ... George E. Moore The naturalistic fallacy is an alleged logical fallacy, identified by British philosopher G.E. Moore in Principia Ethica (1903), which Moore stated was committed whenever a philosopher attempts to prove a claim about ethics by appealing to a definition of the term good in terms of one...

Blanshard wrote little on political theory, and the little he did write (mainly in Reason and Goodness) owed much to Green and Bosanquet. These two philosophers, he held, had rescued Jean-Jacques Rousseau's confused doctrine of the general will and placed it on a rationally defensible footing: our "real will" (in Bosanquet's terms) or "rational will" (in Blanshard's) is simply that which we would want, all things considered, if our reflections upon what we presently desire were pursued to their ideal limit. Blanshard argued that there is excellent reason to regard this "ideal" will as in fact real, and contended that it provided the foundation for a rational political theory: the State is justified if, and precisely insofar as, it helps individual human beings to pursue and achieve the common end which is the object of their rational will. He did not develop this doctrine to the point of advocating any specific form of political organization or social structure. In his Schilpp autobiography, he admitted to an early sympathy for socialism and to having voted the "straight Democratic ticket" over the previous 40-odd years. Niccolò Machiavelli, ca 1500, became the key figure in realistic political theory, crucial to political science Political Science is the systematic study of the allocation and transfer of power in decision making. ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a Franco-Swiss philosopher, writer, political theorist, and self-taught composer of The Age of Enlightenment. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. ... Socialism is an ideology with the core belief that society should exist in which popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production. ...

A firm believer in clarity of exposition and himself one of the ablest writers of philosophical prose in the English language, he wrote an essay "On Philosophical Style" in defense of the view that philosophical profundity need not (and should not) be couched in obscurity and obfuscation.

Writings

1980. The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard, Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed. A volume in the series The Library of Living Philosophers; contains a complete bibliography and an autobiographical essay. The Library of Living Philosophers is a series of books conceived of and started by Paul Arthur Schilpp in 1939; Schilpp remained editor until 1981. ...

Some of Blanshard's books:

• 1939.The Nature of Thought
• 1961. Reason and Goodness
• 1962. Reason and Analysis
• 1974. Reason and Belief (1974).
• 1984. Four Reasonable Men, his last work. Contains sympathetic biographical accounts of four exemplars of the rational temper: Marcus Aurelius, John Stuart Mill, Ernest Renan, and Henry Sidgwick.

Marcus Aurelius depicted in The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, as translated by George Long Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (April 26, 121 – March 17, 180) was Roman Emperor from 161 to his death in 180. ... In 1851 Mill married Harriet Taylor after 21 years of an at times intense friendship and love affair. ... Ernest Renan (February 28, 1823 – October 12, 1892) was a French philosopher and writer. ... Henry Sidgwick Henry Sidgwick (May 31, 1838–August 28, 1900) was an English philosopher. ...

External links

• Biography of Blanshard at the Progressive Living website
• The Rational Temper: Brand Blanshard and What Objectivists Can Learn From Him (by Scott Ryan)
• Summaries/reviews of Blanshard's major works (by Scott Ryan)
• Review of Reason and Analysis (by Nathaniel Branden; originally published in The Objectivist Newsletter in February 1963)