James Hutchison Stirling (1820 - 1909), philosopher, born in Glasgow, and educated there and at Edinburgh, where he studied medicine, which he practised until the death of his father in 1851, after which he devoted himself to philosophy. His Secret of Hegel (1865) gave a great impulse to the study and understanding of the Hegelian philosophy both at home and in the United States, and was also accepted as a work of authority in Germany and Italy. Other works, all characterised: by keen philosophical insight and masterly power of exposition are Complete Text-book to Kant (1881), Philosophy and Theology (1890), What is Thought? or the Problem of Philosophy (1900), and The Categories (1903). Less abstruse are Jerrold, Tennyson, and Macaulay (1868), Burns in Drama (1878), and Philosophy in the Poets (1885).

This article is originally from A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.