John Anderson
1893–1962 · Scottish-born Australian empiricist philosopher, professor at the University of Sydney
John Anderson (Stonehouse, 1893 – Sydney, 1962) was a philosopher born in Scotland who spent most of his career in Australia. He held the Challis Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sydney from 1927 to 1958 and is regarded as the founder of Australian realism, an empiricist current that sought to account for reality through science and naturalism.
After studying at Glasgow, he taught at Cardiff, Glasgow and Edinburgh before moving to Sydney. In the 1930s he was associated with the communist movement, but he eventually rejected Stalinism and, after the war, took positions close to libertarianism and pluralism, opposed to every form of authoritarianism. He championed academic freedom, free speech and free thought against the university and political authorities, which brought him into constant conflict with them.
His ontology rested on a continuous space-time, delimited by particular situations, and he held that there is only one realm of being, best understood through science; hence his rejection of a supernatural god or Platonic ideals. His influence reached several generations of students, the so-called Andersonians, among them Hedley Bull and Eugene Kamenka, and the countercultural scene of Sydney in the 1960s.
Key ideas
- Realism: things and their qualities are independent of the relations in which they stand.
- Empiricism: there is only one realm of being, accessible through science and naturalism.
- Identity theory of the proposition: every situation can be expressed as a proposition, and every proposition refers to a situation.
- Freedom against the State: liberty is an activity exercised against power, not an abstract right.
- Freethought: continuous inquiry and criticism should apply to every subject, including politics and morality.
Curiosities
University censure
The University of Sydney Senate censured him in 1931 for criticising the role of war memorials in glorifying war.
A philosopher brother
His elder brother, William Anderson, was professor of philosophy at Auckland University College in New Zealand.
Teachers and influences
Influenced by
- Samuel Alexander 1859–1938
Influenced
- David Malet Armstrong 1926–2014
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.