P. F. Strawson

Peter Frederick Strawson (b. 1919–d. 2006) was one of the most important and influential philosophers of the late twentieth century. His career centered on Oxford, where he was a Tutorial Fellow at University College and later Gilbert Ryle’s successor as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Magdalen College. His writings range over philosophical logic, the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and the history of philosophy. They were influential in moving Oxford philosophy from the anti-metaphysical leanings of A. J. Ayer and J. L. Austin to a rejuvenated era of traditional philosophical theorizing, albeit understood in a distinctively Strawsonian fashion. Across a range of debates and topics, he aimed to identify the fundamental concepts involved in our ordinary ways of thinking of the world and to show both that they cannot be eliminated and that our entitlement to use them does not depend on their being reduced to a more scientifically acceptable basis. He made important contributions to debates about the nature of truth, reference, perception, induction, free will and determinism, and the role that our concepts of body, person, space, and time play in securing reference. His work has attracted and continues to attract significant scholarly attention, not least through a generation of students who studied under Strawson and on whom his influence was profound.