Herbert James Paton

Herbert James Paton (born March 30, 1887 in Abernethy , † August 2, 1969 in Perth ) was a Scottish philosopher who is particularly known for his work on Immanuel Kant .

Life

Herbert J. Paton was the twin son of the free church pastor William Macalister Paton and his wife Jean, nee. Robertson Miller was born in Perthshire . The family moved to Glasgow in 1896 .

After graduating from Glasgow High School , Paton studied Classical Philology at the University of Glasgow . At the same time he studied philosophy in the tradition of British idealism with Sir Henry Jones with an MA in "Classics" in 1908. With a scholarship from the University of Glasgow (Snell Exhibition), Paton went to Balliol College at the University of Oxford in the same year . His teacher there was John Alexander Smith , who introduced him to Benedetto Croce's idealism . In 1911 he became a Fellow and Lecturer (Praelector) in Classical Philology and Philosophy at Queen's College , Oxford. In 1914 he obtained an MA in philosophy. At the beginning of World War I , Paton worked for the Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty. As an expert on Polish affairs, he took part in the 1919 Versailles conference . After the war Paton returned to Oxford, where u. a. Gilbert Ryle and Oliver Franks were among his students. From 1917 to 1922 he was Dean and 1920/21 Junior Proctor at Oxford. In 1925 he went to Berkeley , California as a research fellow of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial for a year , where he worked on his first book. This appeared in 1927 under the title “The Good Will. A Study of the Coherence Theory of the Goodness ".

In 1927, Paton was appointed professor of logic and rhetoric at the University of Glasgow. Among other things, he was given the task of giving a lecture on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason . This was the beginning of an intensive study of Kant. A first result of this was the two-volume commentary on the first half of the Critique of Pure Reason, which appeared in 1936 under the title "Kant's Metaphysic of Experience". That year Paton bought a house near Bridge of Earn, Perthshire, which he kept during his subsequent tenure at Oxford and where he returned after his retirement. Paton followed in 1937 the renewed call to Oxford as "White's Professor of Moral Philosophy", where he was a fellow at Corpus Christi College and taught until his retirement in 1952. From 1938 to 1952 he was curator of the Bodleian Library . During the Second World War he again worked part-time for the Foreign Office . In 1946 Paton became a member of the British Academy . In particular, during his time in Oxford, Paton published a study on the foundation of the metaphysics of morals and a widely recognized translation of this work. In his last two years in the business he gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews .

In 1953 he took on the task of "Crown Assessor of the University Court" in St. Andrews , which he filled out until 1960. In 1955-1956 he was Visiting Professor in Toronto . Paton was a member of the Mind Association , the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and the Aristotelian Society . From 1939 to 1948 he was a member of the Congregation of the Church of Scotland . At the same time (1938–1948) he worked on the Executive Committee of the League of Nations Union , an organization founded in Great Britain in 1918 to promote international justice, collective security and peace between peoples.

Paton had been married to Sheila Todd-Naylor since 1936, who died in 1959. The marriage remained childless. His second wife, Sarah Dixon, the daughter of a Glasgow professor, died in 1964 after just two years of marriage.

Teaching

In his study "The Good Will", Paton tried to develop a theory of ethics as the coherence of will based on the coherence theory of truth. Against Moore he is of the opinion that the good is not something indefinable, because without something like willing there would be no differentiation between good and bad. The will is not solely dependent on a current situation, but is embedded in a lifestyle ("policy") that cannot be grasped purely rationally, but gives life a basic order. When action is in harmony with this individual order, with the social order and also with humanity as a whole, there is coherence and then the moral good is realized.

In his work on the Critique of Pure Reason (Kant's Metaphysic of Experience) the commentary ends with the Transcendental Analytics . On the one hand, Paton's clear and understandable explanation of the work is emphasized. On the other hand, he is accused of being too close to the text and too uncritical of Kant. As part of his commentary, Paton critically examines the interpretations prevailing at the time, mostly on an idealistic basis, including a. by the Hegelian Edward Caird , the realist Harold Arthur Prichard and, in particular, by the Kant researcher Norman Kemp Smith and his German role models Erich Adickes and Hans Vaihinger, and points out their allegations that Kant was imprecise and confused and that the criticism only consisted of a patchwork detailed analyzes. For Paton, Kant's critique has a coherent and uniform structure. Critics of Patons have reproached him with the fact that his work is exclusively explanatory and shows too little distance to Kant's work and that he has not dealt sufficiently with problematic questions about the criticism of pure reason.

Due to the orientation of his chair in Oxford, Paton dealt intensively with Kant's ethics during that time. His translation of the foundations for the metaphysics of morals is considered authoritative. The commentary on this in the book “The Categorical Imperative” remains close to the text, but also offers a classification into the moral-philosophical relevant works of Kant as a whole. Above all, Paton opposes the prejudice that Kant's moral philosophy is merely formal. This is mainly due to the fact that Kant critics rely primarily on the basic formula of the categorical imperative and pay too little attention to the formulas for an end in themselves - the human being as an end in himself demands respect for the person - and for the realm of ends. Only from a broader perspective does it emerge what can be considered allowed or forbidden according to Kant. In contrast to the work on the Critique of Pure Reason, Paton's “ categorical imperative ” is viewed as an important classic on the interpretation of Kant.

The book “In Defense of Reason”, published in 1951, is a collection of 14 essays from the years 1922 to 1948. In addition to some important essays on Kant's philosophy, which are the preliminary work on his two commentaries on the Kantian writings, Paton continues in the article “ Fashion and Philosophy ”, his inaugural lecture in Oxford in 1937, critically examines the dominant contemporary analytical philosophy. Here he saw an analysis for the sake of analysis and a refusal to adopt a systematic philosophy. From this position, access to metaphysics remains closed and the possibility of an ethical system is impossible. Instead of pure self-analysis and criticism of the times, Paton's philosophy also has the task of conveying a contemporary worldview. Against this background, Paton understood his cautious, but at the same time clarifying explanation of the Kantian philosophy as a return to a secure foundation from which new ideas can develop.

Paton's last philosophical book "The Modern Predicament" from 1955 is an elaboration of his Gifford Lectures, which is aimed more at a broad audience than at the philosophical professional world. Here he advocates the thesis that modern science has put religion into a predicament from which it can only emerge through a new theoretical foundation. Even if scientific progress is enormous, science - contrary to popular belief - cannot provide help in all spheres of life. So you lack z. B. in moral questions the competence to comment, because no obligations can be derived from facts. As Martin Buber has shown, religion is also based on its own sphere of experience that is not based on facts. Religion, for its part, is incapable of dealing with science on the level of facts. The conflict between religion and science is not a competition of theories, but is based on differences in the way of life of individual individuals. Without such a foundation that has not yet been found, modern society must continue to suffer from the dichotomy of heart and mind, of belief and knowledge. In the last years of his life, Paton devoted himself primarily to "the cause of Scotland" and shortly before his death published "The Claim of Scotland", in which he explains to what extent the interests of Scotland are disproportionately taken into account in the United Kingdom and why Scotland should have greater independence.

Fonts

• The good will. A Study of the Coherence Theory of the Goodness (1927)
• Is the Transcendental Deduction a patchwork ?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1930)
• The Key to Kant's Deduction of the Categories, Mind 40 (1931), 310-329
• Kant's Metaphysic of Experience (2 volumes 1936)
• Fashion & Philosophy an Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University of Oxford on November 30, 1937 (1937)
• Can Reason be Practical ?, Proceedings of the British Academy 29 (1943), 65-105 (also as a special edition)
• Kant's Idea of ​​the Good, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1944)
• The Categorical Imperative. A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy (1947)
  • German translation: The Categorical Imperative. An investigation into Kant's moral philosophy. de Gruyter, Berlin 1962
• as editor, translator and commentator: The Moral Law: Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1948)
• In Defense of Reason (collection of articles, 1951)
• The Modern Predicament: A Study in the Philosophy of Religion (1955)
• Immortality (Berkeley 1956)
• Kant on Friendship (1957)
• as editor with Raymond Klibansky . Philosophy & History: Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer (1963)
• The Claim of Scotland (1968)

literature

• Enrique Chávez-Arvizo: Paton , in: Stuart Brown (Ed.): Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Philosophers, A&C Black, Bristol 2005, 750-753
• Ingeborg Heidemann : On Kant research by HJ Paton , Kant studies 49 (1957), 107-112
• WH Walsh: HJ Paton, 1887-1969 , Kant-Studien 61 (1970), 427-432

Web links

• WH Walsh: Herbert James Paton , in: Memoir on the British Academy homepage
• Stuart Brown: 'Paton, Herbert James (1887–1969)' , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (reproduced on the Gifford Lectures site)