William Francis Ross Hardie

William Francis Ross Hardie , called Frank Hardie (born April 25, 1902 in Edinburgh , † September 30, 1990 in Oxford ), was a British classical philologist and historian of philosophy .

Life

Hardie was the older son of the classical philologist and Professor of Humanity (Latin) at the University of Edinburgh William Ross Hardie (1862-1916). Colin Graham Hardie (1906-1998) was his younger brother.

Frank Hardie attended Edinburgh Academy and then studied at Balliol College , Oxford. There he won all major prizes for undergraduate students in classical philology and philosophy. He graduated with first class honors in both classical moderations (1922) and literae humaniores (1924). He was then a year-long fellow at Magdalen College , Oxford, and was appointed tutorial fellow at Corpus Christi College in 1926. In this role he stayed there until 1950, interrupted only by military service in the Treasury (1940–1945). From 1950 to 1969 he was president of Corpus Christi College and in 1962 chairman of the committee that liberalized the Oxford admissions system.

In 1938 he married Isobel St Maur Macaulay, the third of six daughters of the theologian Revd Professor Alexander Beith Macaulay. They had two sons, one of whom died before him.

Research priorities

Hardie worked on ancient philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle . His book on the ethics of Aristotle is still received today. The term psephology , which he suggested to his friend Ronald Buchanan McCallum when he was looking for a word for the study of elections, is said to go back to him . As a tutor in philosophy, Hardie influenced the new ordinary language school of philosophy that formed in Oxford in the 1950s.

Fonts (selection)

• A Study in Plato. Oxford 1936; Reprinted in Bristol 1993.
• My own free will. In: Philosophy 32, 1957, pp. 21-38.
• Aristotle and the Freewill Problem. In: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 43, 1968, pp. 274-278.
• Aristotle's Ethical Theory. Oxford 1968, second edition 1980.
• Willing and Acting. In: The Philosophical Quarterly 21, 1971, pp. 193-206.

Web links

• Cyril Bailey , revised by Mark Pottle: Hardie, William Ross (1862–1916), classical scholar ( memento of November 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition 2011, last accessed October 16, 2014
• Stuart Brown: Hardie, William Francis Ross (1902-90) . In: ders., Dictionary of Twentieth – Century British Philosophers. Bloomsbury Publishing, London 2005, pp. 375-376.
• Francis Sparshot: Hardie, William Francis Ross. In: Robert B. Todd (Ed.): The Dictionary of British Classicists. 3 volumes, Thoemmes Continuum, Bristol 2004, ISBN 1-85506-997-0 ; vol. 2: GN, pp. 347-722.
• James Opie Urmson : WFR Hardie. In: Pelican Record 38, 1991, pp. 50-53.
• informationphilosopher.com: WFR Hardie (1902-1990) .
• philpapers.org: Directory of Hardie's essays and reviews