FRASER, ALEXANDER CAMPBELL (1819 )

This article appears in Volume V11, Page 39 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: FRA-GAE

FRASER, ALEXANDER CAMPBELL (1819 ) , Scottish philosopher, was born at Ardchattan,

Argyllshire

ARGYLLSHIRE

, on the 3rd of September 1819. He was educated at Glasgow and Edinburgh, where, from 1846 to 1856, he was professor of Logic at New College. He edited the North British

Review

REVIEW (Fr. revue, from revoir, to see again, Lat. re and videre)

from 185o to 1857, and in 1856, having previously been a Free Church minister, he succeeded Sir William Hamilton as professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh University. In 1859 he became dean of the faculty of arts. He devoted himself to the study of English philosophers, especially Berkeley, and published a Collected Edition of the Works of

Bishop

Berkeley with Annotations, &c. (1871; enlarged 1901), a

Biography

BIOGRAPHY (from the Gr. (3ios, life, and yp&4 , writing)

of Berkeley (1881), an Annotated Edition of Locke's Essay (1894), the Philosophy of Theism (1896) and the

Biography

BIOGRAPHY (from the Gr. (3ios, life, and yp&4 , writing)

Thomas

Reid (1898). He contributed the article on John Locke to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In 1904 he published an autobiography entitled Biographia philosophica, in which he sketched the progress of his intellectual development. From this

work

WORK

and from his

Gifford

lectures we learn objectively what had previously been inferred from his

critical

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

ws. After a childhood spent in an austerity which stigmatized* unholy even the novels of Sir Walter Scott, he began his college career at the age of fourteen at a time when Christopher North and Dr Ritchie were lecturing on Moral Philosophy and Logic. His first philosophical advance was stimulated by

Thomas

Brown's Cause and Effect, which introduced him to the problems which were to occupy his thought. From this point he fell into the scepticism of Hume. In 1836 Sir William Hamilton was appointed to the chair of Logic and Metaphysics, and Fraser became his pupil. He himself says, " I owe more to Hamilton than to any other influence." It was about this time also that he began his study of Berkeley and Coleridge, and deserted his early phenomenalism for the conception of a spiritual will as the universal cause. In the Biographia this " Theistic faith " appears in its full development (see the concluding chapter), and is especially important as perhaps the nearest approach to Kantian ethics made by

original

ORIGINAL

English philosophy. Apart from the philosophical

interest

INTEREST

of the Biographia, the

work

WORK

contains valuable pictures of the Land of Lorne and

Argyllshire

ARGYLLSHIRE

society in the early 19th century, of university life in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and a history of the North British

Review

REVIEW (Fr. revue, from revoir, to see again, Lat. re and videre)

.

End of Article: FRASER, ALEXANDER CAMPBELL (1819 )

If you wish, you can link directly to this article.

<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/FRA_GAE/FRASER_ALEXANDER_CAMPBELL_1819.html">
FRASER, ALEXANDER CAMPBELL (1819 )
</a>

(Previous)
FRASER

(Next)
FRASER, JAMES (1818-1885)

JCSM was founded in 1997 and exists to help the community and bring people into a life-changing and productive relationship with Jesus Christ. JCSM offers over 200,000 free web pages, including its weekly inspirational emails that were sent continuously for over a decade.

Jesus Christ Saves Ministries
P.O. Box 9297
San Diego, CA 92169
1-888-887-0417 or Email