The John Locke Lectures are a series of annual lectures in philosophy given at the University of Oxford. Named for British philosopher John Locke, the Locke Lectures are the world's most prestigious lectures in philosophy, and are among the world's most prestigious academic lectures. They were established in 1950 by the bequest of Henry Wilde. Another comparable lecture series is the Gifford Lectures, which are delivered annually at several universities in Scotland.
The first lecture series was offered to Ludwig Wittgenstein, who eventually declined. He felt uncomfortable giving formal lectures where the audience would not be asking or answering questions. [1]
The lectures began as an uncertain biennial series, with the first lecturer from 1950 to 1951, and missing the second slot from 1952 to 1953. Between 1969 and 2001, the lectures became gradually more frequent. Since 2001, the lecture notes have been made available electronically.
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George Edward Moore was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the initiators of analytic philosophy. He and Russell began deemphasizing the idealism which was then prevalent among British philosophers and became known for advocating common-sense concepts and contributing to ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. He was said to have an "exceptional personality and moral character". Ray Monk later dubbed him "the most revered philosopher of his era".
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
The Gifford Lectures are an annual series of lectures which were established in 1887 by the will of Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford at the four ancient universities of Scotland: St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Their purpose is to "promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in other words, the knowledge of God." A Gifford lectures appointment is one of the most prestigious honours in Scottish academia.
Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, usually cited as G. E. M. Anscombe or Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and ethics. She was a prominent figure of analytical Thomism, a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, and a professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge.
Robert Boyce Brandom is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He works primarily in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and philosophical logic, and his academic output manifests both systematic and historical interests in these topics. His work has presented "arguably the first fully systematic and technically rigorous attempt to explain the meaning of linguistic items in terms of their socially norm-governed use, thereby also giving a non-representationalist account of the intentionality of thought and the rationality of action as well."
Ray Monk is a British biographer who is renowned for his biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. He is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Southampton, where he taught in various capacities from 1992 to 2018.
Dewi Zephaniah Phillips, known as D. Z. Phillips or simply DZ, was a Welsh philosopher. He was a leading proponent of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion. He had an academic career spanning five decades, and at the time of his death he held the Danforth Chair in Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University, California, and was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Swansea University.
Frank Cameron JacksonFBA is an Australian analytic philosopher and Emeritus Professor in the School of Philosophy at Australian National University (ANU) where he had spent most of the latter part of his career. His primary research interests include epistemology, metaphysics, meta-ethics and the philosophy of mind. In the latter field he is best known for the "Mary's room" knowledge argument, a thought experiment that is one of the most discussed challenges to physicalism.
Alice Ambrose Lazerowitz was an American philosopher, logician, and author.
Arthur John Terence Dibben Wisdom, usually cited as John Wisdom, was a leading British philosopher considered to be an ordinary language philosopher, a philosopher of mind and a metaphysician. He was influenced by G.E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud, and in turn explained and extended their work.
Cora Diamond is an American philosopher who works in the areas of moral philosophy, animal ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy and literature, and the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gottlob Frege, and Elizabeth Anscombe. Diamond is the Kenan Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Virginia.
John Niemeyer Findlay, usually cited as J. N. Findlay, was a South African philosopher.
Ian Thomas Ramsey was a British Anglican bishop and academic. He was Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Oxford, and Bishop of Durham from 1966 until his death in 1972. He wrote extensively on the problem of religious language, Christian ethics, the relationship between science and religion, and Christian apologetics. As a result, he became convinced that a permanent centre was needed for enquiry into these inter-disciplinary areas; and in 1985 the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at the University of Oxford was set up to promote discussion on the problems raised for theology and ethics by developments in science, technology and medicine.
Casimir Lewy was a Polish philosopher of Jewish descent.
Naming and Necessity is a 1980 book with the transcript of three lectures, given by the philosopher Saul Kripke, at Princeton University in 1970, in which he dealt with the debates of proper names in the philosophy of language. The transcript was brought out originally in 1972 in Semantics of Natural Language, edited by Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman. Among analytic philosophers, Naming and Necessity is widely considered one of the most important philosophical works of the twentieth century.
Barry Stroud was a Canadian philosopher and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Known especially for his work on philosophical skepticism, he wrote about David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the metaphysics of color, and many other topics.
Oets Kolk Bouwsma was an American analytic philosopher.
Yorick Smythies was a student and friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein known for his notes of the philosopher's lectures. He was also a friend of, and character inspiration for, the novelist Iris Murdoch.
The Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, founded in October 1878, is a philosophy discussion group that meets weekly at the University of Cambridge during term time. Speakers are invited to present a paper with a strict upper time limit of 45 minutes, after which there is discussion for an hour. Several Colleges have hosted the Club: Trinity College, King's College, Clare College, Darwin College, St John's College, and from 2014 Newnham College.
The Sekyra Foundation is a private foundation created in 2018 by Czech entrepreneur Luděk Sekyra in support of moral universalism, liberal values, and civil society. Among many other projects the Foundation has a long-term cooperation with the University of Oxford which has also named the oldest statutory professorship in philosophy at Oxford after the foundations founder Luděk Sekyra.