Borden Parker Bowne

Borden Parker Bowne (/ˈbn/; January 14, 1847, near Leonardville, New Jersey  April 1, 1910, in Boston) was an American Christian philosopher and theologian in the Methodist tradition. In 1876 he became a professor of philosophy at Boston University, where he taught for more than thirty years. He later served as dean of the graduate school. Bowne was an acute critic of positivism and naturalism. He categorized his views as Kantianized Berkeleyanism, transcendental empiricism and, finally, personalism, a philosophical branch of liberal theology: of this branch Bowne is the dominant figure; this personalism is sometimes called Boston Personalism, in contrast with the California Personalism of George Holmes Howison. Bowne's masterpiece, Metaphysics, appeared in 1882. Bowne was chiefly influenced by Hermann Lotze.

Legacy

Bowne has influenced philosophy in various ways. For instance, there has been a direct line of personalists from Bowne through his student, Edgar Sheffield Brightman (1884-1954), through Brightman's student, Peter Anthony Bertocci (1910  1989), to Bertocci's student, Thomas O. Buford (b. 1932).

There has also been a more general influence, as with Martin Luther King, Jr., who studied at Boston University, and spoke in his Stride toward Freedom of having gained "a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality."[1]

Bowne received nine nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature between 1906 and 1909—one from his own sister.[2]

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1958), Stride toward Freedom, New York: Harper.
  2. "Nomination Database". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2013-10-04.

Further reading

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