Home > Alexander Campbell Fraser

Born at Ardchattan, Argyllshire, he was educated at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, where, from 1846 to 1856, he was professor of Logic at New College. He edited the North British Review from 1850 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 George Berkeley, and published a Collected Edition of the Works of Bishop Berkeley with Annotations, etc. (1871; enlarged 1901), a Biography of Berkeley (1881), an Annotated Edition of Locke's Essay (1894), the Philosophy of Theism (1896) and the Biography of Thomas Reid (1898). He contributed the article on John Locke to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

In 19041904 is a leap year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). Events January 7 The distress signal " CQD" is established only to be replaced two years later by " SOS. February 7 A fire in Baltimore, Maryland destroys over 1,500 buildings in 30 he published an autobiographyFor the album by Ashlee Simpson, see Autobiography (album In a sense, autobiography is a form of biography, the writing of a life story. The difference, of course, is point of view: an autobiography is from the viewpoint of its subject. Biographers genera entitled Biographia philosophica, in which he sketched the progress of his intellectual development. From this work and from his Gifford lectures we learn objectively what had previously been inferred from his critical work. After a childhood spent in an austerity which stigmatized as unholy even the novels of Sir Walter ScottFor the first Premier of Saskatchewan see Thomas Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott ( August 14, 1771 September 21, 1832) was a prolific Scottish historical novelist popular throughout Europe. Portrait of Sir Walter Scott, by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer Born in E, he began his college career at the age of fourteen at a time when Christopher NorthJohn Wilson ( May 18, 1785 April 3, 1854) was a Scottish writer, the Christopher North of Blackwood's Magazine''. He was born at Paisley, the son of a wealthy gauze manufacturer who died when John was eleven years old. He was the fourth child, but the eld and Dr RitchieDavid George Ritchie ( 1853- 1903), Scottish philosopher, was born at Jedburgh, son of the Rev. George Ritchie, D. He had a distinguished university career at Edinburgh, and Balliol College, Oxford, and after being fellow of Jesus and tutor of Balliol was were lecturing on Moral Philosophy and Logic. His first philosophical advance was stimulated by Thomas BrownThomas Brown ( January 9, 1778 April 2, 1820) was a Scottish philosopher. He was born at Kirkmabreck, Kirkcudbright, where his father was parish clergyman. He was a wide reader and an eager student. Educated at several schools in London, he went to the Un'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 David Hume.

In 1831 Sir William Hamilton was appointed to the chair of Logic and Metaphysics, and Fraser became his pupil. He himself said "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 developmeni (see the concluding chapter), and is especially important as perhaps the nearest approach to Kantian ethics made by original English philosophy. Apart from the philosophical interest of the Biographia, the work contains valuable pictures of the Lam of Lorne and Argyllshire society in the early 19th century, of university life in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and a history of the North British Review.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.