Peter Geach

Peter Thomas Geach ( born March 29, 1916 in London, † December 21, 2013 ) was a British philosopher and logician.

Life

Peter Geach was the son of George Hender Geach, a professor of philosophy in Lahore and Cambridge, and Eleonora Adolfina Sgonina, a daughter of Polish emigrants. From a very young age he was concerned with philosophical authors, some of whom he cites agree or disagree again and again in later works ( so the logician John Neville Keynes and John McTaggart ). He studied philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1938 he converted - such as Elizabeth Anscombe, whom he married in 1941, Michael Dummett and other great English philosopher of the 20th century - to the Catholic faith. About Anscombe he came in contact with Ludwig Wittgenstein, although it was never his instructor, but still exercised considerable influence on him.

From 1945 to 1951 Geach was without a job and trying to make a name for his publications. 1951 to 1966 he taught logic in Birmingham and from 1966 to 1981 in Leeds. Since 1963 he appeared frequently as a guest professor in Poland and published several essays in Polish.

Work

Logic

Although Geach applies not only to Elizabeth Anscombe, Anthony Kenny and Michael Dummett as one of the greatest British philosophers of his generation, there is no " philosophy of Geach " in the same sense as in Willard Van Orman Quine, Donald Davidson Dummett or of certain names associated with their spirit or a building on such a basic concept teaching can be no question. The reception of his work is associated with certain individual theses, which are within the analytical philosophy as fixed reference points of the discussion. These include his thoughts on the logical structure of names, the concept of (relative) identity and reference of quantified statements.

The first publications of Geach mainly related to questions of logic. However, Geach worked less in the area of ​​theoretical logic - although he has also published several contributions to the logic of relations and to set theory - but dealt with the question of the logical analysis of natural languages.

Constant reference point for his reflections are the works of Gottlob Frege and Wittgenstein. In contrast to the representatives of the American school of Rudolf Carnap on one side and the supporters of the ordinary language philosophy on the other hand, there is no separation for Geach of Wittgenstein's work in an early, determined by the logical- philosophical treatise, and in a late, defined by the Philosophical Investigations phase. Therefore, Geach not busy - as the Carnap - school - with the problems of a logical ideal language, but omitted in his investigations on the semantics and logic of natural languages ​​and not - as the philosophers of ordinary language - in a logical formalization. On this point, Geachs work strongly touched with that of Michael Dummett.

Geach was within the analytical philosophy of one of the first authors who systematically related to scholastic authors and has thus contributed to the strong appreciation, has undergone medieval philosophy in recent decades in the English debate. In particular, he dealt with the work of Thomas Aquinas, which he liberated from a neuscholastisch narrowed understanding and its philosophical rank he brought to bear again in the discussion contexts of analytical thinking. The by Geach along with Anthony Kenny represented Thomas - interpretation is called " analytical Thomism ". He is also editor of the works of Paul Venetus.

In addition, Geach also dealt with questions of philosophy of psychology; the 1957 published book Mental Acts is considered a modern classic of philosophy.

Philosophy of Religion

Clearly separated from the work on logic and other typical problems of analytic philosophy are Geachs work on the philosophy of religion. Geach represents a strict Catholicism, which is also in that orthodox, as he insists on a consistent rationalism.

Geach has pointed out and showed how out of fashion Come terms of an essentialist philosophy ( "essence ", " soul ", " immortality " ), as Thomas has used, but also moral-philosophical concepts such as sin in several lectures central doctrines of the Catholic philosophy of religion and can use also at the level of modern philosophy virtue.

Publications

  • Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. Together with Max Black. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952.
  • Descartes. Philosophical Writings. Together with G. E. M. Anscombe. London: Nelson, 1954.
  • Mental Acts, Their Content and Their Objects. London, New York: Routledge & Kegan, 1957.
  • Three philosophers. Aristotle - Aquinas - Frege. Together with GEM Anscombe, Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1961.
  • Reference and generality. An Examination of Some Medieval and Modern Theories. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1962, 3 revid. Ed in 1980.
  • God and the soul. London, New York: Routledge & Kegan; Schocken, 1969. ( Collection of essays )
  • Logic Matters. Oxford:. Blackwell, 1972 ( collection of essays )
  • Reason and argument. Oxford: Blackwell, 1976.
  • Providence and evil. The Stanton Lectures, 1971-2. London: Cambridge UP, 1977.
  • The Virtues. The Stanton Lectures 1973-4. London: Cambridge UP, 1977.
  • Truth, Love and Immortality. An Introduction to McTaggart 's Philosophy. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1979.
  • Truth and hope. The Prince Franz Josef and Princess Gina lectures delivered at the International Academy of Philosophy in the principality of Liechtenstein, 1998. University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. ISBN 0-268-04215-2
  • Wittgenstein 's Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 1946-47. Notes by P.T. Geach, K. J. Shah, A. C. Jackson. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988.

Secondary literature

  • Harry A. Lewis ( ed.): Peter Geach: Philosophical Encounters. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer, 1991 ( = synthesis Library, 213 ) ( with bibliography and an autobiography of Geach ).
  • Luke Gormally (ed.): Moral Truth and Moral Tradition. Essays in Honour of Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1994.
  • Pirmin Stekeler - Weithofer, Geach, in: Mittelstraß (Ed.), Encyclopedia Philosophy and Theory of Science, 2nd Edition, Vol 3 (2008), ISBN 978-3-476-02102-1 ( with detailed work and bibliography)
Donald Davidson (philosopher) Benchmark Integrated Authority File
363213
de