Name Borden Bowne Role Philosopher | ||
 | ||
Died 1910, Boston, Massachusetts, United States Books Personalism, The immanence of God, Essence of Religion, Kant and Spencer: A Critical E, Studies in theism | ||
Nominations Nobel Prize in Literature | ||
BORDEN PARKER BOWNE: METAPHYSICS & 1ST PRIN.
Borden Parker Bowne (; January 14, 1847 – April 1, 1910) was an American Christian philosopher, preacher, and theologian in the Methodist tradition. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times.
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Life
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 mechanistic determinism, 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."
Bowne received nine nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature between 1906 and 1909—one from his own sister.