Richard Ithamar Aaron

Richard Ithamar Aaron (November 6 1901 – March 29 1987) was a Welsh philosopher.

Early life and education

Born in Blaendulais, Glamorgan, Aaron was the son of a draper, William Aaron, and his wife, Margaret Griffith. He was educated at Ystalyfera Grammar School, followed by a spell at the University of Wales starting in 1918, where he studied history and philosophy. In 1923 he was elected a Fellow of the university, allowing him to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he was awarded a DPhil in 1928 for a dissertation titled "The history and value of the distinction between intellect and intuition".

Career

In 1926 he was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Swansea University. After the retirement of W. Jenkin Jones in 1932 Aaron was appointed to the chair of philosophy at Aberystwyth University where he settled, initally at Bryn Hir and later at Garth Celyn. Although his early publications focused on epistemology and the history of ideas, Aaron became fascinated with the work and life of [John Locke] . The interest was sparked by his discovery of unresearched information in the Lovelace Collection, a collection of notes and drafts left by John Locke to his cousin Per King. In the collection he found letters, notebooks, catalogues, and, most exciting of all, an early draft of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, hitherto presumed missing. Aaron's research led to the 1937 publication of a book covering the life and work of Locke, which subsequently became to be considered the standard work for that subject.Other notable publications of his include the essay "Two senses of the word universal" (published in "Mind" in 1939) and "Our knowledge of universals’ read to the British Academy in 1945 and published in volume 23 of its "Proceedings". As shown in his work Aaron had an intense fascination with the idea of a Universal, which culminated in his 1952 book "The Theory of Universals". In this book he attacks the notion of universals as Platonic forms, but is equally critical of Aristotelian realism about essences, as he is also of nominalism and conceptualism as theories of universals.

Between 1952 and 1953 Aaron was invited to be Visiting Professor at Yale University, In 1956, where was able to study the third draft of Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" at the Pierpont Morgan Library, which resulted in a substantial addition to the second edition of "John Locke", published in 1955, a year where he was also made a Member of the British Academy and President of the Mind Association. In 1956 when the annual lecture hosted by the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association (who published the journal "mind") was hosted in Aberystwyth, Aaron was invited to give the inaugural lecture. In 1957 he was made president of the Aristotelian Society.

In 1967 he published a second edition of "The Theory of Universals", with a new preface, several new additions and several rewritten chapters. In 1971 he published both a third edition of his Locke biography and the book "Knowing and the Function of Reason", which includes a wide-ranging discussion of the laws of non-contradiction, excluded middle, identity, of the use of language in speech and thought, and of substance and causality.

After retiring in 1969 he taught for one semester at Carlton College in Minnesota before returning to Wales. While at home he helped write articles for the 1974 edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica". He eventually began to feel the affects of Alzheimer's disease, and passed away at home on March 29 1987.

Selected works

*"The Nature of Knowing" (1930)
*"Hanes Athroniaeth" (1932) - a history of philosophy, in Welsh
*"John Locke" (1937)
*"The Theory of Universals" (1952)
*"Knowing and the Function of Reason" (1971)

References

*Stephens, Meic (ed.), "Companion to Welsh Literature" (Cardiff, 1986)