J. O. Urmson

James Opie Urmson (1915- ) was Fellow, Tutor, and Emeritus Fellow in Philosophy of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Life

He was a Student (i.e. a Fellow [Christ Church is peculiar in that it calls its Fellows "Students" with a capital "S".] ) of Christ Church, Oxford from 1945 to 1955. During this period he lived in [http://www.headington.org.uk/history/postcards/monckton_cottage.htm Monckton Cottage] in Headington, Oxford.

In 1955 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews. In 1959 he resigned from St. Andrews and accepted an appointment as a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and a Tutor of Philosophy. Except for visiting appointments in the United States (e.g. Visiting Associate Professor of philosophy at Princeton University in 1950-51), he remained at Oxford until his retirement, [

Bertrand Russell, "Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: Last Philosophical Testament 1947-1968", p.602, ed. John G. Slater & Peter Kollner ISBN 0415094097 ] at which point he assumed the position of Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Stanford University.

Career

J. O. Urmson (his "nom de plume") was a prolific author and expert on a number of topics including British analytic/linguistic philosophy, George Berkeley, ethics, and Greek philosophy (especially Aristotle).

According to the [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supererogation/ article on supererogation] in the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy, "the history of supererogation in non-religious ethical theory is very recent, starting only in 1958 with J. O. Urmson's seminal article, “Saints and Heroes.” [Urmson, J., 1958, “Saints and Heroes”, in "Essays in Moral Philosophy", A. Melden (ed.), Seattle: University of Washington Press.] which "opened the contemporary discussion of supererogation (strikingly, without ever mentioning the term itself!) by challenging the traditional threefold classification of moral action: the obligatory, the permitted (or indifferent) and the prohibited."

He and his co-editor G. J. Warnock performed an invaluable service to the development of "analytic" or "linguistic" philosophy by preparing the papers of J. L. Austin for publication. Urmson's book "Philosophical Analysis" was also influential in the spread of analytic philosophy by providing an overview of the development of that style of philosophy at Cambridge and Oxford universities between World War I and World War II.

He translated or wrote notes for a number of volumes of Aristotle, and commentaries on Aristotle by Simplicius, for the "Ancient Commentators on Aristotle" series published by Cornell University Press. His book "Aristotle's Ethics" was praise by J. L. Ackrill and Julius Moravcsik as an excellent introduction to Aristotle's "Ethics".

In the entry devoted to Urmson in the third edition of "Concise Encyclopedia of Wester Philosophy and Philosophers" (2004), Jonathan Ree wrote of Urmson that "Although many of his writings focus on theories about the nature of philosophy, he holds that 'on the whole the best philosophy is little affected by theory; the philosopher sees what needs doing and does it'."

Works

Edited volumes
*J. L. Austin "How to do Things with Words"
*J. L. Austin "Philosophical Papers" (joint editor with G. J. Warnock)
*Aristotle "The Nicomachean Ethics" (translated David O. Ross, 1925; revised J. O. Urmson and J. L. Ackrill, 1980) Oxford University Press

Books

*"Concise Encyclopedia of Wester Philosophy and Philosophers" with Jonathan Ree (first edition 1960, second edition 1989, third edition 2004)

*"Philosophical Analysis: Its Development between the Two World Wards", Oxford University Press, 1956
*"The Emotive Theory of Ethics" (1968)

*"Greek Philosophical Vocabulary "
*"Simplicius: Corollaries on Place and Time" (translator)
*"On Aristotle's "Physics 3" by Simplicius, translated by J.O. Urmson & Peter Lautner, 2002, ISBN 978-0-8014-3903-2.
*"Aristotle's Ethics" (1988) Blackwell Publishers
*"The British Empiricists: Locke, Berkeley, Hume" (with John Dunn and A. J. Ayer)
*"Berkeley" Oxford University Press, 1982

Articles
*“Saints and Heroes”, "in Essays in Moral Philosophy", A. Melden (ed.), Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958
*"J. L. Austin" "Journal of Philosophy" 1965, reprinted in "The Linguistic Turn" ed. Richard Rorty 1967
*"Austin, John Langshaw" in J.O. Urmson, ed., "The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers", p. 54. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1960.
*"Parenthetical Verbs" "Mind" (October 1952), 61(244):480-496.
*"The History of Analysis" in "The Linguistic Turn" ed. Richard Rorty 1967
*"The interpretation of the Moral Philosophy of J. S. Mill", The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 3 (1953 pp.33-39. Reprinted in "Theories of Ethics" (ed. Philippa Foot) Oxford University Press, 1967
*"On Grading", "Mind" (April 1950), 59(234):145-169, reprinted in "Logic and Language (Second Series)" (ed. Antony Flew, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1953
*"Aristotle on Excellence of Character", "New Blackfriars" Volume 71 Issue 834 Page 33-37, January 1990
*"Literature", from George Dickie and R. J. Sclafani, "Aesthetics: A Critical Analogy", New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977.Related Works
*"Human Agency: Language, Duty, and Value. Philosophical Essays in Honor of J. O. Urmson" ed. Jonathan Dancy, J. M. E. Moravcsik, C. C. W. Taylor, Stanford University Press, 1988. "Contains a bibliography of Urmson's philosophical works"

References