In his University of Aberdeen lecture series, Seth Pringle-Pattison explores the significance of Enlightenment philosophy in relation to Christian theism, setting these ideas within the context of Idealist philosophy.
In his University of Edinburgh lecture series, Seth Pringle-Pattison examines the ‘primitive’ ideas of the south and how the future is idealised as ‘a better world’. Defining the scope of ‘philosophy of religion’, he concludes that religion is ‘historical and psychological’ in all its manifestations.
Andrew Seth was born on 20 December 1856 in Edinburgh, adding Pringle-Pattison to his name in 1898 as a recipient of a bequest. A Scottish philosopher, he produced, in conjunction with R.B Haldane, a pioneering work on the British neo-Hegelian movement. Beginning as an assistant to Alexander Campbell Fraser, he was appointed Professor of Logic and Philosophy at University College, Cardiff in1883. He then moved to St Andrews as Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics in 1887, and four years later, returned to Edinburgh as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, retiring in 1919.
Elected to the British Academy in 1904, Pringle-Pattison was a two-time Gifford Lecturer, gave the Balfour Lectures, and lectured at Princeton. His writings cover logic, metaphysics, ethics, and religion. Prominent works include The Development from Kant to Hegel (1882), Essays in Philosophical Criticism, edited with R.B. Haldane (1883), Hegelianism and Personality (1887), Scottish Philosophy (1890), Man’s Place in the Cosmos and Other Essays (1897), Two Lectures on Theism (1902) The Philosophical Radicals and Other Essays (1907), and The Balfour Lectures on Realism, posthumously published in 1933.
