Herbert James Paton was born on 30 March 1887 in Abernethy, Scotland. His major contribution to philosophical scholarship was the two-volume commentary, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience (1936). Elected Fellow in Classics and Philosophy at Queen’s College, Oxford in 1909, he left for the Admiralty, advising on Polish affairs at the Versailles conference in 1919. Returning to Queen’s, he served as Dean from 1917 to 1922 until he became Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at Glasgow. In 1937, he was appointed White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, remaining until retirement.
Recipient of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Research fellowship at the University of California in 1925, he was also elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1946. Upon retiring in 1952, he moved to Scotland, serving as Crown Assessor for St Andrews and contributing to the debate on Scottish independence. Notable works include The Good Will: A Study in the Coherence Theory of Goodness (1927), Can Reason Be Practical? (1943), In Defence of Reason (1951), Immortality (1956), The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1964), and The Claim of Scotland (1968).
