# P. F. Strawson

Sir Peter Frederick Strawson FBA (/ˈstrɔːsən/; 23 November 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Oxford. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford from 1968 to 1987. He had previously held the positions of college lecturer and tutorial fellow at University College, Oxford, a college he returned to upon his retirement in 1987, and which provided him with rooms until his death.
Paul Snowdon and Anil Gomes, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, comment that Strawson "exerted a considerable influence on philosophy, both during his lifetime and, indeed, since his death."

## Early years

Strawson was born in Ealing, west London, and brought up in Finchley, north London, by his parents, both of whom were teachers. He was educated at Christ's College, Finchley, followed by St John's College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
During the Second World War, Strawson served first with the Royal Artillery from 1940, and then with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. He was demobilised in 1946, with the rank of captain.
After his military service, he went initially to the (then) University College of North Wales at Bangor, as an assistant lecturer. After winning the John Locke scholarship in 1946, and the support of Gilbert Ryle, he went to University College, Oxford, initially as a lecturer, and then, from 1948, as a fellow.

## Philosophical work

Strawson first became well known with his article "On Referring" (1950), a criticism of Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions (see also Definite descriptions) that Russell explained in the famous "On Denoting" article (1905).
In philosophical methodology, there are (at least) two important and interrelated features of Strawson's work that are worthy of note. The first is the project of a 'descriptive' metaphysics, and the second is his notion of a shared conceptual scheme, composed of concepts operated in everyday life. In his book Individuals (1959), Strawson attempts to describe various concepts that form an interconnected web, representing (part of) our common, shared, human conceptual scheme. In particular, he examines our conceptions of basic particulars, and how they are variously brought under general spatio-temporal concepts. What makes this a metaphysical project is that it exhibits, in fine detail, the structural features of our thought about the world, and thus precisely delimits how we, humans, think about reality.
Strawson distinguished between 'revisionary' and 'descriptive metaphysics', he wrote: "Descriptive metaphysics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, revisionary metaphysics is concerned to produce a better structure". The purpose of the former is to "lay bare the most general features of our conceptual scheme" and to understand structures which do not "readily display itself on the structures of language but lies submerged" by analysing those metaphysical concepts which have always existed. He lists Aristotle and Kant as descriptive and Descartes and Leibniz as revisionary.
Strawson was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1960 and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1969 to 1970. He was knighted in 1977, for services to philosophy.

## Personal life

After serving as a captain in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during World War II, Strawson married Ann Martin in 1945. They had four children, including the philosopher Galen Strawson.
P. F. Strawson lived in Oxford all his adult life and died in hospital on 13 February 2006 after a short illness. He was the elder brother of Major General John Strawson.
His obituary in The Guardian noted that "Oxford was the world capital of philosophy between 1950 and 1970, and American academics flocked there, rather than the traffic going the other way. That golden age had no greater philosopher than Sir Peter Strawson."
In its obituary, The Times of London described him as a "philosopher of matchless range who made incisive, influential contributions to problems of language and metaphysics". The author went on to say:
   Few scholars achieve lasting fame as dramatically as did the philosopher Sir Peter Strawson. By 1950 Strawson, then a Fellow of University College, Oxford, was already a respected tutor and a promising member of the group of younger Oxford dons whose careful attention to the workings of natural languages marked them out as 'linguistic' philosophers. [He published] extraordinary papers, which are still read and discussed more than 50 years later and which are prescribed to tyros as models of philosophical criticism.
His portrait was painted by the artists Muli Tang and Daphne Todd.

## Works
### Books

* Introduction to Logical Theory, (London: Methuen, 1952.
** Italian translation by A. Visalberghi (Torino: Einaudi, 1961)
** Japanese translation by S. Tsunetoshi, et al. (Kyoto: Houritsu Bunkasya, 1994)
* Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, (London: Methuen, 1959)
** German translation by F. Scholz (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1972)
** French translation by A. Shalom and P. Drong (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1973)
** Italian translation by E. Bencivenga (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978)
** Japanese translation by H. Nakamura (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1978)
** Polish translation by B. Chwedenczuk (Warsaw: Wydawniczy Pax, 1980)
** Spanish translation by A. Suarez and L. Villanueva (Madrid: Taurus, 1989)
** Brazilian Portuguese translation by P. J. Smith (São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2019)
* The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. (London: Methuen, 1966)
** Spanish translation by C. Luis Andre (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1975)
** German translation by E. Lange (Hain, 1981)
** Italian translation by M. Palumbo (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1985)
** Japanese translation by T. Kumagai, et al. (Tokyo: Keiso Shobo, 1987)
* Logico-Linguistic Papers. (London: Methuen, 1971)
* Freedom and Resentment and other Essays. (London: Methuen, 1974)
* Subject and Predicate in Logic and Grammar. (London: Methuen, 1974)
* Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985)
* Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
** Estonian translation by T. Hallap (Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2016)
* Entity and Identity. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
* Philosophical Writings, ed. Galen Strawson and Michelle Montague, (Oxford University Press, 2011)