James Frederick Ferrier.

Abstract

James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864) received his philosophical education first in his native Edinburgh then at Magdalen College, Oxford and finally at Heidelberg where he went in 1834 to study German thought at first hand. On returning to Scotland, he contributed a series of articles to Blackwoods Magazine in 1838 and 1839. Entitled An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness, the articles defend an idealist metaphysics sharply at odds with the realism of the common sense school. This idealism was developed and defended in his books, Institutes of Metaphysic (1854) and Philosophy, the Old and New (1856). From 1845 until his death he was Professor of moral philosophy and political economy at the University of St.Andrews. E.S. Haldane's biography, (which contains a new introduction by John Haldane), a contribution to the Famous Scots series, conducts the reader through Ferrier's eventful life, devotes one chapter to his philosophy and paints a picture of Scottish intellectual life circa 1850. Ferrier is portrayed as an important transitional figure between two different schools or traditions of Scottish philosophy.