Richard Bevan Braithwaite (15 January 1900–21 April 1990) was an English philosopher who worked in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Although Braithwaite was positivistically inclined, he was a Christian.
Braithwaite was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and educated at the University of Cambridge, studying physics and mathematics. He was elected Sidgwick Lecturer in Moral Science in the University of Cambridge from 1934 to 1953, and the Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cambridge from 1953 to 1967.
He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1946 to 1947. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1957.
He died in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire at the age of ninety.
According to theologian Alister E. McGrath Braithwaite's 1955 Eddington Memorial Lecture _An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief_[1] is to date the most widely cited publication (e.g. by Anglican priest Don Cupitt) from a genre of 1970's-1980's theological works arguing that "God" and "religion" are human constructs--having no independent reality of their own--and that human dignity and freedom may best be advanced by systematic deconstruction of these two ideas (i.e., "God" and "religion"), although Braithwaite had little sympathy for vague claims like these[2]
It has been claimed that it was Braithwaite's poker that Ludwig Wittgenstein brandished at Karl Popper in their confrontation in Braithwaite's rooms in Cambridge. The implement subsequently disappeared.
Contents |
Publications
- Scientific Explanation (1953)
- Theory of Games as a Tool for the Moral Philosopher (1955)
- An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief (1955)
Life
- M. Hesse, ‘Richard Bevan Braithwaite, 1900–1990’, PBA, 82 (1993), 367–80.
- D. H. Mellor, ‘Braithwaite, Richard Bevan (1900–1990)’, rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
Notes
- ^ Ed. Basil Mitchell. The Philosophy of Religion. Oxford University Press, 1970. ISBN 0198750188. pp. 72-91.
- ^ Alister E. McGrath. A Scientific Theology. Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001. ISBN 0-8028-3925-8. pp.74-75.
External links
- R.B. Braithwaite, details from the British Academy Fellows Archive
- Science, Belief and Behaviour: Essays in Honour of R. B. Braithwaite, ed. D. H. Mellor (contents page and photograph of Braithwaite)
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