John Passmore

For the American politician, see John Passmore (politician).
For the Australian artist, see John Passmore (artist).
John Passmore
Born 9 September 1914
Manly, Sydney
Died 25 July 2004
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophers
School Empiricism
Main interests
 History of Philosophy, history of ideas

John Passmore AC (9 September 1914 – 25 July 2004) was an Australian philosopher.

Life

Passmore was born in Manly, Sydney, where he grew up.[1] He was educated at Sydney Boys High School[2] and subsequently graduated from the University of Sydney with first-class honours in English literature and philosophy, and continued his studies to become a secondary-school teacher. In 1934 he accepted the position of assistant lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney, continuing teaching there until 1949. In 1948 he went to study at the University of London.

From 1950 to 1955 he was professor of philosophy at the University of Otago in New Zealand. In 1955 he spent a year at the University of Oxford on a Carnegie grant. Upon his return to Australia he took up a post at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University, where he was professor of Philosophy in the Research School of Social Sciences from 1958 to 1979.

In 1960 he was Ziskind visiting professor at Brandeis University in the United States. He subsequently lectured in England, the United States, Mexico, Japan, and in various European countries.

In 1994 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), Australia's highest civilian honour.[3]

He died in 2004 and was survived by his wife Doris and two daughters.

Work

Passmore was as much an historian of ideas as a philosopher, and his scholarship always paid careful attention to the complex historical context of philosophical problems. He published about twenty books, many of which have been translated. Passmore will be remembered as a thinker who helped to shape public debate and to open up domains of applied philosophy and the history of ideas to the wider world.

In his book Man's Responsibility for Nature (1974) Passmore argued that there is urgent need to change our attitude to the environment, and that humans cannot continue unconstrained exploitation of the biosphere. However, he rejected the view that we need to abandon the Western tradition of scientific rationalism, and was unsympathetic towards attempts to articulate environmental concern through radical revisions of our ethical framework, as advocated by deep ecologists, which he conceived as misguided mysticism or irrationalism. Passmore's unequivocal anthropocentrism made him a reference point in the discourse of environmental ethics and many treatises in the field begin with (or include) a criticism of his views. Passmore's skepticism about attempts to attribute intrinsic value to nature, and his preferred position of valuing nature in terms of what it contributes to the flourishing of sentient creatures (including humans), is perhaps not as unfashionable now as it was in the years following the publication of Man's Responsibility for Nature. Passmore described himself as a "pessimistic humanist" who regarded neither human beings nor human societies as perfectible.

Passmore took a keen interest in film and in performing arts and was a director of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust.

Works

References

  1. ↑ John Passmore, Memoirs of a Semi-Detached Australian, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 1997, p. 17.
  2. ↑ http://www.shsobu.org.au/wp-content/uploads/australian-honours.pdf
  3. ↑ It's an Honour: AC

Sources

Primary sources
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