From the early modern period, Western epistemologists have often been concerned with a rigorous notion of epistemic justification, epitomized in the work of Descartes: properly held beliefs require insulation from extreme skepticism. To the degree that veridical cognitive states may be indistinguishable from non-veridical states, apparently veridical states cannot enjoy high-grade positive epistemic status. Therefore, a good believer begins from what are taken to be neutral, subjective experiences and reasons outward—hopefully identifying the kinds of appearances that properly link up to (...) the world and those that do not. Good beliefs, beliefs that are justified (warranted, etc.), are those that a believer has .. (shrink)

Recently, Jonardan Ganeri reviewed the collaborative translation of the first chapter of Gaṅgeśa's Tattvacintāmaṇi by Stephen H. Phillips and N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya (Ganeri 2007). The review is quite favorable, and we have no desire to dispute his kind words. Ganeri does, however, put forth an argument in opposition to a fundamental line of interpretation given by Phillips and Ramanuja Tatacharya about the nature of pramāṇa, knowledge sources, as understood by Gaṅgeśa and, for that matter, Nyāya tradition. This response is (...) meant to answer the argument and reassert an understanding of pramāṇa as factive, that is, as knowledge sources that are inerrant. We argue that this is the best reading of Gaṅgeśa himself .. (shrink)

Led by Buddhists and the yoga traditions of Hinduism and Jainism, Indian thinkers have long engaged in a rigorous analysis and reconceptualization of our common notion of self. Less understood is the way in which such theories of self intersect with issues involving agency and free will; yet such intersections are profoundly important, as all major schools of Indian thought recognize that moral goodness and religious fulfillment depend on the proper understanding of personal agency. Moreover, their individual conceptions of agency (...) and freedom are typically nodes by which an entire school's epistemological, ethical, and metaphysical perspectives come together as a systematic whole. Free Will, Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy explores the contours of this issue, from the perspectives of the major schools of Indian thought. With new essays by leading specialists in each field, this volume provides rigorous analysis of the network of issues surrounding agency and freedom as developed within Indian thought. (shrink)

Often translated simply as "logic," the Sanskrit word _nyāya_ means "rule of reasoning" or "method of reasoning." Texts from the school of classical Indian philosophy that bears this name are concerned with cognition, reasoning, and the norms that govern rational debate. This translation of selections from the early school of Nyāya focuses on its foundational text, the _Nyāya-sūtra_, with excerpts from the early commentaries. It will be welcomed by specialists and non-specialists alike seeking an accessible text that both represents some (...) of the best of Indian philosophical thought and can be integrated into courses on Indian philosophy, religion, and intellectual culture. (shrink)

In classical India, debates over rational theology naturally become the occasion for fundamental questions about the scope and power of inference itself. This is well evinced in the classical proofs for God by the Hindu Nyāya tradition and the opposing arguments of classical Buddhists and Mīmāsā philosophers. This paper calls attention to, and provides analysis of, a number of key nodes in these debates, particularly questions of inferential boundaries and whether inductive reasoning has the power to support inferences to wholly (...) unique entities (like God). (shrink)

Much of classical Hindu thought has centered on the question of self: what is it, how does it relate to various features of the world, and how may we benefit by realizing its depths? Attempting to gain a conceptual foothold on selfhood, Hindu thinkers commonly suggest that its distinctive feature is consciousness (caitanya). Well-worn metaphors compare the self to light as its awareness illumines the world of knowable objects. Consciousness becomes a touchstone to recognize the presence of a self. A (...) rock is insentient, void of consciousness, and purely an object. Selves, however, are loci of awareness and thus subjects. Some schools, most notably classical Sāṁkhya and Advaita Vedānta, take this approach to its furthest conclusion: consciousness is not only unique to the self, but is the fundamental feature of selfhood. Other putative features of the self—feelings, memories, moral responsibility, and importantly, agency (kartṛtva)—are taken to be the impositions of insentient matter (prakṛti) or symptoms of primordial illusion (avidyā). Against this position, Nyāya defends a more robust notion of selfhood, placing qualities like desire, aversion, volition, and moral responsibility alongside cognition as the self’s distinctive qualities. These various aspects of selfhood come together neatly when we consider agency. An agent performs intentional actions under her volition, which is triggered by her own cognitive and affective states. Her volitional acts further generate moral consequences which she must bear, and which are, in the Indian context, embodied in the form of karmic merit and demerit. For Nyāya, agency is, therefore, a special expression of the self’s different capacities and potentialities, which coherently binds them together. Nyāya’s view is an important contribution to Indian theories of self as it is a counterpoint to what we may call exclusively cognitive accounts of selfhood in other influential Hindu schools, as noted above. The first half of this paper will consider Nyāya’s conception of agency in relation to selfhood. The second half will discuss Nyāya’s arguments with other Hindu schools—specifically Sāṁkhya—in support of the thesis that the self must be an agent as well as a knower. (shrink)

This is an overview of the Nyaya ("Logic") school of classical Indian philosophy, focusing on the earlier period (up to roughly 1000 CE).

Recent studies of Nyäya’s account of testimony have illustrated its anticipation of contemporary testimonial antireductionism, the position that testimony cannot be reduced to a more fundamental means of knowledge like inference or perception. This paper discusses another relevant but less discussed anticipation of current debate, involving the status of speaker belief in testimonial exchange. Is a speaker’s veridical apprehension of the content of his utterance a necessary condition on testimonial exchange? This was a source of much disputation among Indian epistemologists, (...) particularly Naiyäyikas (adherents of the Nyäya, or “Logic” school) and Mimamsakas(adherents of the Mimamsa, or “Exegete” school). (shrink)

Pakṣilasvāmin Vātsyāyana (c. 450 CE) is the author of the Commentary on Nyāya (Nyāya-bhāṣya), the first full commentary on the Nyāya-sūtra of Gautama (c. 150 CE), which is itself the foundational text of the school of philosophy called “Nyāya.” The Nyāya tradition is home to a number of leading voices within the classical Indian philosophical scene and is celebrated in later doxographies as one of the six “orthodox” systems of Hindu thought. Given the way that sūtra texts and their first (...) commentaries are profoundly intertwined, Vātsyāyana’s work provides a formative vision of Nyāya’s self-conception as a philosophical system as well as interpretive strategies, central lines of argumentation, and determinations of importance that later Naiyāyikas (Nyāya philosophers) often take to be as much as a given as the original text itself. Along with its sustained defense of metaphysical realism across various fronts, Nyāya is best known for its achievements in epistemology and logic, and as indicated by the title of this chapter, the lens through which we will explore Vātsyāyana’s thought is his theory of knowledge. We will give special attention to his account of the nature and importance of cognition as a guide to action and will illustrate the way in which this theme informs a number of apparently distinct elements of his project including his realism, his account of epistemic entitlement, and his notion of philosophy’s contribution to living well. (shrink)

There are some tantalizing suggestions that Pyrrhonian skepticism has its roots in ancient India. Of them, the most important is Diogenes Laertius’s report that Pyrrho accompanied Alexander to India, where he was deeply impressed by the character of the “naked sophists” he encountered (DL IX 61). Influenced by these gymnosophists, Pyrrho is said to have adopted the practices of suspending judgment on matters of belief and cultivating an indifferent composure amid the vicissitudes of ordinary life. Such conduct, and the attitudes (...) that it embodied, became inspirations to later skeptical thinkers. It is a fact that practices of the sort attributed to Pyrrho are richly evident in a number of ancient Indian philosophical and ascetic movements. On this basis, attempts have been made to determine the identity of these gymnosophists and, further, to pinpoint the dialectical tropes within Pyrrhonism that may have their basis in Indian thought. But despite these attempts, and in the absence of any new discoveries, these suggestions will likely remain just that. The paucity of the historical data and the problematic nature of the data itself prevent us from reconstructing a solid bridge between ancient India and Greek skepticism that may serve as the basis of robust historical theorizing. Classical India does, however, lay claim to a sophisticated and diverse culture of epistemological reflection, which includes a number of innovative skeptical thinkers deserving study on their own merits. This chapter is meant to provide such a study, or perhaps more accurately, a prolegomena for such. After some initial ground-laying, I will discuss three leading Indian skeptics and situate them historically and conceptually within the network of competing schools that comprise classical Indian philosophy. They are Nāgārjuna (c. 150 CE), the founder of Madhyamaka Buddhism, Jayarāśi (c. 800), associated with the Indian materialist tradition, and Śrīharṣa (c. 1150), a thinker connected to the school of Nondual (Advaita) Vedānta. (shrink)

This paper examines of the intersection of theism and philosophy in classical Indian thought, focusing on the rational theology of Nyaya and the revealed theology of Vedanta. I also consider anti-theistic arguments, primarily by classical Buddhists.

This is a select annotated bibliography of literature on the famous Six Systems of orthodox Hindu philosophy.

Vatsyayana's Commentary on the Nyaya-sutra is one of classical India's most important philosophical works.

An ongoing effort, exemplified though happily not exhausted in the work of B. K. Matilal, is to present the best of classical Indian philosophy in a way that speaks to contemporary philosophical concerns, while still being historically and philologically responsible. Epistemology in Classical India: The Knowledge Sources of the Nyāya School by Stephen Phillips is expressly this kind of work. Phillips begins by explaining that his book is “for philosophers and students of philosophy, not for specialists in classical Indian thought” (...) (p. 1). His project is to engage with a range of classical texts and contemporary philosophy, in order to offer the Nyāya theory of knowledge as a coherent system. A welcome feature of .. (shrink)

For those of us who work in Indian philosophy, these are encouraging times, with reasons for guarded optimism that the broader philosophical community will slowly continue to realize the quality and depth of Indian responses to perennial philosophical problems. Across the profession, there is increased awareness of the sheer historical contingency behind the political, social, and distinctively academic structures which perpetuate the myopic idea that Philosophy proper is a cultural practice tied to a fairly narrow tradition that began with Thales (...) and terminates in the work of (largely) English-speaking thinkers in American and European universities. The last few decades have also witnessed the emergence of a group of scholars who are both expert in contemporary philosophy and historical research into Indian thought, and capable of bringing the latter into conversation with the former in fruitful ways. Against this background, one chief requirement of the times is work that provides philosophically sophisticated introductions to Indian philosophical thought. We need something, after all, to give to people who wish to learn about Indian thought without having to develop the competence to understand technical material or who would like to include something from India within an undergraduate course on Philosophy. Amber Carpenter’s Indian Buddhist Philosophy, published within Acumen’s Ancient Philosophies series is indeed this very sort of work, and succeeds admirably at achieving the right tone, neither setting the bar too high, nor ignoring the work of accurate philosophical and historical reconstruction. It also tackles an ambitious range of material without sacrificing serious philosophical engagement and appropriate contextualization. (shrink)

The work of three present-day Sankritist-philosophers, _God and the World's Arrangement_ allows readers to engage directly with writings of the classical Indian philosophers Śaṅkara and Vācaspati, as well as some of their most acute critics, on the question of whether the existence of a creator God can be known by reason alone. Carefully selected and annotated with the needs of students foremost in mind, these new translations will be of interest to anyone wishing to see up close a newly set (...) gem of our philosophical inheritance from global antiquity. (shrink)

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad's delightful and challenging little book does not fit easily into the standard categories available for academic excursions into philosophy. It is, to simplify, a venture in constructive philosophical theology, centered on questions of being and selfhood, which takes the form of a reflection upon the Bhagavad-gītā commentaries written by two of India's leading philosopher/theologians, Śaṅkara (c. 8th century CE) and Rāmānuja (c. 11th century CE). While Ram-Prasad does try to argue for the best readings of Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, (...) the book should not be misunderstood as a "merely" historical work. Ram-Prasad looks to the classical thinkers, and indeed the ancient text of the Bhagavad-gītā itself, for enduring insights into the nature of being. It speaks to a number of sub-disciplines within philosophy, including metaphysics, history of philosophy, Indian philosophy, philosophy of religion, and comparative philosophy/theology. (shrink)

Review of the book Indian Buddhist Philosophy, by Amber Carpenter. Durham: Acumen Publishing, 2014.

I would like to thank the editors of Philosophy East and West for courteously asking me if I would like to respond to Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips' very thoughtful remarks about the review I wrote of Phillips' translation and commentary on the pratyakṣa chapter of Gaṅgeśa's Tattvacintāmaṇi, prepared in collaboration with N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya (Phillips and Tatacharya 2004). Let me begin by reaffirming what I said at the beginning of my review, that the book is "a (...) monumental and momentous achievement, one whose importance cannot be understated." I have indeed enormous admiration for the magnitude of their achievement and respect for the contribution they have made through this translation to the field of .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:God and the World's Arrangement: Readings from Vedānta and Nyāya Philosophy of Religion by Nirmalya Guha, Matthew Dasti, and Stephen PhillipsSwami Narasimhananda (bio)God and the World's Arrangement: Readings from Vedānta and Nyāya Philosophy of Religion. Translated, with Introduction and Explanatory Notes, by Nirmalya Guha, Matthew Dasti, and Stephen Phillips. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2021. Pp. xx + 91. Paperback $19.00, isbn 978-1-62466-957-6.The scarcity of accessible English (...) translations of Sanskrit texts that retain the philosophical rigor of the original has been a great challenge in Indian philosophy. God and the World's Arrangement, a translation with introduction and explanatory notes by Nirmalya Guha, Matthew Dasti, and Stephen Phillips, is an example of how this scarcity could be addressed without straying away from present-day idioms and context. This book discusses the perspectives on God and the arrangement of the world according to Nyāya, Vedānta, Mīmāṃsā, and Buddhist philosophies. This book is divided into two parts, followed by two appendices, and a bibliography. Each part has study questions at the end and there is an impressive reading list. The first part is a translation and analysis of Śaṅkara's theistic argument in his commentary on the Brahma-sūtra 2.2.1–10. The translators also include the subcommentary by Vācaspati Miśra. The second part contains the translation and analysis of Vācaspati Miśra's theistic argument in his commentary on the Nyāya-sūtra 4.1.19–21. All translations are followed by explanations that elaborate the contexts of the arguments. The translations in this book are elegant and use modern English idioms.The seeds of this book were sown by a guest lecture by Nirmalya Guha to a philosophy course at the University of Texas at Austin. The other two authors joined hands with Guha and worked on texts from Sāṃkhya, Nyāya, Vedānta, and Buddhist schools of thought. Scholars around the world are now interested in having a pan-global view of philosophy. However, such an understanding requires an informed engagement with the various contexts and mores of thought. This deceptively slim volume addresses this problem by succinctly providing the required background context and clarifying many commonly held misconceptions about Indian philosophy, particularly Advaita Vedānta. For a long time, there have not been many serious readings of Advaita Vedānta texts. This book comes as a relief and explains the basic concepts of Advaita Vedānta with readings from relevant portions of texts like the Brahma-sūtra. This book is a step to fill the gap [End Page 1] of texts that properly voice the perspectives of scholars from within the traditions following Advaita Vedānta.It is heartening to read a contemporary text that acknowledges the unbiased masterly exegetical work of Vācaspati Miśra that earned him the epithet sarva-tantra-svatantra, "one who is equally proficient in all the disciplines of knowledge." The translators and editors of this book have a noble goal of "coupling Vācaspati's works on Vedānta and on Nyāya" to make "it possible for a wide swath of his work to be pondered, little of which is currently accessible despite Vācaspati's importance for the whole of classical Indian philosophical thought" (p. xi). The editors lose no time in clarifying the approach of the texts explained in the book from Vedānta and Nyāya philosophies. They explain in some detail one of the means of knowledge, pramāṇa s, used by the Indian philosophies that adhere to the Vedās, the means of anumāṇa or inference. An interesting aspect of this book is the contemporary examples that the translators give, like those of a politician and automobile manufacturers. For instance, the translators explain different ways in which arguments given through an example can fail. The translators explain the error of an example not having the property to be proved in this manner:Yet another type of failure occurs when the property to be proved is not actually present in the example. Should one argue that "People who purchase Japanese vehicles... (shrink)

This work is a translation of selected sutras of the Nyāya-sūtra, together with relevant extracts from three commentaries: Nyāya-sūtra-bhāṣya of Vātsyāyana; Nyāya-vārttika of Uddyotakara; and Nyāya-vārttika-tātparya-ṭīkā of Vācaspatimiśra. The translators' introduction gives a general overview of the Nyāya school, its overall aims, and its place within classical Indian philosophy. Each of the nine chapters covers a particular topic in the Nyāya scheme: knowledge sources, philosophical method, the Nyāya defense of metaphysical realism, the self, substance and causation, God, theory of meaning, (...) value theory, and debate. For a given topic there will be sūtras... (shrink)

This paper explores some surprising effects of psychological trauma on memory and develops the puzzle of observer memory for trauma. Memory for trauma tends to have a third-person perspective, or observer perspective. But it appears observer memory, by having a novel visual point of view, tends to misrepresent the past. And many find it plausible that if a memory type tends to misrepresent, it cannot yield knowledge of, or justification for believing, details of past events. But it is also plausible (...) that, with respect to details of past trauma, observer memory can yield knowledge or justification. I argue for a novel set of views that offers a way out of the puzzle: observer memory does tend to misrepresent, but it still has epistemic power regarding details of the past, although with special limits; but observer memory for trauma has other epistemic powers too, in that it allows for a kind of self-awareness. (shrink)

Beneath the stylized violence and thrilling car crashes, the Mad Max films consider universal questions about the nature of human life, order and anarchy, justice and moral responsibility, society and technology, and ultimately, human redemption. In Mad Max and Philosophy, a diverse team of political scientists, historians, and philosophers investigates the underlying themes of the blockbuster movie franchise, following Max as he attempts to rebuild himself and the world. -/- This book guides you through the barren wastelands of a post-apocalyptic (...) future as you explore ethics and politics in The Wasteland, the importance of costumes and music, humankind's relationship with nature, commerce, gender, religion, madness, and more. (shrink)

I distinguish two ways of explaining our capacity for ‘transparent’ knowledge of our own present beliefs, perceptions, and intentions: an inferential and a reflective approach. Alex Byrne (2011) has defended an inferential approach, but I argue that this approach faces a basic difficulty, and that a reflective approach avoids the difficulty. I conclude with a brief sketch and defence of a reflective approach to our transparent self-knowledge, and I show how this approach is connected with the thesis that we must (...) distinguish between a kind of self-knowledge that is of oneself as agent and another kind that is of oneself as patient. (shrink)

Recent research on the evolution of religion has focused on whether religion is an unselected by-product of evolutionary processes or if it is instead an adaptation by natural selection. Adaptive hypotheses for religion include direct fitness benefits from improved health and indirect fitness benefits mediated by costly signals and/or cultural group selection. Herein, I propose that religious denominations achieve indirect fitness gains for members through the use of ecologically arbitrary beliefs, rituals, and moral rules that function as recognition markers of (...) cultural inheritance analogous to kin and species recognition of genetic inheritance in biology. This recognition signal hypotheses could act in concert with either costly signaling or cultural group selection to produce evolutionarily altruistic behaviors within denominations. Using a cultural phylogenetic analysis, I show that a large set of religious behaviors among extant Christian denominations supports the prediction of the recognition signal hypothesis that characters change more frequently near historical schisms. By incorporating demographic data into the model, I show that more-distinctive denominations, as measured through dissimilar characteristics, appear to be protected from intrusion by nonmembers in mixed-denomination households, and that they may be experiencing greater biological growth of their populations even in the present day. (shrink)

Research that involves the creation of animals with human-derived parts opens the door to potentially valuable scientific and therapeutic advances, yet invokes unsettling moral questions. Critics and champions alike stand to gain from clear identification and careful consideration of the strongest ethical objections to this research. A prevailing objection argues that crossing the human/nonhuman species boundary introduces inexorable moral confusion (IMC) that warrants a restriction to this research on precautionary grounds. Though this objection may capture the intuitions of many who (...) find this research unsettling, it relies on mistaken views of both biology and moral standing, ultimately distorting the morally relevant facts. We critically examine IMC, identify mistaken essentialist assumptions, and reframe ethical concerns. The upshot is a stronger line of objection that encourages a more inclusive and productive ethical discourse. (shrink)

Matthew Calarco draws on ethological and evolutionary evidence and the work of Heidegger, who called for a radicalized responsibility toward all forms of life.

This book is an uncompromising defense of legal positivism that insists on the separability of law and morality. After distinguishing among three facets of morality, Kramer explores a variety of ways in which law has been perceived as integrally connected to each of those facets. The book concludes with a detailed discussion of the obligation to obey the law--a discussion that highlights the strengths of legal positivism in the domain of political philosophy as much as in the domain of jurisprudence.

Surprisingly little has been written about hedged assertion. Linguists often focus on semantic or syntactic theorizing about, for example, grammatical evidentials or epistemic modals, but pay far less attention to what hedging does at the level of action. By contrast, philosophers have focused extensively on normative issues regarding what epistemic position is required for proper assertion, yet they have almost exclusively considered unqualified declaratives. This essay considers the linguistic and normative issues side-by-side. We aim to bring some order and clarity (...) to thinking about hedging, so as to illuminate aspects of interest to both linguists and philosophers. In particular, we consider three broad questions. 1) The structural question: when one hedges, what is the speaker’s commitment weakened from? 2) The functional question: what is the best way to understand how a hedge weakens? And 3) the taxonomic question: are hedged assertions genuine assertions, another speech act, or what? (shrink)

The word 'ought' is one of the core normative terms, but it is also a modal word. In this book Matthew Chrisman develops a careful account of the semantics of 'ought' as a modal operator, and uses this to motivate a novel inferentialist account of why ought-sentences have the meaning that they have. This is a metanormative account that agrees with traditional descriptivist theories in metaethics that specifying the truth-conditions of normative sentences is a central part of the explanation (...) of their meaning. But Chrisman argues that this leaves important metasemantic questions about what it is in virtue of which ought-sentences have the meanings that they have unanswered. His appeal to inferentialism aims to provide a viable anti-descriptivist but also anti-expressivist answer to these questions. (shrink)

This chapter outlines something of Mario Bunge’s long life and career as a physicist-philosopher originally living and working in Argentina for 40 years, then in Canada for nearly 60 years. It indicates the extraordinary breadth, depth and quantity of his research publications. It deals briefly with some key components of his work, such as: systemism, causation, theory analysis, axiomatization, ontology, epistemology, physics, psychology and philosophy of mind, social science, probability and Bayesianism, defence of the Enlightenment project, and education. Finally, the (...) chapter gives an account of the structure of the festschrift, and an indication of each of the 41 contributions. (shrink)

This book addresses a range of relevant theoretical issues, including the possibility of an interpersonally comparable measure of well-being, or “utility” metric; the moral value of equality, and how that bears on the form of the social welfare function; social choice under uncertainty; and the possibility of integrating considerations of individual choice and responsibility into the social-welfare-function framework. This book also deals with issues of implementation, and explores how survey data and other sources of evidence might be used to calibrate (...) both a utility metric and a social welfare function, and whether distributive goals are ever best pursued through regulation rather than the tax system. In working through this range of theoretical and practical issues, the book draws from a wide variety of literatures, including philosophical scholarship on equality, responsibility, the nature of well-being, and personal identity over time; the social choice literature within economics; applied economic literatures concerning the measurement of inequality and poverty; legal and policy-analysis scholarship on cost-benefit analysis, environmental justice, and the choice between regulation and taxation; and the burgeoning field of “happiness studies”. (shrink)

Additive theories of rationality, as I use the term, are theories that hold that an account of our capacity to reflect on perceptually-given reasons for belief and desire-based reasons for action can begin with an account of what it is to perceive and desire, in terms that do not presuppose any connection to the capacity to reflect on reasons, and then can add an account of the capacity for rational reflection, conceived as an independent capacity to ‘monitor’ and ‘regulate’ our (...) believing-on-the-basis-of-perception and our acting-on-the-basis-of-desire. I show that a number of recent discussions of human rationality are committed to an additive approach, and I raise two difficulties for this approach, each analogous to a classic problem for Cartesian dualism. The interaction problem concerns how capacities conceived as intrinsically independent of the power of reason can interact with this power in what is intuitively the right way. The unity problem concerns how an additive theorist can explain a rational subject's entitlement to conceive of the animal whose perceptual and desiderative life he or she oversees as ‘I’ rather than ‘it’. I argue that these difficulties motivate a general skepticism about the additive approach, and I sketch an alternative, ‘transformative’ framework in which to think about the cognitive and practical capacities of a rational animal. (shrink)

Matthew Arnold was born at Laleham-on-Thames on 24 December 1822 as the eldest son of Dr Thomas Arnold and his wife Mary. He was educated at Winchester College, his father's old school; Rugby, where his father was headmaster; and Oxford. In 1851 he was appointed Inspector of Schools, pursuing this taxing career to support his wife and family until his retirement in 1886. He published his first volume of verse, The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, in 1849 followed by (...) Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems (1852) and five further collections which appeared, with a diminishing number of new poems in each, between 1853 and 1867, after which his creative gift appeared to dwindle still further and he published little poetry. His career as a writer of prose began to take over after his election to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford in 1857. Stimulated by preparing his lectures, many of the earliest published in 1865 as Essays in Criticism (First Series), he turned increasingly to the vigorous and widely ranging polemical commentaries on culture, religion, and society which were to make him known at home and abroad as the foremost critic of his day. He died suddenly of heart failure on 15 April 1888 while awaiting at Liverpool the arrival of his married daughter from America. (shrink)