George Henry Radcliffe Parkinson (also known as Harry Parkinson; 2 November 1923 – 20 March 2015) was a British

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and

historian of philosophy The history of philosophy is the systematic study of the development of Philosophy, philosophical thought. It focuses on philosophy as rational inquiry based on argumentation, but some theorists also include myth, Religion, religious traditions ...

Biography

Parkinson was born in 1923 in

Tianjin Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, to British parents. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School and

Wadham College Wadham College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road. Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy Wadham, a ...

, Oxford, where he obtained a First Class Honours degree in Literae Humaniores in 1949, and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1952. His doctoral thesis concerned Baruch (Benedictus de) Spinoza. Later work focused on Gottfried W. (von) Leibniz. In 1950 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Philosophy at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...

, under then Head of Department Professor H A Hodges, and he remained in the department until he retired. He was made a Professor there in 1974, served as Head of Department from 1983 to 1989, and was made an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy upon his retirement. Best known for his work on the

history of philosophy The history of philosophy is the systematic study of the development of philosophical thought. It focuses on philosophy as rational inquiry based on argumentation, but some theorists also include myth, religious traditions, and proverbial lor ...

, perhaps particularly for his work on Leibniz, Parkinson was closely associated with the journal '' Studia Leibnitiana'' from its inception in 1969, and became one of its editors in 1988.

Works

* Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 1954) * Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 1965) * Leibniz on Human Freedom (Steiner, 1970) * Georg Lukacs: The Man, his Work, and his Ideas (Routledge, 1977) * The Theory of Meaning (Oxford University Press, 1968), * Marx and Marxisms (Cambridge University Press, 1982) * An Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Routledge, 1988) (This is the British edition of The Handbook of Western Philosophy) * G. W. von Leibniz's Logical Papers (Oxford University Press, 1966) * G. W. von Leibniz's Philosophical Writings (J.M.Dent & Sons, 1973) * Why the Humanities?: Essays on Some Aspects of University Education (University of Reading, 1987) * The Handbook of Western Philosophy (Macmillan, 1988) * G. W. von Leibniz's De Summa Rerum: Metaphysical Papers, 1675–1676 (Yale University Press, 1992) * B. Spinoza's Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2000)

References

20th-century English historians British historians of philosophy 1923 births 2015 deaths British expatriates in China Philosophy journal editors People educated at Bradford Grammar School {{philosopher-stub