A.C. Ewing

Alfred Cyril Ewing ( ; 11 May 1899 – 14 May 1973) was an English philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Cambridge. He was a prolific writer who made contributions to Kant scholarship, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of religion.

Biography

Alfred Ewing was born in Leicester, England, on 11 May 1899, the only child of Emma and H. F. Ewing. He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School.

From his entrance to University College, Oxford, Ewing's early academic career was, as Russell Grice remarks, one of "almost unparalleled brilliance." Firsts in Classical Moderations and, in 1920, ' Greats' were followed by a Bishop Fraser Scholarship at Oriel College in 1920 and a Senior Demyship at Magdalen College in 1921 He was awarded the John Locke Scholarship in Mental Philosophy (now the John Locke Prize) the same year.

In 1923, Ewing was amongst the first Oxford students to be awarded a DPhil, his (revised) thesis being published as ''Kant's Treatment of Causality'' (1924). He served as a lecturer at Oxford 1924 –1925, He was awarded the Green Prize in Moral Philosophy in 1926. An expanded version of the essay for which he won the same was published as ''The Morality of Punishment'' (1929), with a short introduction by W. D. Ross.

After holding temporary positions at Michigan University (in the summer session of 1926) and Armstrong College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (in 1927), he served as a lecturer in philosophy at University College, Swansea from 1927 until 1931.

In 1931 he was appointed University Lecturer in Moral Science at Cambridge. ( A. J. Ayer describes him being as being 'imported' to teach the history of philosophy.) Ewing would later recall his "shock" on arriving at Cambridge to find "dominant not the influence of Moore, Broad, or Russell, but the influence of Wittgenstein" reporting that "the reaction his philosophy provoked in me was one of sharp antagonism."

He was awarded, the Cambridge D.Litt in 1933, at the remarkably early age of 34. The following year, Ewing published his extensive study ''Idealism: A Critical Survey,'' which was reviewed favourably by T. E. Jessop. And offers an early characterisation of a 'traditional account' of coherentist epistemic justification.

The late 1930s saw the publication of "Meaninglessness" and 'The Linguistic Theory' two "powerfully argued" papers that, Brand Blanshard contends, "must have contributed much to the disintegration of positivism."

He served as president of the Aristotelian Society from 1941 to 1942, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1941. He delivered the latter's annual Henriette Hertz philosophical lecture the same year. During the Second World War, Goebel records, Ewing turned his attention back to ethics with the publication of a series of articles that formed the basis of two works both published in 1947:''The Definition of Good (''an investigation primarily into problems of metaethics) and ''The Individual, the State, and World Government'' (a work on political ethics against the background of the European catastrophe and the danger of nuclear war). In a 1945 article for ''The Hibbert Journal'' he argued there were, as Brian McGuinness puts it, "no retributive, reformatory, or deterrent grounds, for making the terms of peace for Germany as a whole more severe than they would otherwise need to be". Wittgenstein wrote to Rush Rhees that Ewing’s article was "stupidish and academical but ''not'' unkind. It treated the Germans as prospective inmates of a reformatory school, managed on modern, humane principles. ... the Journal surprised me as being rather human."

Two visiting professorships took him to Princeton and Northwestern University in 1949. In the winter of 1950 Ewing attended the silver jubilee Indian Philosophical Congress in Calcutta and lectured at a number of Indian universities. He returned to India in 1959, to Mysore, to attend the joint symposium between the Indian Philosophical Congress and the International Institute of Philosophy, of which he was an active member.

At Cambridge where, as Ayer contends, Ewing was "not well treated," he was "eventually" made a reader in 1954. And, after many years of lecturing for the university, he was finally elected a fellow of Jesus College in 1962, As Ayer, notes. Ewing "was an able philosopher, a good scholar and a prolific writer" but one that "never caught the idiom … largely foisted on Cambridge in the 1930s by Ludwig Wittgenstein."

After holding a visiting position in Colorado in 1963, he retired from Cambridge in 1966 with an Honorary Fellowship from Jesus College. and moved to Manchester. But in 1967 he took a visiting position at San Francisco State College and in 1971 such a post at Delaware.

He continued to write, working to complete ''Value and Reality: the Philosophical Case for Theism'' (1973) which was published posthumously. This was a work, Grice records, Ewing "had started writing for twenty-five years before its publication," and one "that had been his central concern for the last five years of his life."

Ewing died of a stroke in Manchester, England, on 14 May 1973. He left his papers, and Goebel reports, his body, to the University of Manchester. His eyes went to Manchester Royal Eye Hospital and the rest to Manchester anatomy department. To "the Moral Science Library in SIdgwick Avenue

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