Charles Norris Cochrane (August 21, 1889 – November 23, 1945) was a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

and

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 ...

who taught at the University of Toronto. He is known for his writings about the interaction between ancient Rome and emerging Christianity.

Early life and education

Cochrane was born in Omemee, Ontario. He attended the University of Toronto, graduating with a degree in Classics in 1911. He then attended the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

Career

During the First World War, Cochrane was active in the Canadian Officers Training Corps and in 1918 went overseas with the 1st Tank Battalion. After the war, in 1919, Cochrane joined the Faculty of Ancient History at the University of Toronto. His ''

Thucydides Thucydides ( ; ; BC) was an Classical Athens, Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts Peloponnesian War, the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been d ...

and the Science of History'' appeared in 1929, and his best-known work, '' Christianity and Classical Culture'', in 1940. The latter work was praised by W. H. Auden, and it was in addition described by Harold Innis as "the first major Canadian contribution to the intellectual history of the West". In it Cochrane investigated the political and cultural interaction between the Romans and Christians in the early days of Christianity. In 2017, a new collection of Cochrane's posthumously published writings and collected essays appeared, ''Augustine and the Problem of Power: The Essays and Lectures of Charles Norris Cochrane''. The title essay in this volume was originally delivered as the 1945 Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectures at Yale University Divinity School. Cochrane expressed the opinion that the philosophy of Augustine largely replaced classical Greek philosophy as the dominant intellectual world view. In his philosophy and historiography, Cochrane was influenced by R. G. Collingwood. The Hegelian philosopher James Doull was among his students. Doull's friend George Grant was also a very great admirer of Cochrane. Political scientist Arthur Kroker, pointing to Cochrane's writings about the conflict between Christianity and nihilism, and his insight into the "generative origins of Christianity as a response to a larger cultural crisis that secular thought, whether Roman or Greek, could not solve for itself," deemed Cochrane "one of the leading 20th-century philosophers of civilization." Cochraine died on November 13, 1945, in Toronto.

References

External links

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George Grant on Charles Norris Cochrane

William E. Heise on Charles Norris Cochrane's ''Christianity and Classical Culture''

Charles Norris Cochrane archival papers
held at th
University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cochrane, Charles Norris 1945 deaths 1889 births 20th-century Canadian historians 20th-century Canadian philosophers Alumni of the University of Oxford Canadian male non-fiction writers University of Toronto alumni Academic staff of the University of Toronto