Watson, John

Person

Watson, John

1847-1939

John Watson was born at Glasgow, Scotland in 1847 and died in 1939. His ideas influenced the development of religious and political thought in Canada during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Educated at Glasgow University, Watson became a disciple of Edward Caird, the British philosopher who, later, became The Master of Balliol College Oxford. Watson came to Queen's University to teach philosophy in 1872 and remained in Kingston until his death in 1939. During his fifty-two years on the faculty of Queen's University, John Watson became the Professor of Moral Philosophy and, in 1901, Vice Principal, a post he held until his retirement to Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1924. He published some fifteen books and over two hundred articles and reviews, as well as some poetry and even had a play he wrote produced. He became the first Queen's Professor to have an international reputation as a scholar, leading the Kantian revolution in the English-speaking world. He was the first Canadian to be invited to give the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow, the most prestigious honour that can be given a English-speaking philosopher, and was regarded by many as the leading academic philosopher not just in Canada but in North America.

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