Frederick Copleston

Frederick Charles Copleston (10 April 1907 – 3 February 1994) was a British Catholic priest, philosopher, and historian of philosophy, best known for his influential multi-volume A History of Philosophy (1946–75).

Copleston achieved a degree of popularity in the media for debating the existence of God with Bertrand Russell in a celebrated 1948 BBC broadcast; the following year he debated logical positivism and the meaningfulness of religious language with his friend the analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer.

Origins Frederick Charles Copleston was born on 10 April 1907 at Claremont in the parish of Trull, near Taunton in Somerset, England, the eldest son of Frederick Selwyn Copleston (1850–1935), a judge of the High Court in Rangoon, Burma, by his second wife, Norah Margaret Little. He was a member of the family of Copleston, lords of the manor of Copleston in Devon until 1659, one of the most ancient in that county according to a traditional rhyme related by John Prince (d.1723): "Crocker, Cruwys, and Coplestone, When the Conqueror came were at home"

Biography He was raised an Anglican—his uncle, Reginald Stephen Copleston, was an Anglican bishop of Calcutta; another uncle, Ernest Copleston, was the Anglican Bishop of Colombo. Copleston was educated at Marlborough College from 1920 to 1925. His father, though opposed to his son's becoming a Catholic, helped him complete his education at St John's College, Oxford, where he studied from 1925 to 1929. He graduated from Oxford University in 1929 having managed a third in classical moderations and a good second at Greats.

In 1930, he entered instead the Jesuits. Still highly respected, Copleston's history has been described as "a monumental achievement" that "stays true to the authors it discusses, being very much a work in exposition". (see Copleston–Russell debate). The following year he debated logical positivism and the meaningfulness of religious language with his friend the analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer.

Other select works

Friedrich Nietzsche: Philosopher of Culture (1942), expanded edition; (1975) Arthur Schopenhauer: Philosopher of Pessimism (1946) Medieval Philosophy (1952), revised edition: A History of Medieval Philosophy (1972) Aquinas (1955), reprinted from 1976 as Thomas Aquinas, "Logical Positivism - A Debate" (with A. J. Ayer) in: Edwards, Paul, Pap, Arthur (eds.), A Modern Introduction to Philosophy (1957) Contemporary Philosophy: Studies of Logical Positivism and Existentialism (1956), republished with a new first chapter in 1972 Religion and Philosophy (1974) Philosophers and Philosophies (1976) On the History of Philosophy and Other Essays (1979) Philosophies and Culture (1980) Religion and the One: Philosophies East and West (1982) Philosophy in Russia: From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev (1986) Russian Religious Philosophy (1988) Memoirs of a Philosopher (1993)

Related works

Hughes, Gerard J. (1987) The Philosophical Assessment of Theology: Essays in Honour of Frederick C. Copleston