Geoffrey Warnock

Sir Geoffrey James Warnock (16 August 19238 October 1995) was an English philosopher and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Before his knighthood (in the 1986 New Year Honours), he was commonly known as G. J. Warnock.

Life Warnock was born at Neville House, Chapel Allerton, Leeds, West Yorkshire, to James Warnock (1880–1953), OBE, a general practitioner from Northern Ireland who had been a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and Kathleen (née Hall; 1890–1979). The Warnocks later lived at Grade II-listed Pull Croft, Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire (historically Berkshire).

Warnock was educated at Winchester College. His tutors during his studies included Isaiah Berlin and H. L. A. Hart. He was also the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1981 to 1985. Warnock also reconstructed Austin's Sense and Sensibilia (1962) from manuscript notes.

Warnock married Mary Wilson, a fellow philosopher of St Hugh's College, Oxford, and later Baroness Warnock, in 1949. They had two sons and three daughters. In 1987 he appeared on Bryan Magee's The Great Philosophers in an episode on Immanuel Kant.

He retired to live near Marlborough, Wiltshire, in 1988 and died of degenerative lung disease in 1995 at Axford in Wiltshire.

Works Books Berkeley, Penguin Books, 1953. English Philosophy Since 1900, 1st edition, Oxford University Press, 1958; 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 1969. Contemporary Moral Philosophy (New studies in ethics), Palgrave Macmillan, 1967. . The Object of Morality, Methuen, 1971. . Morality and Language, Barnes & Noble. 1983 J. L. Austin (The Arguments of the Philosophers), Routledge, 1989.

Papers Metaphysics in Logic in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 51 (1950 - 1951), pp. 197-222. Verification and the Use of Language in Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Vol. 5, No. 17/18 (3/4) (1951), pp. 307-322 Seeing in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 55 (1954 - 1955), pp. 201-218. Analysis and Imagination in A.J. Ayer et al., The Revolution in Philosophy. London: Macmillan, 1956. J. L. Austin (with J.O. Urmson) in Mind, New Series, Vol. 70, No. 278 (Apr., 1961), pp. 256-257. The Primacy of Practical Reason. Proceedings of the British Academy 52, 1966 (1967). Saturday Mornings in Essays on J.L. Austin (1973) Gilbert Ryle's Editorship (1976) in Mind, Vol. 85, No. 337 (Jan., 1976), pp. 47-56.

Reviews Reason and Analysis by Brand Blanshard (1963) in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 53 (Oct., 1963), pp. 373-375. What Philosophy Is: a guide to the elements by Arthur C. Danto (1970) in Metaphilosophy, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April 1970), pp. 166-168. Philosophical Problems by Leonard Goddard (1979) in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 114 (Jan., 1979), pp. 83-84.

For a more complete list of Warnock's works see his PhilPapers entry.