Andrew Seth, FBA, DCL (1856,

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

– 1931,

The Haining The Haining is a country house and estate in Selkirk in the Scottish Borders. The present house dates from the 1790s, and was a property of the Pringle family. In 2009, the house and grounds were bequeathed to The Haining Charitable Trust which ...

, Selkirkshire), who changed his name to Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison in 1898 to fulfill the terms of a bequest, was a Scottish philosopher. His brother was James Seth, also a philosopher.

Early life and education

Their father, Smith Kinmont Seth, was the son of a farmer from Fife and a bank clerk in the head office of the Commercial Bank of Scotland. Their mother, Margaret, was the daughter of Andrew Little a farmer from Berwickshire. An elder brother died in infancy. Seth was educated at High School and the University of Edinburgh. In 1878 he was awarded a Hibbert Travelling Fellowship. He spent two years abroad, chiefly at German universities. On his return in 1880 he was appointed assistant to Professor

Campbell Fraser Campbell may refer to: People Surname * Campbell (surname), includes a list of people with surname Campbell Given name * Campbell Brown (footballer), an Australian rules footballer * Campbell Brown (journalist) (born 1968), American television n ...

, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh. He became Balfour Lecturer in Philosophy in 1883. From 1883 to 1887 he was Professor of Logic and Philosophy at the newly created University College of Cardiff. He returned to Scotland in 1887 when he was appointed Professor of Logic, Rhetoric and Metaphysics at St Andrews (1887–91). He was Gifford Lecturer, University of Aberdeen, 1911–13, Hibbert Lecturer (1921) and Gifford Lecturer, University of Edinburgh (1921–23). Pringle-Pattison received the degree

Doctor of Civil Law Doctor of Civil Law (DCL; la, Legis Civilis Doctor or Juris Civilis Doctor) is a degree offered by some universities, such as the University of Oxford, instead of the more common Doctor of Laws (LLD) degrees. At Oxford, the degree is a higher ...

(DCL) ''

honoris causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

'' from the

University of Durham Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...

in June 1902.

Personal life

In 1884 he married Eva (d. 1928), daughter of Albrecht Stropp. The couple had two daughters and three sons He is buried with his wife and family in

Morningside Cemetery, Edinburgh Morningside Cemetery is a cemetery in south Edinburgh. It was established in 1878 by the Metropolitan Cemetery Company, originally just outwith the then city boundary, the nearest suburb then being Morningside. It extends to just over 13 ac ...

against the south wall towards the south-west.

Philosophical work

Seth's twin enemies were English

Empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...

and the Anglo variant of

Hegelianism Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...

. According to Seth, both manner of philosophy degraded the independence of the individual. "Each self," he wrote in ''Hegelianism and Personality'', "is a unique existence, which is perfectly impervious ... to other selves – impervious in a fashion of which the impenetrability of matter is a faint analogue." Seth's comments here stand in stark contrast to the British and American Hegelianism of the turn of the 20th century. Seth was a personal idealist and was critical of

Absolute idealism Absolute idealism is an ontologically monistic philosophy chiefly associated with G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Schelling, both of whom were German idealist philosophers in the 19th century. The label has also been attached to others such as Josi ...

, according to Seth personality should not be merged into the

Absolute Absolute may refer to: Companies * Absolute Entertainment, a video game publisher * Absolute Radio, (formerly Virgin Radio), independent national radio station in the UK * Absolute Software Corporation, specializes in security and data risk manage ...

. Seth's views have also been described as

panentheistic Panentheism ("all in God", from the Greek grc, πᾶν, pân, all, label=none, grc, ἐν, en, in, label=none and grc, Θεός, Theós, God, label=none) is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends bey ...

. It was

F. H. Bradley Francis Herbert Bradley (30 January 1846 – 18 September 1924) was a British idealist philosopher. His most important work was ''Appearance and Reality'' (1893). Life Bradley was born at Clapham, Surrey, England (now part of the Greater ...

's and

Josiah Royce Josiah Royce (; November 20, 1855 – September 14, 1916) was an American objective idealist philosopher and the founder of American idealism. His philosophical ideas included his version of personalism, defense of absolutism, idealism and his ...

's primary contention that the Self is permeable to all manner of imitation, and that the self as Seth describes is a harmful fiction. At the heart of Seth's analysis was a defence of the necessity of

anthropomorphism Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and politi ...

's "

pathetic fallacy The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen ...

." "We are anthropomorphic," he affirmed, "and necessarily so, to the inmost fibre of our thinking." He continues: "Every category ... every description of existence or relation, is necessarily a transcript from our own nature and our own experience. Into some of our conceptions we put more, into others less, of ourselves; but all modes of existence and forms of action are necessarily construed by us in terms of our own life. Everything, down to the

atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, and ...

, is constructed upon the scheme of the conscious self, with its multiplicity of states and its central interpenetrating unity. We cannot rid our thought of its inevitable presupposition." Personality, the true

a priori ("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...

, stands walled off against external

phenomenon A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...

either in terms of the

, or from the influx of sensation. Seth's defence of personality had a dramatic effect on later, anti-Hegelian and pluralist, thinkers in the United States in particular.

William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...

George Santayana Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (; December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a Spanish and US-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised ...

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

and

George Herbert Mead George Herbert Mead (February 27, 1863 – April 26, 1931) was an American philosopher, Sociology, sociologist, and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatism, pragmati ...

, all borrowed his concept of the personality, or psyche, and sought it as a barrier against the claims of

Gabriel Tarde Gabriel Tarde (; in full Jean-Gabriel De Tarde; 12 March 1843 – 13 May 1904) was a French sociologist, criminologist and social psychologist who conceived sociology as based on small psychological interactions among individuals (much as i ...

, and

Works

''Essays in Philosophical Criticism''
edited with R B Haldane in memory of T H Green (1883)
''Hegelianism and Personality''
(1887)
''Scottish philosophy''
a comparison of the Scottish and German answers to Hume (second edition 1890)
''Man's Place in the Cosmos and other essays''
(1897)
''The Philosophical Radicals and Other Essays''
with chapters reprinted on the philosophy of religion in Kant and Hegel (1907)
''The Idea of God in the light of Recent Philosophy''

Gifford Lectures The Gifford Lectures () are an annual series of lectures which were established in 1887 by the will of Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford. Their purpose is to "promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in o ...

(1917)
''The Idea of Immortality''

(1922) *''Studies in the Philosophy of Religion'' (1930)
''The Balfour Lectures on Realism''
edited with a Memoir of the Author by G F Barbour (1933)

References

Further reading
''Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison''
biographical notes on the Gifford Lectures website *Denis Maria Gallagher. ''Pringle-Pattison's Idea of God'', 1933 *Hugh Joseph Tallon. ''The concept of self in British and American idealism'', 1939 {{DEFAULTSORT:Seth Pringle-Pattison, Andrew 1856 births 1931 deaths People educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh Philosophers from Edinburgh Alumni of the University of Edinburgh 19th-century Scottish people Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Idealists University of Göttingen alumni University of Jena alumni Academics of the University of Edinburgh Academics of Cardiff University Academics of the University of St Andrews Fellows of the British Academy Panentheists