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Anthony Meredith Quinton, Baron Quinton, FBA (25 March 192519 June 2010) was a British
political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studi ...
and
moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
, metaphysician, and
materialist Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...
philosopher of
mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
. He served as President of Trinity College, Oxford from 1978 to 1987; and as chairman of the board of the
British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...
from 1985 to 1990. He is also remembered as a presenter of the BBC Radio programme, '' Round Britain Quiz''.


Life

Quinton was born at 5, Seaton Road,
Gillingham, Kent Gillingham ( ) is a large town in the unitary authority area of Medway in the ceremonial county of Kent, England. The town forms a conurbation with neighbouring towns Chatham, Rochester, Strood and Rainham. It is also the largest town in t ...
. He was the only son of Surgeon Captain Richard Frith Quinton,
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...
(1889–1935) and his wife (Gwenllyan) Letitia (née Jones). He was educated at
Stowe School , motto_translation = I stand firm and I stand first , established = , closed = , type = Public school Independent school, day & boarding , religion = Church of England , president = , head_label = Headmast ...
and
Christ Church, Oxford Christ Church ( la, Ædes Christi, the temple or house, '' ædēs'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is uniq ...
, where he got a first-class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. A fellow of All Souls from 1948, he became a Fellow of
New College, Oxford New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College is one of the oldest colleges at ...
, in 1955. He was President of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1978 to 1987. Quinton was president of the
Aristotelian Society The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy, more generally known as the Aristotelian Society, is a philosophical society in London. History Aristotelian Society was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Squa ...
from 1975 to 1976. He was chairman of the board of the
British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...
from 1985 to 1990. On 7 February 1983, he was created a
life peer In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages ...
as Baron Quinton, of Holywell in the
City of Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the U ...
and
County of Oxford Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primar ...
shire. An admirer of
Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...
, he sat in the Lords as a
Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
. To BBC Radio audiences, Quinton became well known as a presenter of the long-running '' Round Britain Quiz''.


''City of Benares'' tragedy

In September 1940, Quinton's mother, Letitia, booked a passage for herself and 15-year-old Anthony on the passenger liner '' City of Benares'' for Canada, where her mother lived. The ship sailed on 13 September. At 10:03pm on 17 September, the ship was torpedoed by German submarine '' U-48'' and began to sink. The Quintons were in the ship's lounge when the alarm bells rang. They went to their cabin to put on their life-jackets, collected their valuables, and returned to the lounge, which was their muster station. Eventually, Colonel James Baldwin-Webb, a British parliamentarian, decided they had waited long enough and took them to the lifeboats. The Quintons boarded Lifeboat 6, which, with roughly 65 people, was already overfull. As it was lowered, the falls and cables on one end snapped, sending the boat lurching forward, and tossing the majority of the passengers into the sea. Quinton was trapped by a heavy set woman, Mrs Anne Fleetwood-Hesketh: he clung to her, hoping her weight would keep them both from falling, but both fell into the sea. Quinton resurfaced and his mother pulled him back into the lifeboat. The boat now contained 23 people, two of whom had been rescued from another lifeboat, so that only 21 passengers of an original estimated 65 survived. Through the night more passengers, including four children, died. By morning, only eight people, comprising five men, two women (including Mrs Quinton), and one child (Quinton himself) remained alive. Other lifeboats had suffered equally. HMS ''Hurricane'' rescued 105 survivors from the water, including Quinton and his mother. One lifeboat was adrift at sea for eight days before being rescued by another ship, which brought the survivor toll up to 148. Of the 406 people on board, 258 died (including 81 children). Quinton was one of 19 children to survive.


Metaphysics

In the debate about philosophical universals, Quinton defended a variety of
nominalism In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings ...
that identifies properties with a
set Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics *Set (mathematics), a collection of elements *Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively Electro ...
of "natural" classes.
David Malet Armstrong David Malet Armstrong (8 July 1926 – 13 May 2014), often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher. He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functio ...
has been strongly critical of natural class nominalism: Armstrong believes that Quinton's 'natural' classes avoid a fairly fundamental flaw with more primitive class nominalisms, namely that it has to assume that for every class you can construct, it must then have an associated property. The problem for the class nominalist according to Armstrong is that one must come up with some
criteria Criterion, or its plural form criteria, may refer to: General * Criterion, Oregon, a historic unincorporated community in the United States * Criterion Place, a proposed skyscraper in West Yorkshire, England * Criterion Restaurant, in London, En ...
to determine classes that back properties and those which just contain a collection of
heterogeneous Homogeneity and heterogeneity are concepts often used in the sciences and statistics relating to the uniformity of a substance or organism. A material or image that is homogeneous is uniform in composition or character (i.e. color, shape, siz ...
objects. Quinton's version of class nominalism asserts that determining which are the natural property classes is simply a basic fact that is not open to any further philosophical scrutiny. Armstrong argues that whatever it is which picks out the natural classes is not derived from the membership of that class, but from some fact about the particular itself. While Quinton's theory states that no further analysis of the classes is possible, he also says that some classes may be more or less natural—that is, more or less unified than another class. Armstrong illustrates this intuitive difference Quinton is appealing to by pointing to the difference between the class of coloured objects and the class of
crimson Crimson is a rich, deep red color, inclining to purple. It originally meant the color of the kermes dye produced from a scale insect, '' Kermes vermilio'', but the name is now sometimes also used as a generic term for slightly bluish-red co ...
objects: the crimson object class is more unified in some intuitive sense (how is not specified) than the class of coloured objects. In Quinton's 1957 paper, he sees his theory as a less extreme version of nominalism than that of
Willard van Orman Quine Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century" ...
,
Nelson Goodman Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906 – 25 November 1998) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism, and aesthetics. Life and career Goodman was born in Somerville, Ma ...
and
Stuart Hampshire Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire (1 October 1914 – 13 June 2004) was an English philosopher, literary critic and university administrator. He was one of the antirationalist Oxford thinkers who gave a new direction to moral and political thought ...
.


Metaphilosophy


His "shortest definition of philosophy"


His longer definition


Writings

* ''Spaces and Times'' (1962) * ''Political Philosophy'' (editor) (1967) * ''The Nature of Things'' (London, 1973) * ''The Politics of Imperfection: The Religious and Secular Traditions of Conservative Thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott'' (1978) * ''Utilitarian Ethics'' (1973) * ''Francis Bacon'' (Oxford, 1980) * ''Thoughts and Thinkers'' (1982)
"Persistence of intellectual nationalism," Perspectives on culture and society, vol. 1 (1988), 1–22
* ''From Wodehouse To Wittgenstein'' (1998)


Arms


References


External links


Obituary
in ''
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''
Obituary
in ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...
''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quinton, Anthony 1925 births 2010 deaths 20th-century British non-fiction writers 20th-century British philosophers 20th-century essayists 21st-century British non-fiction writers 21st-century British philosophers 21st-century essayists Analytic philosophers Aristotelian philosophers British cultural critics British ethicists British male essayists British radio presenters Conservative Party (UK) life peers Epistemologists Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Fellows of New College, Oxford Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of Trinity College, Oxford Materialists Metaphilosophers Metaphysicians Moral philosophers Ontologists People educated at Stowe School People from Gillingham, Kent Philosophers of culture Philosophers of education Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of mind Philosophers of religion Philosophers of social science Philosophy writers Political philosophers Presidents of the Aristotelian Society Presidents of Trinity College, Oxford Set theorists Social philosophers