Henry Silton Harris (11 April 1926 – 13 March 2007) was a British-Canadian philosopher, having been a Distinguished Research Professor at

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,0 ...

. He is best known for his work on the intellectual development of

G. W. F. Hegel 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 ...

and for his writings and commentary upon ''

The Phenomenology of Spirit ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' (german: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the most widely-discussed philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; its German title can be translated as either ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' or ''The Phenomen ...

''.

Biography

Born in Brighton, England, Harris received a BA (1949) in classics and philosophy from

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, and an MA (1952) and PhD (1954) at

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...

. He taught at the University of Illinois and

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

and, in 1962, joined

where he was eventually made Distinguish Research Professor in 1984. He was

Glendon College Glendon College is a public liberal arts college in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Formally the federated bilingual campus of York University, it is one of the school's nine colleges and 11 faculties with 100 full-time faculty members and a student po ...

's Academic Dean from 1967 to 1969, elected a Fellow in Royal Society of Canada in 1988 and was also given an Honorary Doctor of Letters from York in 2001. In 2001, he was also inducted into York University's Founders' Honour Society in recognition of his contribution to York's early development. Harris was known for his collegiality, and he was a frequent collaborator on a variety of translation projects. He was "the keystone" of a group who gathered at

Trinity College, Toronto Trinity College (occasionally referred to as The University of Trinity College) is a college federated with the University of Toronto, founded in 1851 by Bishop John Strachan. Strachan originally intended Trinity as a university of strong Angl ...

, to translate the works of

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 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 ...

. He was also Honorary President of the Hegel Society of Great Britain. At the time of his death, Harris was working on manuscripts on pre-Platonic philosophy,

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...

Blake Blake is a surname which originated from Old English. Its derivation is uncertain; it could come from "blac", a nickname for someone who had dark hair or skin, or from "blaac", a nickname for someone with pale hair or skin. Another theory, presuma ...

, and Hegel—and a large collection of articles on philosophy and literature.

Hegel scholarship

Although Harris came to Hegel late in his career, once he did "his attention to detail was exceptional": "''Hegel’s Development: Toward the Sunlight 1770–1801'' explored every text from Hegel’s early years, and showed both their internal logic but also how each one contributed to the need to push further. It has become the standard reference work on that period of Hegel’s life." The same would be true of its sequel, ''Hegel’s Development: Night Thoughts (Jena 1801–1806)''. Harris's next major project, a two-volume commentary on ''

'', ''Hegel's Ladder'' (vol. 1, ''The Pilgrimage of Reason'', and vol. 2, ''The Odyssey of Spirit''), was likewise received with critical acclaim. Introducing a collection of essays on the ''Phenomenology'' dedicated to H. S. Harris, Kenneth R. Westphal writes,

''Hegel's Ladder'' is a landmark. Hegel's texts are notoriously rich, compressed, systematic, and rife with allusions. Harris identified a wealth of Hegel's profuse sources and shows why and how Hegel used them; his commentary demonstrates the decompression and detailed explication Hegel's text deserves and requires.

In the words of George di Giovanni, "for wealth of historical detail and accuracy of insight, there is nothing comparable in any language to this latest commentary of the ''Phenomenology of Spirit''." By his own account, Harris's effort to "make Hegel speak English" was greatly indebted to his ongoing engagement with the philosophy of

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...

.Burbidge, John. 1997. "Forward: Hegel, Hume, and Harris." In ''Hegel and the Tradition: Essays in Honour of H.S. Harris'' Ed. John Russon and Michael Baur, University of Toronto Press, pp.ix-xv.

References

External links

Repository of H.S. Harris's manuscripts at York University
1926 births 2007 deaths English emigrants to Canada York University faculty 20th-century Canadian philosophers {{Canada-philosopher-stub