Michael Richard Ayers, (born 1935) is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

philosopher and

professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

of philosophy at the

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

. He studied at St. John's College of the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

, and was a member of

Wadham College Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road. Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...

, Oxford from 1965 until 2002. Among his students are

Colin McGinn Colin McGinn (born 10 March 1950) is a British philosopher. He has held teaching posts and professorships at University College London, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, and the University of Miami. McGinn is best known for his work ...

and William Child.

Career

Ayers's research focuses are in the history of philosophy and in

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epis ...

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

, and

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

. He is co-editor of the ''Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy'' and subject editor of the ''

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' is an encyclopedia of philosophy edited by Edward Craig that was first published by Routledge in 1998 (). Originally published in both 10 volumes of print and as a CD-ROM, in 2002 it was made availabl ...

'', has edited the work of George Berkeley and published on Descartes. His most influential contributions, however, concern the work of John Locke. He is the author of ''Locke: Epistemology and Ontology'' as well as of several seminal articles on Locke's philosophy. In 1987

Bryan Magee Bryan Edgar Magee (; 12 April 1930 – 26 July 2019) was a British philosopher, broadcaster, politician and author, best known for bringing philosophy to a popular audience. Early life Born of working-class parents in Hoxton, London, in 1930, w ...

invited Michael Ayers to talk about Locke and Berkeley in the

BBC's #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

series '' The Great Philosophers''. More recently, Michael Ayers has published further work on

Publications

* ''Philosophy and its past'',

Jonathan Rée Jonathan Rée (born 1948) is a British freelance historian and philosopher from Bradford. Educated at Sussex University and then at Oxford, Rée was previously a professor of philosophy at Middlesex University, but gave up a teaching career in orde ...

, Michael Ayers, Adam Westoby: Harvester Press, 1978. * ''Philosophical works : including the works on vision'' George Berkeley 1685–1753. Michael Ayers (ed.) New ed., revised and enlarged. London : Dent, 1985. * ''Locke'' London : Routledge 1991 * 'The foundations of knowledge and the logic of substance: the structure of Locke's general philosophy' in ''Locke'' Vere Chappell (ed.), Oxford University Press 1998 * ''The Cambridge history of seventeenth-century philosophy'' Daniel Garber, Michael Ayers: Cambridge University Press 1998 * 'What is Realism?' in ''Supplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society'', Volume 75, Number 1, July 2001 * 'The Second Meditation and Objections to Cartesian Dualism' in Christia Mercer and Eileen O'Neill (eds.), ''Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics'', Oxford University Press, 2005 * 'Ordinary Objects, Ordinary Language and Identity' in

The Monist ''The Monist: An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of philosophy. It was established in October 1890 by American publisher Edward C. Hegeler. History Init ...

, Vol. 88, No. 4, October 2005 *Ayers, Michael R. "Substance, Reality, and the Great Dead Philosophers." American Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1970): 38–49.
The paper is a reply to: * Ayers, Michael (2005). "Was Berkeley an empiricist or a rationalist?". The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley. pp. 34–62. *''Knowing and Seeing: Groundwork for a New Empiricism'', Oxford University Press, Oxford 2019.

Awards

* FBA: Fellow of the British Academy * Member of Academia Europaea

External links

Fellows of Wadham CollegeRoutledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Editorial Board

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ayers, Michael R. 1935 births 20th-century British male writers 20th-century British philosophers 20th-century essayists 20th-century English historians 21st-century British male writers 21st-century British philosophers 21st-century essayists 21st-century English historians Analytic philosophers Aristotelian philosophers British logicians British male essayists Descartes scholars Empiricists Epistemologists Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford George Berkeley scholars Historians of philosophy Living people Locke scholars Metaphysicians Metaphysics writers Ontologists Ordinary language philosophy People educated at Battersea Grammar School Philosophers of education Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of logic Philosophers of mind Philosophy academics