Charles Norris Cochrane (August 21, 1889 – November 23, 1945) was a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

and

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 ...

who taught at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

. He is known for his writings about the interaction between ancient Rome and emerging Christianity.

Early life and education

Cochrane was born in

Omemee, Ontario Omemee is a community within the city of Kawartha Lakes, Ontario, Canada, formerly known as Victoria County. Located on Ontario Highway 7, which is the Trans-Canada Highway, Omemee is one of the communities in the Kawartha Lakes, as the proclaim ...

. He attended the University of Toronto, graduating with a degree in Classics in 1911. He then attended 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 ...

Career

During the First World War, Cochrane was active in the Canadian Officers Training Corps and in 1918 went overseas with the 1st Tank Battalion. After the war, in 1919, Cochrane joined the Faculty of Ancient History at the University of Toronto. His ''

Thucydides Thucydides (; grc, , }; BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientifi ...

and the Science of History'' appeared in 1929, and his best-known work, '' Christianity and Classical Culture'', in 1940. The latter work was praised by

W.H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

, and it was in addition described by

Harold Innis Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894 – November 9, 1952) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. He helped devel ...

as "the first major Canadian contribution to the

intellectual history Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histor ...

of the

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...

". In it Cochrane investigated the political and cultural interaction between the Romans and Christians in the early days of Christianity. In 2017, a new collection of Cochrane's post-humously published writings and collected essays appeared, ''Augustine and the Problem of Power: The Essays and Lectures of Charles Norris Cochrane.'' The title essay in this volume was originally delivered as the 1945 Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectures at Yale University Divinity School. Cochrane expressed the opinion that the philosophy of Augustine largely replaced classical Greek philosophy as the dominant intellectual world view. In his philosophy and historiography, Cochrane was influenced by

R.G. Collingwood Robin George Collingwood (; 22 February 1889 – 9 January 1943) was an English philosopher, historian and archaeologist. He is best known for his philosophical works, including ''The Principles of Art'' (1938) and the posthumously published ...

. The

Hegelian 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 ...

philosopher

James Doull James Alexander Doull (1918–2001) was a Canadian philosopher and academic who was born and lived most of his life in Nova Scotia. His father was the politician, jurist, and historian John Doull. Biography From the late 1940s until the mid-1980 ...

was among his students. Political scientist

Arthur Kroker Arthur Kroker (born 1945) is a Canadian author, editor, educator and researcher of political science, technology and culture. Life and career He earned a PhD in political science from McMaster University in 1975. In addition to being a profess ...

, pointing to Cochrane's writings about the conflict between Christianity and

nihilism Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. The term was popularized by Ivan ...

, and his insight into the "generative origins of Christianity as a response to a larger cultural crisis that

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

thought, whether Roman or Greek, could not solve for itself," deemed Cochrane "one of the leading 20th-century philosophers of civilization." Cochraine died November 13, 1945 in Toronto.

References

External links

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George Grant on Charles Norris Cochrane

William E. Heise on Charles Norris Cochrane's ''Christianity and Classical Culture''

Charles Norris Cochrane archival papers
held at th
University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cochrane, Charles Norris 1945 deaths 1889 births 20th-century Canadian historians 20th-century Canadian philosophers Alumni of the University of Oxford Canadian male non-fiction writers University of Toronto alumni University of Toronto faculty