James Opie UrmsonMC (4 March 1915 – 29 January 2012)[1] was a philosopher and classicist who spent most of his professional career at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was a prolific author and expert on a number of topics including British analytic/linguistic philosophy, George Berkeley, ethics, and Greek philosophy (especially Aristotle).
When the Second World War broke out, he joined the army. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1943. He was taken prisoner in Italy in 1944, remaining in captivity in Germany until the end of the war in Europe. He spent his time as a prisoner of war "playing bridge and doing mathematics."[2][3]
In 1955 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Philosophy at Queen's College Dundee, then part of the University of St Andrews in Scotland. In 1959 he returned to Oxford as a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and a Tutor in Philosophy. Except for visiting appointments in the United States (e.g. Visiting Associate Professor of philosophy at Princeton University in 1950–51), he remained at Oxford until his retirement,[4] at which point he assumed the position of Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Stanford University.
Urmson and his co-editor G. J. Warnock performed an invaluable service to the development of "analytic" or "linguistic" philosophy by preparing for publication the papers of the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin.
After World War II, Urmson's book Philosophical Analysis (1956) – an overview of the development of analytic philosophy at Cambridge and Oxford universities between World War I and World War II – was influential in the post-war spread of analytic philosophy in Anglophone countries.
David Heyd records that "the history of supererogation in non-religious ethical theory" began with Urmson's 'seminal' "Saints and Heroes" (1958).[5][6] This paper, according to Heyd, "opened the contemporary discussion of supererogation," while hardly mentioning the term, "by challenging the traditional threefold classification of moral action: the obligatory, the permitted (or indifferent) and the prohibited."[5]
Urmson translated or wrote notes for a number of volumes of Aristotle, and commentaries on Aristotle's PhysicsbySimplicius, for the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series published in the US by Cornell University Press, in the UK initially by Duckworth, now by Bloomsbury, under the general editorship of Richard Sorabji. His book Aristotle's Ethics was praised by J. L. Ackrill and Julius Moravcsik as an excellent introduction to Aristotle's Ethics.
Although, as Jonathan Rée notes, many of Urmson's writings "focus on theories about the nature of philosophy",[7] Urmson holds that "on the whole the best philosophy is little affected by theory; the philosopher sees what needs doing and does it."[8]
"What Makes a Situation Aesthetic?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 31 (1957), reprinted in Aesthetics, form and emotion (1983)
Human Agency: Language, Duty, and Value. Philosophical Essays in Honor of J. O. Urmson ed. Jonathan Dancy, J. M. E. Moravcsik, C. C. W. Taylor, Stanford University Press, 1988, ISBN9780804714747. Contains a bibliography of Urmson's philosophical works
^Urmson's death on 29 January 2012 was announced on 30 January by the President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. "Professor James Urmson". Telegraph. 4 April 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2012.
^"Professor James Urmson". The Telegraph. 4 April 2012. Retrieved 20 January 2024. In May 1943, during the last stages of the Tunisia Campaign, Urmson was awarded an immediate MC for his "courage and skill" as a captain in the 1st Battalion the Duke of Wellington's Regiment. ... After the action for which he was awarded an MC,he was captured at Anzio and spent the rest of the war in a German PoW camp, "playing bridge and doing mathematics".
^Taylor, C. C. W. (2016). "Urmson, James Opie (1915–2012), philosopher". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/104992. Archived from the original on 11 March 2021. Retrieved 20 January 2024. Urmson served in the Duke of Wellington's regiment in France, North Africa, and Italy. In May 1943 he was awarded the Military Cross for his courage and skill in bringing ammunition and other supplies to the units holding the crucial position of Bou Akouaz in the final assault on Tunis, where, despite being wounded, he repeatedly led the supply column under heavy fire. He was taken prisoner in Italy in 1944 and remained in captivity until the end of the war, occupying himself, on his own account, by teaching philosophy, doing mathematics, playing bridge, and playing chess with the camp commandant.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
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Bertrand Russell, Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: Last Philosophical Testament 1947–1968, p.602, ed. John G. Slater & Peter Kollner ISBN0-415-09409-7
