John Alexander Smith


John Alexander Smith was a British idealist philosopher, who was the Jowett Lecturer of philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford from 1896 to 1910, and Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, carrying a Fellowship at Magdalen College in the same university, from 1910 to 1936. He was born in Dingwall and died in Oxford.

Life and work

Smith was educated at Inverness Academy, the Edinburgh Collegiate School, Edinburgh University, and at Balliol College, Oxford, to which he was admitted as Warner exhibitioner and honorary scholar in Hilary term 1884. His most visible accomplishments were his work with William David Ross on a 12-volume translation of Aristotle, and his Gifford Lectures for 1929–1931 on the Heritage of Idealism, which were never published.
The 'Moral' tag in his Professorial title disappeared with R. G. Collingwood's appointment in 1936. Smith expressed some unease about the combination of 'moral' and 'metaphysical' in his inaugural lecture Knowing and Acting: The framer of the Chair's regulations, he remarks, describes the Professor's duties 'in a way which rather sets a problem than furnishes guidance. The Professor, he says, 'shall lecture and give instruction on the principles and history of Mental Philosophy, and on its connexion with Ethics.' He distinguishes two great departments of philosophical thought — so recognizedly different as already to be assigned for separate treatment to two other Professors in the University — and he enjoins that they shall be afresh discussed in their connexion with one another, yet with respect to their distinction. It can scarcely be his meaning that his Professor should attempt the invidious task of harmonising the possibly divergent accounts given of Logic by the Wykeham Professor and of Ethics by Whyte's Professor, of performing in public the higher synthesis of his colleagues' several contributions to philosophic truth, or — less arrogantly — of indicating or reinforcing their latent consonance. Such a task, had it been required or suggested, I could not have undertaken.'
Smith interpreted the requirements of his professorship as metaphysical, though he is often referred to as simply a Professor of Moral Philosophy as in Alastair Horne's biography of Harold Macmillan : '... he recalled the words with which his Professor of Moral Philosophy, J.A. Smith, had opened a lecture course in 1914: 'Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life – save only this – if you work hard and diligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.
Smith's early and perhaps predominant interests were literary and philological, as he makes clear in Contemporary British Philosophy, Second Series, ed. J.H. Muirhead, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1925:228. At the turn of the twentieth century he espoused a form of realism but by the time of his appointment to the Waynflete Professorship had come strongly under the sway of the Italian philosopher, Benedetto Croce. The philosophy of Giovanni Gentile later exerted a powerful influence.

Biographies

There is a good account of Smith's life and career in Sir David Ross' entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1931–40. See also Mabbott, J.D.Oxford Memories. Thornton, 1986, p. 74; and Ayer, A.J. Part of My Life. Collins, 1977, pp. 77, 144, 152. A.N. Wilson's biography of C.S. Lewis, a colleague of Smith's at Magdalen, makes reference to Smith as does Lewis' voluminous published correspondence. For personal glimpses: Buchan, John.Memory Hold-the-Door. Hodder & Stoughton, 1940, p. 49; Jones, L.E.An Edwardian Youth, Macmillan, 1956; Scott, D. A.D. Lindsay. Basil Blackwell, 1971: 41, 43, 45, 51, 52, 113; Barker, Sir Ernest. Age and Youth. Oxford University Press,1953, p. 319; Matheson, P.E. The Life of Hastings Rashdall. Ixfird University Press, 1928, pp. 127, 221; Jones, Sir Henry & Muirhead, J.H. The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird. Thoemmes, 1991, pp. 156–7; Joliffe, J. Raymond Asquith: Life and Letters. Collins, 1980, p. 90.
For philosophical assessments, see Coates, A. A Sceptical Examination of Contemporary British Philosophy. Brentano's, 1929, pp. 163–87; and Patrick, James. The Magdalen Metaphysicals. Mercer University Press, pp. 47–75. In Sir Roy Harrod's The Prof, London: Macmillan, 1959: 18–21, there is a sharply observed if unsympathetic account of Smith's contribution to a debate on relativity theory with F.A. Lindemann, then Dr Lee's Professor in Experimental Philosophy at Oxford, shortly after the First World War.

Cultural references

Smith was the subject of a clerihew which acquired some currency at Oxford:
"J. A. Smith

Said Christianity was a myth;

When he grew calmer

They sent for Mr Palmer."

The reference to 'Mr Palmer' is to the Reverend Edwin Palmer, Corpus Professor Latin at Oxford, 1870–95; formerly Fellow of Balliol College.

Publications

A small quantity of Smith's papers is held at Balliol College, Oxford; the main body is archived at Magdalen College, Oxford.