Borden Parker Bowne (January 14, 1847 – April 1, 1910) was an American Christian philosopher, Methodist minister and theologian. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times.

Life

Bowne was born on January 14, 1847, near Leonardville in Monmouth County, New Jersey. In 1876 he became a professor of philosophy at Boston University, where he taught for more than thirty years. He later served as the first dean of the graduate school. Bowne was an acute critic of mechanistic determinism, positivism, and naturalism. He categorized his views as Kantianized Berkeleyanism, transcendental empiricism, and, finally, personalism, emphasizing freedom and the importance of the self, a philosophical branch of liberal theology: of this branch Bowne is the dominant figure; this personalism is sometimes called Boston personalism, in contrast with the California personalism of George Holmes Howison. Bowne's magnum opus, Metaphysics, was published in 1882. Bowne was influenced by Hermann Lotze. He died on April 1, 1910, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Legacy

Bowne has influenced philosophy in various ways. For instance, there has been a direct line of personalists from Bowne through his student, Edgar Sheffield Brightman (1884–1954), through Brightman's student, Peter Anthony Bertocci (1910–1989), to Bertocci's student, Thomas O. Buford (born 1932). There has also been a more general influence, as with Martin Luther King Jr., who studied at Boston University, and spoke in his Stride Toward Freedom of having gained "a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality." Bowne received nine nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature between 1906 and 1909—one from his own sister. Boston University named a professorship in Bowne's honor. The named professors are:

Published works

Footnotes