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James Frederick Ferrier: Selected Writings
This volume contains selections from the philosophical writings of James Frederick Ferrier (1808–1864). Ferrier was the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews between 1845 and 1864 and he was one of the earliest post-Hegelian British idealists. He develops a system of absolute idealism via a rejection of the Scottish school of common sense and Enlightenment philosophy in general. These selections focus on his primary philosophical interests: epistemology and ontology. Ferrier denies the possibility of a science of man and suggests that philosophy should focus on self-consciousness, the defining feature of humanity.
James Frederick Ferrier
Mr. Oliphant Smeaton has asked me to write a few words of preface to this little book. If I try, it is only because I am old enough to have had the privilege of knowing some of those who were most closely associated with Ferrier. When I sat at the feet of Professor Campbell Fraser in the Metaphysics classroom at Edinburgh in 1875, Ferrier's writings were being much read by us students. The influence of Sir William Hamilton was fast crumbling in the minds of young men who felt rather than saw that much lay beyond it. We were still engrossed with the controversy, waged in books which now, alas! sell for a tenth of their former price, about the Conditioned and the Unconditioned. We still worked at Reid, Hamilton, and Mansel. But the attacks of Mill on the one side, and of Ferrier and Dr. Stirling on the other, were slowly but surely withdrawing our interest. Ferrier had pointed out a path which seemed to lead us in the direction of Germany if we would escape from Mill, and Stirling was urging us in the same sense.
James Frederick Ferrier
Ferrier was born in Edinburgh, the son of John Ferrier, writer to the signet. He was educated at the Royal High School, the University of Edinburgh and Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently, his metaphysical tastes having been fostered by his intimate friend, Sir William Hamilton, spent some time at Heidelberg studying German philosophy.
