A.j. ayer philosophy

A.j. ayer verification principle
A.j. ayer emotivism
A.j. ayer spouse

•

Alfred Ayer

Sir Alfred Jules ("Freddie") Ayer (better known as Alfred Ayer or A. J. Ayer) (1910 - 1989) was a 20th Century British philosopher in the Analytic Philosophy tradition, mainly known for his promotion of Logical Positivism and for popularizing the movement's ideas in Britain.

He saw himself as continuing in the British Empiricist tradition of Locke and Hume and more contemporary philosophers like Bertrand Russell, and is often considered second only to Russell among British philosophers of the 20th Century in the depth of his philosophical knowledge.

Alfred Ayer was born on 29 October 1910 in London, England, into a wealthy family of continental origin. His mother, Reine, was from a Dutch-Jewish family; his father, Jules Louis Cyprien Ayer, was a Swiss Calvinist. He grew up in the well-to-do St. John's Wood area of London, and was educated at the exclusive Ascham St. Vincent preparatory school for boys at Eastbourne, and then at even more prestigious Eton College.

A precocious but mischievous child, Ayer always felt

•

Alfred Jules Ayer

1. Biographical Sketch

Alfred Jules Ayer was born in London on October 29, 1910. His mother, Reine, was descended from Dutch Jews, whilst his father, Jules Louis Cypress Ayer, came from a Swiss Calvinist background. As recounted in Rogers 1999, Ayer was a precocious but mischievous child, and so was sent to boarding school (outside Eastbourne) at the age of seven, from which he won a scholarship to Eton in 1923. There he impressed his peers with his intelligence and competitiveness, the latter trait manifesting itself in the way he played games. Ayer nevertheless felt an ‘outsider’, and it is clear that his fellow-students did not warm to him, perhaps due to the excessive zeal with which he attempted to convert them to atheism. Feeling ‘an outsider’ was something that remained with him all his life. At the age of sixteen he specialized in classics and at the same time started reading some philosophy. Bertrand Russell’s Sceptical Essays made an impression, particularly Russell’s argument for the claim that it is undesirable

•

A. J. Ayer

English philosopher (1910–1989)

Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" AyerFBA (AIR;^[2] 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989)^[3] was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956).

Ayer was educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford, after which he studied the philosophy of logical positivism at the University of Vienna. From 1933 to 1940 he lectured on philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford.^[4]

During the Second World War Ayer was a Special Operations Executive and MI6 agent.^[5]

Ayer was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London from 1946 until 1959, after which he returned to Oxford to become Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College.^[1] He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1951 to 1952 and knighted in 1970. He was known for his advocacy of humanism, and was the second president of the British Humanist Association (now known as Humanists UK)