David Oswald Thomas

Who was David Oswald Thomas?

David Oswald Thomas was a Welsh philosopher, best known as an interpreter of the work of Richard Price.

Thomas was born in Rhuthun, Denbighshire, the son of the Clerk to the Department of Education for the county. He was educated at Denbigh Grammar School, after which he worked as a bank clerk. In 1943, after two years in the bank, he joined the RAF. He served until 1946. Stationed for most of the time in the Middle East, he served one and a half years in Iraq. At the end of his service he took advantage of a scheme for demobilizing into university and studied philosophy at the University College of Wales, Bangor. His student days were marked by the onset of ankylosing spondylitis. After completing his degree, Thomas studied the British idealists for his MA, and then moved from Bangor to London where, for his PhD, he studied the political philosophy of Richard Price. His choice of subject had been influenced by the publication in 1948 of D.D. Raphael's new edition of Price's A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, first published 190 years earlier.