John Wisdom

Who was John Wisdom?

Arthur John Terence Dibben Wisdom, usually cited as John Wisdom, was a leading British philosopher considered to be an ordinary language philosopher, a philosopher of mind and a metaphysician. He was influenced by G.E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud, and in turn explained and extended their work.

He is not to be confused with his cousin, fellow philosopher John Oulton Wisdom, 1908-1993, who shared his interest in psychoanalysis.

Before the posthumous publication of the Philosophical Investigations in 1953 Wisdom's writing was one of the few published sources of information about Wittgenstein's later philosophy.

His article "Philosophical Perplexity" has been described as ‘something of a landmark in the history of philosophy’ being ‘the first which throughout embodied the new philosophical outlook’.

According to David Pole "in some directions at least Wisdom carries Wittgenstein's work further than he himself did, and faces its consequences more explicitly."

Wisdom was for most of his career at Trinity College, Cambridge, and became Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University. Near the end of his career he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.