Peter Geach | |
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Born |
Chelsea, London |
29 March 1916
Died | 21 December 2013 Cambridge |
(aged 97)
Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford (MA) |
Spouse(s) | G. E. M. Anscombe |
Era | 20th-century |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Analytic philosophy |
Main interests
|
Philosophical logic, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, |
Notable ideas
|
Analytical Thomism, omnipotence paradox, Frege–Geach problem |
Influences
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Peter Thomas Geach, FBA (/ˈɡiːtʃ/; 29 March 1916 – 21 December 2013) was a British philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Logic at the University of Leeds. His areas of interest were the history of philosophy, philosophical logic, metaethics, and the theory of identity.
Peter Geach was born in London in 1916 to George Hender Geach, a professor of philosophy in Lahore and Cambridge, and Eleonora Adolfina Sgonina, a poet, and spent his earliest years in Cardiff. He attended Llandaff Cathedral School and Clifton College. He received instruction in logic and philosophy from his father who, as a member of the Indian Educational Service, had been professor of philosophy at Lahore and later principal of a teacher training college in Peshawar. His parents' marriage was unhappy and quickly broke up. Until around the age of eight, Peter lived with his maternal grandparents in Cardiff, after which time he was sent off to school by his father and raised by a guardian. Geach never saw his mother again after childhood.
In 1934 Geach won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1938 with a First in Literae Humaniores.
Geach spent a year (1938–39) as a Gladstone Research Student, based at St Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden. Following the end of World War II in 1945, he undertook further research at Cambridge.