John Henry Muirhead was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 philosopher best known for having initiated the Muirhead Library of Philosophy

Muirhead Library of Philosophy

The Muirhead Library of Philosophy was an influential series which published some of the best writings of twentieth century philosophy. The original programme was drawn up by John Muirhead and published in Erdmann's History of Philosophy in 1890...

 in 1890. He became the first person named to the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham

University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...

 in 1900.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he was educated at the Glasgow Academy (1866–70), and proceeded to Glasgow University, where he was deeply influenced by the Hegelianism of Edward Caird

Edward Caird

Edward Caird FRSE was a Scottish philosopher and younger brother of the theologian John Caird.He was the son of engineer John Caird, the proprietor of Caird & Company,...

, professor of moral philosophy. He graduated MA in 1875. The same year he won a Snell exhibition at Balliol College

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

, Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

, to which he went up in Trinity term 1875. His library was originally published by Allen & Unwin

Allen & Unwin

Allen & Unwin, formerly a major British publishing house, is now an independent book publisher and distributor based in Australia. The Australian directors have been the sole owners of the Allen & Unwin name since effecting a management buy out at the time the UK parent company, Unwin Hyman, was...

 and continued through to the 1970s. His library is seen as a crucial landmark in the history of modern philosophy, publishing a number of prominent 20th Century philosophers including Ernest Albee, Brand Blanshard

Brand Blanshard

Percy Brand Blanshard was an American philosopher known primarily for his defense of reason. A powerful polemicist, by all accounts he comported himself with courtesy and grace in philosophical controversies and exemplified the "rational temper" he advocated.-Life:Brand Blanshard was born August...

, Francis Herbert Bradley, Axel Hagerstrom

Axel Hägerström

Axel Anders Theodor Hägerström was a Swedish philosopher and jurist.Born in Vireda, Jönköping County Sweden, he was the son of a Church of Sweden pastor. As student at Uppsala University, he gave up theology for a career in philosophy...

, Henri Bergson

Henri Bergson

Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...

, Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...

, Bernard Bosanquet

Bernard Bosanquet (philosopher)

Bernard Bosanquet was an English philosopher and political theorist, and an influential figure on matters of political and social policy in late 19th and early 20th century Britain...

, Irving Thalberg, Jr., Georg Wilhelm Hegel, and George Edward Moore

George Edward Moore

George Edward Moore OM, was an English philosopher. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy...

. In 2002, the library was made available in a 95 volume set. (ISBN 0-415-27897-X)

J.H. Muirhead writings:

• The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird (written with Sir Henry Jones
  Henry Jones (philosopher)
  Sir Henry Jones , was a Welsh philosopher and academic.He was born in Llangernyw, Denbighshire, the son of a shoemaker. After working as an apprentice to his father, he studied at Bangor Normal College and became a teacher at Brynamman. Having decided to enter the Presbyterian ministry, he went...
  
  ), (1921) – Maclehose, Jackson and Co., Glasgow
• Coleridge as Philosopher (1930) - MacMillan & Co., New York
• The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy: Studies in the History of Idealism in England and America (1931) - London: G. Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan
• The Use of Philosophy: Californian Addresses (1979) - Greenwood Press
• The Elements of Ethics - C. Scribner's Sons
• Rule and End in Morals (1969) - Books for Libraries Press
• Chapters from Aristotle's Ethics - J. Murray

External links