STRAWSON, SIR PETER (FREDERICK)

born Nov. 23, 1919, London, Eng. British philosopher, an exponent and reformer of the linguistic analysis school originally centred on the Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Strawson was a fellow of University College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1968, afterward serving as a fellow of Magdalen College and Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy in the University of Oxford. He was knighted in 1977. Strawson integrated the study of metaphysics with linguistic philosophy and extended its scope beyond the limits set by its more empirically oriented adherents. Attempting to describe the actual structure of human thought about the world, he used such general notions as existence, identity, and unity. Among his writings are Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959), Freedom and Resentment (1974), Subject and Predicate in Logic and Grammar (1974), and Scepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (1985). He edited Philosophical Logic (1967) and Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action (1968).