Henry E. Allison

Henry Edward Allison (April 25, 1937 – June 5, 2023) was an American scholar of Immanuel Kant, widely considered to be one of the most eminent English-language Kant scholars of the postwar era.[1][2] He was a professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of California, San Diego[3] and a visiting professor at Boston University.[4]

Henry E. Allison
Born(1937-04-25)April 25, 1937
DiedJune 5, 2023(2023-06-05) (aged 86)
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
Main interests
Immanuel Kant
Notable ideas
"two aspects" interpretation of transcendental idealism

Life and career

Allison earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the New School for Social Research in 1964 with a dissertation on Lessing written under the direction of Aron Gurwitsch.[5] He taught from 1973 until 1997 at the University of California, San Diego, where an endowed chair was named in his honor.[6] He joined the faculty at Boston University in 1997.[5] He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1996[7] and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2023.[8] He died before he could be inducted, on June 5, 2023, at the age of 86.[9]

Philosophical work

His areas of interest were Immanuel Kant, Baruch Spinoza, German idealism, 18th and 19th century philosophy.[4] Allison was perhaps best known for his 1983 book, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, which proposed a new "epistemological" reading of the Critique of Pure Reason that was both radically different from standard interpretations and offered responses to many of the objections advanced by philosophers like Paul Guyer. The "two aspects' reading "interprets transcendental idealism as a fundamentally epistemological theory that distinguishes between two standpoints on the objects of experience: the human standpoint, from which objects are viewed relative to epistemic conditions that are peculiar to human cognitive faculties (namely, the a priori forms of our sensible intuition); and the standpoint of an intuitive intellect, from which the same objects could be known in themselves and independently of any epistemic conditions."[10]

See also
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References
  1. Leiter, Brian (February 18, 2016). "Best Anglophone and German Kant scholars since 1945?". Leiter Reports. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  2. Thielke, Peter (2015). "Allison, Henry". In Audi, Robert (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Third ed.). New York City: Cambridge University Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-139-05750-9. OCLC 927145544.
  3. "UC San Diego Philosophy Faculty". UC San Diego. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  4. "Henry Allison profile". Boston University. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  5. Gross, Steven A. (1996). "Henry Allison: Personal and Professional" (PDF). The Harvard Review of Philosophy. 6 (1): 31–45. doi:10.5840/harvardreview1996613. ISSN 1062-6239.
  6. "Endowed Chairs". UC San Diego. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  7. "Utenlandske medlemmer". Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (in Norwegian). Archived from the original on 15 July 2007. Retrieved 4 July 2021.
  8. New Members Elected in 2023 American Academy of Arts & Sciences
  9. "In Memoriam: Professor Henry E. Allison 1937–2023". Boston University Arts & Sciences. 26 July 2023. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
  10. Rohlf, Michael (2020). "Kant". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.


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