Borden Parker Bowne

Borden Parker Bowne
Born	January 14, 1847
Died	April 1, 1910
Occupation	philosopher preacher theologian

Borden Parker Bowne (/ˈboʊn/; January 14, 1847 – April 1, 1910) was an American Christian philosopher, preacher, and theologian in the Methodist tradition. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times.

In 1876 he became a professor of philosophy at Boston University, where he taught for more than thirty years. He later served as dean of the graduate school. Bowne was an acute critic of mechanistic determinism,positivism, and naturalism. He categorized his views as Kantianized Berkeleyanism, transcendental empiricism and, finally, personalism, a philosophical branch of liberal theology: of this branch Bowne is the dominant figure; this personalism is sometimes called Boston Personalism, in contrast with the California Personalism of George Holmes Howison. Bowne's masterpiece, Metaphysics, appeared in 1882. Bowne was chiefly influenced by Hermann Lotze.

Bowne has influenced philosophy in various ways. For instance, there has been a direct line of personalists from Bowne through his student, Edgar Sheffield Brightman (1884-1954), through Brightman's student, Peter Anthony Bertocci (1910 – 1989), to Bertocci's student, Thomas O. Buford (b. 1932).

There has also been a more general influence, as with Martin Luther King, Jr., who studied at Boston University, and spoke in his Stride toward Freedom of having gained "a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality."

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