David George Ritchie

Prof David George Ritchie (1853–1903) was a Scottish philosopher who had a distinguished university career at Edinburgh, and Balliol College, Oxford, and after being fellow of Jesus College and a tutor at Balliol College was elected professor of logic and metaphysics at St Andrews. He was also the third president of the Aristotelian Society in 1898.

Ritchie was born at Jedburgh on 26 October 1853. He was the only son of the three children of George Ritchie, D.D., minister of the parish and a man of scholarship and culture, who was elected to the office of moderator of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1870. His mother was Elizabeth Bradfute Dudgeon. The family was connected with the Carlyles, and early in 1889 Ritchie edited a volume of Early Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Ritchie received his early schooling at Jedburgh Academy. Not allowed to make friends with other boys of his own age, he never learned to play games, and lived a solitary life, concentrating his mind rather too early on purely intellectual subjects. He matriculated in 1869 at Edinburgh University, where he made a special study of classics under Professors William Young Sellar and J. S. Blackie, while he began to study philosophy under Professor Campbell Fraser, in whose class and in that of Professor Henry Calderwood (on moral philosophy) he gained the highest prizes. After graduating M.A. at Edinburgh in 1875 with first-class honours in classics, Ritchie gained a classical exhibition at Balliol College, Oxford, and won a first-class both in classical moderations (Michaelmas 1875) and in the final classical school (Trinity term, 1878). In 1878 he became a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and in 1881 a tutor. From 1882 to 1186 he was also a tutor at Balliol College. At Oxford Ritchie came under the influence of Thomas Hill Green and Arnold Toynbee, and it was there that the foundations were laid both for his interest in idealistic philosophy associated with the name of Hegel, and also of his strong bent toward practical politics; his political philosophy was dominated by the belief that practical action must be derived from principles.

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