Oets Kolk Bouwsma

Oets Kolk Bouwsma (1898–1978) was an American philosopher born of Dutch-American parents in Muskegon, Michigan.

He was educated at Calvin College and at the University of Michigan. In his early years he was an advocate of idealism, but later found the work of G. E. Moore’s common sense counters to skepticism more appealing to his inclinations. Still, he was critical of Moore. He developed his own technique of analysis that focused on uncovering hidden analogies driving Moore’s ways of speaking about sense data. He worked intensely on Moore, publishing a significant paper, “Moore’s Theory of Sense-Data,” which was eventually included in the Library of Living Philosophers volume on Moore. The essay reflected the beginnings of a method of philosophical analysis that was soon to be forged by his reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Engaged in Moore’s philosophy, Bouwsma sent students from the University of Nebraska, most notably Morris Lazerowitz, to study with Moore at Cambridge. Lazerowitz’s wife Alice Ambrose, a student of Wittgenstein as well as Moore, introduced Bouwsma to Wittgenstein’s revolutionary ideas in “The Blue Book.” Norman Malcolm, another of Bouwsma’s students, became a prominent interpreter and presenter of Wittgenstein’s ideas in America, after studying with Wittgenstein at Cambridge. Malcolm, who later taught at Cornell, was able to persuade Wittgenstein to visit there. Simultaneously, Malcolm arranged for Bouwsma to teach at Cornell during Wittgenstein’s visit. By that time, in 1949, Bouwsma had absorbed the implications of Wittgenstein’s philosophy in The Blue Book. With a leave from the University of Nebraska and a Fulbright Fellowship, he was able to spend much of the next two years discussing philosophy with Wittgenstein at Cornell, Smith College, and Oxford. Through Wittgenstein, Bouwsma developed an understanding of what he had been groping for in his work on Moore.

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