The Approach to Philosophy (Esprios Classics)

Ralph Barton Perry (July 3, 1876 in Poultney, Vermont - January 22, 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American philosopher. He was a strident moral idealist who stated in 1909 that, to him, idealism meant "to interpret life consistently with ethical, scientific, and metaphysical truth." Perry's viewpoints on religion stressed the notion that religious thinking possessed legitimacy should it exist within a framework accepting of human reason and social progress. He was educated at Princeton (B. A., 1896) and at Harvard (M. A., 1897; Ph. D., 1899), where, after teaching philosophy for three years at Williams and Smith colleges, he was instructor (1902-05), assistant professor (1905-13), full professor (1913-30) and Edgar Pierce professor of philosophy (1930-46).