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Peter Geach
Peter Geach
Peter Geach
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Peter Thomas Geach[a] FBA (29 March 1916 – 21 December 2013) was a British philosopher who was Professor of Logic at the University of Leeds. His areas of interest were philosophical logic, ethics, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion and the theory of identity.

Key Information

Early life

[edit]

Peter Geach was born in Chelsea, London, on 29 March 1916.[2] He was the only son of George Hender Geach and his wife Eleonora Frederyka Adolfina née Sgonina.[3] His father, who was employed in the Indian Educational Service, would go on to work as a professor of philosophy in Lahore and later as the principal of a teacher-training college in Peshawar.[4][5]

His parents' marriage was unhappy and quickly broke up.[6] Until the age of four, he lived with his maternal grandparents, who were Polish immigrants, in Cardiff.[6] After this time he was placed in the care of a guardian (until his father returned to Britain) and contact with his mother and her parents ceased.[6] He attended Llandaff Cathedral School in Cardiff and, later, Clifton College.[7]

His father, who had studied with Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore at Cambridge, taught him philosophy starting with logic.[8]

In 1934 Geach won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1938 with first-class honours in literae humaniores.[9][10] At Oxford, he increasingly engaged in intellectual clashes with Catholics, through which he discovered the Catholic faith, later converting to the Roman Catholic Church.[11] He later described it:

I was certainly cleverer than they, but they had the immeasurable advantage that they were right—an advantage that they did not throw away by resorting to the bad philosophy and apologetics then sometimes taught in Catholic schools. One day my defences quite suddenly collapsed: I knew that if I were to remain an honest man I must seek instruction in the Catholic Religion. I was received into the Catholic Church on May 31, 1938.[12]

Academic career

[edit]

Geach spent a year (1938–39)[9] as a Gladstone Research Student, based at St Deiniol's Library, Hawarden.[13]

Geach refused to join the British Army in the Second World War and, as a conscientious objector, was employed in the war years in timber production.[13] Though Geach himself recounts that he did later try, unsuccessfully, to join the Free Polish Army.[14]

Following the end of the war in 1945, he undertook further research at Cambridge.

In 1951, Geach was appointed to his first substantive academic post, as assistant lecturer at the University of Birmingham, going on to become Reader in Logic. In 1966 Geach resigned in protest at the University’s decision to create an Institute of Contemporary Culture. In his resignation letter he said he had no wish to stay at a university which "preferred Pop Art to Logic".[15] In the same year he was appointed Professor of Logic in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Leeds.[9][16] Geach retired from his Leeds chair in 1981 with the title Emeritus Professor of Logic.[17]

At various times Geach held visiting professorships at the universities of Cornell, Chicago, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Warsaw.[9]

Philosophical work

[edit]

His early work includes the classic texts Mental Acts and Reference and Generality, the latter defending an essentially modern conception of reference against medieval theories of supposition. His Catholic perspective was integral to his philosophy. He was perhaps the founder of analytical Thomism (though the current of thought running through his and Elizabeth Anscombe's work to the present day was only ostensibly so named forty years later by John Haldane), the aim of which is to synthesise Thomistic and analytic approaches. Geach was a student and an early follower of Ludwig Wittgenstein whilst at the University of Cambridge.[18]

Geach defends the Thomistic position that human beings are essentially rational animals, each one miraculously created. He dismissed Darwinistic attempts to regard reason as inessential to humanity, as "mere sophistry, laughable, or pitiable." He repudiated any capacity for language in animals as mere "association of manual signs with things or performances."[19]

Geach dismissed both pragmatic and epistemic conceptions of truth, commending a version of the correspondence theory proposed by Thomas Aquinas. He argues that there is one reality rooted in God himself, who is the ultimate truthmaker. God, according to Geach, is truth. While they lived, he saw W. V. Quine and Arthur Prior as his allies, in that they held three truths: that there are no non-existent beings; that a proposition can occur in discourse without being there asserted; and that the sense of a term does not depend on the truth of the proposition in which it occurs. He is said to have invented the famous ethical example of the stuck potholer,[4] when arguing against the idea that it might be right to kill a child to save their mother.

In metaethics, a debate developed in the 1960s and 1970s as to whether it was possible to logically derive categorical 'ought' statements from 'is' statements. The debate famously involved Richard Hare, Max Black, Philippa Foot and John Searle among others. Geach made a notable contribution to this debate with a paper published in 1977, which purported to derive one categorical 'ought' from purely factual premises.[20][21]

Geach has famously argued that the notion of absolute identity should be abandoned, to be replaced with relative identity predicates.[22][23]

Honours

[edit]

Geach was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1965.[24] He was elected an honorary fellow of Balliol College in 1979.[24] He was awarded the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice by the Holy See in 1999[25] for his philosophical work.

Marriage and children

[edit]

His wife and occasional collaborator was the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe.[16] Both converts to Catholicism, they were married at Brompton Oratory in 1941 and went on to have seven children.[26] They co-authored the 1961 book Three Philosophers, with Anscombe contributing a section on Aristotle and Geach one each on Aquinas and Gottlob Frege.[16] For a quarter century they were leading figures in the Philosophical Enquiry Group, an annual confluence of Catholic philosophers held at Spode House in Staffordshire that was established by Columba Ryan in 1954.[27]

Death

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Peter Geach died on 21 December 2013[28] at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge and is buried in the same grave as his wife in (what is now) the Ascension Parish Burial Ground.

Works

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For more complete publication details see Lewis (1991).[29]

Festschriften

[edit]

See also

[edit]

Notes

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References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Peter Geach

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Peter Thomas Geach (29 March 1916 – 21 December 2013) was a British philosopher and logician, best known for his pioneering work in , which sought to reconcile the rigorous methods of with the metaphysical and ethical traditions of . Born in , to George Hender Geach, a Cambridge-educated officer in the Indian Educational Service, and Eleonore Sgnonina, the daughter of a Polish civil engineer, Geach was raised primarily by a nanny following his parents' separation. He attended School and before earning a to , in 1934, where he studied and , achieving a first-class degree in Greats and converting to Catholicism during his studies. Geach's academic career began as an assistant lecturer in philosophy at the in 1951, where he advanced to reader in logic. In 1966, he was appointed Professor of Logic at the , a role he held until 1981, after which he became professor emeritus; he relocated to in 1970 alongside his wife, fellow philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, whom he married in 1941 and with whom he had seven children. Deeply influenced by , , , and Aquinas, Geach contributed significantly to , , and logic, notably translating Frege's works with Max Black in 1952 and developing ideas such as the "Frege-Geach problem," which questions how moral terms retain meaning when embedded in non-assertoric contexts. Among Geach's key innovations was his theory of relative identity, arguing that identity statements are sortal-dependent (e.g., "x is the same F as y" rather than absolute sameness), illustrated through thought experiments like the "Tibbles the cat" puzzle to address and . He also posited that concepts are best understood as abilities rather than mental representations, as explored in his 1957 book Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects. Other seminal works include Reference and Generality (1962), which advanced logical analysis of quantifiers; Logic Matters (1972), covering topics from medieval logic to modern debates; and Providence and Evil (1977), addressing the problem of evil from a theistic perspective. Geach's synthesis of analytic precision with Thomistic realism influenced generations of philosophers, earning him fellowship in the in 1965.

Early life and education

Family background and childhood

Peter Thomas Geach was born on 29 March 1916 at 41 Royal Avenue in , to George Hender Geach and Eleonora Frederyka Adolfina Sgonina. His father, a graduate, worked in the Indian Educational Service and later served as a professor of in . His mother, of Polish extraction and the daughter of parents—a father and a herself—returned to from for the birth but had limited subsequent involvement in his life due to an unhappy marriage and separation shortly thereafter. Geach spent his earliest years, until the age of four, in with his maternal Polish grandparents, who were immigrants, immersing him in a bilingual environment that included Polish, though he retained no conscious memory of the language in childhood. Following his parents' separation, his father obtained custody through a , and Geach became the ward of Miss Tarr, his father's former nanny and a strict nonconformist, with whom he lived in ; contact with his mother ceased almost entirely due to interference from his guardian. This period of his childhood was marked by instability, as his father's career in kept him absent for much of the time until his retirement around 1924. At age eight, Geach began boarding at School near , where he received an early education in . He demonstrated notable aptitude by winning a scholarship to in , a prestigious public school, which surprised his housemaster and allowed him to continue studies in languages and humanities. His father's philosophical background profoundly shaped his initial intellectual development; upon returning to , George Geach provided systematic instruction in logic and introduced his son to works by thinkers such as McTaggart, Keynes, and Russell by age thirteen, fostering an early interest in analytical reasoning. Meanwhile, his mother's poetic heritage subtly influenced his cultural sensibilities, though direct exposure was minimal.

Oxford studies and religious conversion

In 1934, Peter Geach was awarded a scholarship to , where he began studying , the classical curriculum encompassing ancient languages, literature, history, and . His multilingual upbringing provided a strong foundation for engaging with Greek and Latin texts central to the program. During his undergraduate years, Geach achieved a second-class honors in Moderations, the preliminary examination, before excelling in the final schools to earn first-class honors in Greats upon in 1938. He was tutored in key subjects by scholars such as Cyril Bailey on and Donald Allan on and , whose guidance deepened his appreciation for ancient philosophy. Through these studies and informal discussions with contemporaries, Geach encountered Aristotle's works, particularly the , which prompted him to reevaluate earlier influences like G. E. Moore's ethical theories in favor of Aristotelian . Geach's time at Oxford also marked a profound personal and intellectual shift, culminating in his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1938 during his final year. This decision was heavily influenced by rigorous debates with Catholic students in Balliol's intellectual circle, who challenged his Protestant assumptions through theological arguments rooted in Catholic tradition. The conversion, received into the Church that year, reflected his growing conviction in the coherence of Catholic doctrine and set the course for his lifelong integration of faith with philosophical inquiry.

Academic career

Wartime service and early appointments

Following his graduation from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1938 with a first-class degree in classics and philosophy, Peter Geach faced the onset of World War II, which shaped his immediate post-university path. Geach registered as a conscientious objector, refusing military service on moral grounds related to just war theory, particularly concerns over conduct in warfare (jus in bello) despite accepting the justification for entering the conflict (jus ad bellum). As a result, from 1939 to 1945, he was assigned to essential civilian labor in timber production, involving forestry work such as felling trees in open-air settings, which also contributed to agricultural support efforts during wartime shortages. This role not only aligned with his principles but also benefited his health, as it helped resolve early tubercular symptoms through physical activity. Following the end of the war in 1945, Geach undertook philosophical research in until 1951, during which time he had no formal academic appointment but engaged in minimal teaching. In 1951, he was appointed assistant lecturer in at the , where he was promoted to lecturer, senior lecturer, and then reader in logic by 1961.

Professorships and international engagements

In 1961, Geach was promoted to the position of Reader in Logic at the , a role he held until 1966. This advancement marked a significant step in his academic career at Birmingham, building on his earlier contributions to . In 1966, Geach was appointed Professor of Logic at the , and he held this chair until his retirement in 1981. During his tenure at , he played a key role in shaping the philosophy department's focus on logic and . Geach's international engagements included visiting professorships at several prominent institutions, such as , the , the , the , and the . These visits, spanning from the late 1950s to the 1980s, allowed him to collaborate with scholars abroad and disseminate his work on logic and ; for instance, he delivered lectures at in 1957, which informed his 1962 book Reference and Generality published by , and he served as a visiting professor in in 1985, lecturing in Polish. At Leeds, Geach supervised a number of PhD students who went on to make contributions to , including Stephen Theron, whose 1979 dissertation on was completed under his guidance, and Antoni Diller, who researched aspects of during his doctoral studies. Geach retired from his Leeds chair in 1981 and was awarded the title of of Logic; he then relocated to , where he continued scholarly activities, including revising his earlier works and engaging in philosophical correspondence until health issues limited him in later years.

Personal life

Marriage to Elizabeth Anscombe

Peter Geach first met Elizabeth Anscombe in 1938 at , where both were recent Catholic converts participating in a Corpus Christi procession organized through Dominican circles. Their shared faith and philosophical inclinations quickly fostered a close relationship, with Geach, three years Anscombe's senior, serving as an early intellectual mentor to her. The couple married on 11 December 1941 at in , shortly after Anscombe's graduation with first-class honors, amid the disruptions of the Second World War that complicated travel and daily life. Their union formed the foundation of a profound partnership, blending their interests in logic, , and ; Anscombe deepened Geach's engagement with , while their mutual connections to —whom Anscombe studied under in starting in 1942, followed by Geach—influenced their analytical approaches to . Throughout their careers, Geach and Anscombe collaborated extensively, including co-authoring the influential (1961), which examined the , Aquinas, and Frege, and jointly editing translations of Wittgenstein's writings. Their academic life intertwined seamlessly, often involving shared teaching and discussions that shaped generations of students in and Catholic thought. Anscombe passed away on 5 January 2001 in Cambridge at the age of 81, after a brief illness; Geach, who survived her by over a decade until his own death in 2013, thereafter lived in increasing solitude, reflecting on their shared legacy.

Family and religious involvement

Peter Geach and his wife Elizabeth Anscombe had seven children born between 1942 and 1958, all of whom were raised as practicing Catholics with a strict adherence to Church teachings, including mandatory Sunday Mass attendance. The family faced significant challenges in raising this large brood amid frequent academic relocations, such as moves from Cambridge to Oxford in the 1950s and back to Cambridge in 1970 when Anscombe accepted a professorship there, as well as periods of financial hardship in the early postwar years when the couple lived in poverty, relying on Anscombe's earnings as the primary breadwinner while Geach managed household duties. Later, Anscombe's declining health, including mobility issues following a 1997 car accident, added further strains to family life, with the children providing care during her final years. Geach and Anscombe were leading figures in the Philosophical Enquiry Group, established in 1954 at Spode House, a Dominican , which fostered discussions on and every September for over a decade and exemplified their commitment to integrating Thomistic thought with contemporary analysis. Geach's religious involvement extended to active participation in activities, where he and his family publicly demonstrated their traditional , such as walking out of a in that he deemed heretical. He opposed practices like and in line with Church doctrine, viewing them as incompatible with Catholic moral teachings on the sanctity of life, and delivered lectures emphasizing the harmony between and reason, drawing on Aquinas to address modern ethical dilemmas. In retirement after 1981, Geach remained engaged in the Cambridge Catholic community, attending services and continuing informal philosophical exchanges with local scholars and clergy until advanced age limited his mobility, while his children, including son John and daughter Mary, a theologian and editor of Anscombe's works, carried forward the family's intellectual legacy in Catholic thought.

Philosophical contributions

Logic and philosophy of language

Peter Geach's contributions to logic and the were profoundly shaped by the analytical traditions of and , whose emphasis on formal semantics and logical structure informed his analyses of reference, meaning, and . In particular, Geach drew on Frege's distinction between to develop his own theories of linguistic expression, applying these ideas to clarify how language connects to thought and reality. Russell's work on definite descriptions and similarly influenced Geach's approach to quantifiers and generality, providing tools for dissecting complex sentences into their logical components. Geach's early book Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects (1957) laid foundational groundwork for his by exploring and the nature of mental states. In it, he argued that mental acts, such as judging or intending, have contents that are not merely behavioral but directed toward objects, distinguishing between what is said in an utterance and what is meant by it in context. This distinction critiques simplistic views of language as mere reporting, emphasizing instead how s involve layered intentional structures where meaning arises from the act's purpose rather than its surface form. Geach's analysis here prefigures later developments in theory, though he rooted it in a logical examination of how expressions refer under intentional attitudes. Geach's most influential work in this area, Reference and Generality: An Examination of Some Medieval and Modern Theories (1962), advanced a theory of relative identity, challenging the notion of absolute identity in favor of sortal-relative predicates. He contended that identity statements like "a is the same as b" are incomplete without specifying a sortal term, such as "same man" or "same statue," arguing that identity is always relative to a category or kind. For example, the same lump of clay might be identical as matter but not as a statue before and after molding, illustrating how absolute identity leads to paradoxes without contextual predicates. This theory critiques traditional absolute identity as incoherent or vacuous, proposing instead that all identity relations are disguised relatives, thereby resolving issues in metaphysics and semantics. Geach's relative identity theory sparked significant debates, particularly with , who defended absolute identity within his ontological framework. Geach argued against Quine's criterion of , claiming that relativizing identity avoids positing unnecessary entities and better aligns with natural language use. His views also engaged Peter Strawson's ideas on individuals and sortals, influencing discussions on how depends on conceptual frameworks rather than pure . These exchanges highlighted Geach's role in bridging medieval logic with modern , though his primary focus remained on formal semantics. In Reference and Generality, Geach further contributed to quantifier logic by formalizing the scope and binding of general terms, extending Russell's theory of descriptions to handle complex generality. He analyzed how quantifiers like "every" or "some" interact with relative clauses and pronouns, providing a rigorous account of anaphoric reference. A key innovation was his treatment of pronouns as bound variables rather than mere definite descriptions, as seen in his discussion of "donkey sentences" where a pronoun like "it" refers back to a quantified antecedent (e.g., "Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it"). This resolved longstanding puzzles in predicate logic by treating anaphora as functional dependence, influencing subsequent work in formal semantics and linguistics. Geach's integration of these elements not only refined logical notation but also illuminated how language achieves generality through contextual binding.

Ethics and moral philosophy

Peter Geach's contributions to emphasized a return to classical traditions, particularly Aristotelian and Thomistic frameworks, while mounting rigorous critiques of contemporary non-cognitivist theories. His work sought to ground moral judgments in objective facts about and function, rejecting subjectivist accounts that reduce to mere expressions of emotion or . Central to this approach was his analysis of moral language, which highlighted the logical structure of ethical terms and their implications for normative theory. In his 1977 book The Virtues, Geach revived Aristotelian-Thomistic by focusing on the cultivation of character traits that enable humans to fulfill their natural ends, rather than rules or consequences as primary guides. He argued that virtues such as , , temperance, , , , and charity perfect human powers, allowing individuals to achieve or flourishing in alignment with rational and divine purposes. This emphasis on virtues as habits of excellence contrasted sharply with consequentialist theories, which prioritize outcomes, and deontological approaches, which stress duties independent of character formation. Geach contended that true action arises from a virtuous , not isolated adherence to principles, thereby repositioning around personal transformation over abstract calculation or imperative compliance. Geach sharply critiqued , as advanced by , and prescriptivism, as developed by , for failing to account for the inferential role of statements in logical contexts. In his seminal 1956 essay "" and subsequent works, he formulated what became known as the Frege-Geach problem, demonstrating that non-cognitivist views struggle to explain how terms like "good" retain their force when embedded in complex sentences, such as conditionals or negations (e.g., "If stealing is wrong, then..." or "It is not the case that lying is good"). He argued that judgments must express propositions about facts—specifically, the functional goodness or badness of actions relative to their kind—rather than evoking attitudes or issuing commands, thereby preserving the cognitive and truth-apt nature of . This critique undermined the idea that is non-factual, insisting instead on grounded in descriptive truths about kinds and purposes. A key element of Geach's ethical semantics was his distinction between attributive and predicative uses of adjectives, particularly applied to "good" in , as elaborated in Logic Matters (). Predicative adjectives, like "," denote a that can be distributed across a class (e.g., "Some tomatoes are red and some are not"), but attributive adjectives, like "good," modify the kind or function of the subject (e.g., "A good cuts well," but one cannot coherently say "Some knives are good and some are not" without specifying the kind of goodness). Geach maintained that "good" functions attributively in , meaning something is good insofar as it excels in its proper role or , such as a good person acting justly in human affairs; this rejected predicative interpretations that treat goodness as an independent, aggregable quality, and instead tied evaluation to objective, kind-relative standards. This framework supported his broader normative theory by ensuring ethical claims are logically coherent and fact-based, avoiding the of modern . Geach advocated a form of divine command theory, linking moral obligations directly to 's will as the ultimate source of the moral law. In the chapter "The Moral Law and the Law of " from God and the Soul (1969), he posited that ethical duties are imperatives issued by divine authority, such that what is morally required is precisely what commands for the rational ordering of creation toward goodness. This view integrated his with , portraying moral norms not as arbitrary but as expressions of divine rationality that align human actions with cosmic purposes, thereby resolving tensions between and in favor of a theistic foundation for . Rooted in Catholic doctrine, Geach's firmly opposed practices like , , and non-procreative sexual acts, viewing them as violations of the sanctity of human life and the natural law governing bodily functions. He regarded the as a human person from conception, making a grave equivalent to , and as an illicit usurpation of over life and death. On , he upheld the inseparability of the unitive and procreative aspects of marital intercourse, condemning contraception, , and as distortions of human sexuality's teleological purpose. These positions, articulated in essays and public statements, stemmed from his conviction that moral absolutes derive from unchanging natural and divine laws, prioritizing the protection of vulnerable life over utilitarian considerations.

Philosophy of religion and Thomism

Geach played a pivotal role in founding Analytical Thomism, a philosophical approach that fuses the precision of analytic logic with the metaphysical depth of Thomas Aquinas's thought. Alongside Elizabeth Anscombe, he co-authored Three Philosophers (1961), in which the chapter on Aquinas employs modern logical tools to clarify Thomistic metaphysics, particularly the concepts of matter, form, and essence, thereby bridging medieval scholasticism and contemporary philosophy. His earlier paper "Form and Existence" (1955) further advanced this synthesis by analyzing Aquinas's notion of esse (the act of being) as distinct from form, using analytic distinctions to refute oversimplified translations and highlight the act-potency framework as essential to understanding reality. These works established Geach as a key proponent of Analytical Thomism, influencing subsequent thinkers in reconciling Aristotelian-Thomistic ontology with logical positivism's legacy. In his , Geach articulated arguments for 's rooted in Thomistic principles, emphasizing the of being and the act-potency distinction to counter atheistic naturalism. Drawing on Aquinas, he posited that contingent beings, characterized by potentiality, require an actualizing first cause whose is pure act without potency, as explored in essays from God and the Soul (1969), where he offered deductive proofs for divine necessity. In this collection and his Stanton Lectures, later published as Providence and Evil (1977), Geach critiqued by arguing that the universe's ordered actualization demands a transcendent cause, employing to affirm meaningful predications of divine attributes like —redefined not as power over logical impossibilities but as over all contingent realities. These arguments underscore Geach's commitment to a robust metaphysical , where 's is inferred from the structure of being itself. Geach defended the doctrine of —the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist's substantial change—through linguistic and logical , integrating his broader work on and identity. In God and the Soul (1969), he addressed accusations of in the by clarifying how sacramental language denotes a real conversion of substance (from bread and wine to Christ's body and blood) while preserving accidental appearances, without reducing the mystery to mere symbolism or empirical contradiction. This defense relied on his analytic to distinguish primary substances from secondary predicates, ensuring the doctrine's coherence with Aristotelian categories as reinterpreted via modern logic. Such extended briefly to relative identity in , where the Eucharist's elements are the same under one sortal (appearance) but different under another (substance), avoiding paradoxical claims about numerical identity. Geach critiqued Darwinism's implications for reason and , maintaining that evolutionary mechanisms fail to account for the teleological order evident in human and . In Truth and Hope (2001), he contended that distinctive human mental capacities, such as abstract reasoning, exceed Darwinian and point to divine , preserving against reductionist . Building on Thomistic , Geach argued in The Virtues (1977) that biological processes exhibit directed purpose, incompatible with a purely chance-based Darwinian framework, thus affirming providence as the ultimate explanation for life's ordered complexity. This perspective reinforced his view that and science converge in recognizing as a sign of God's sustaining action. Influenced by Wittgenstein's later philosophy, Geach treated religious language as non-verificationist, embedded in practical forms of life rather than subject to empirical or logical positivist tests. Rejecting verificationism's demand for observable criteria, he viewed theological statements—like those on or sacraments—as meaningful within the believer's language games, conveying commitments to truth without propositional reduction. This Wittgensteinian approach, evident in his integration of analytic clarity with Thomistic depth, allowed Geach to defend religious discourse against skeptical dismissals while avoiding fideistic isolation.

Recognition and legacy

Awards and honours

Geach's contributions to were formally recognized in 1965 when he was elected a (FBA). In 1979, —his —elected him an Honorary Fellow. He was named a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986. Following his retirement from the in 1981, Geach received the Humboldt Research Award from the in 1983 for his scholarly achievements. From 1971 to 1974, during his professorship at , he delivered the Stanton Lectures on the at the , a prestigious series that highlighted his work in that area. In 1999, conferred upon him the cross in recognition of his services to Catholic philosophy. Geach was awarded the Aquinas Medal by the American Catholic Philosophical Association in 2000 for his significant contributions to Thomistic philosophy.

Influence and tributes

Peter Geach died on 21 December 2013 at in , at the age of 97. He was buried in the in , in the same grave as his wife Elizabeth Anscombe. Obituaries highlighted Geach's synthesis of analytical philosophy and Catholic thought. The Guardian praised his mastery of logic and ethical work, particularly The Virtues (1977), which drew on to blend rigorous analysis with Thomistic principles. The Telegraph described him as a formidable logician whose writings combined analytical precision with a profound Catholic , influencing generations through this unique integration. Geach's ideas profoundly shaped analytical Thomism, a movement that fuses Aquinas's metaphysics with modern analytic methods. John Haldane, who coined the term "analytical Thomism" in 1992, credited Geach and Anscombe as pioneers whose work inspired subsequent scholars to explore Thomistic themes through logical analysis. Anthony Kenny, a key figure in the tradition, was greatly influenced by Geach's 1955 lecture on Aquinas, which informed Kenny's own Thomistic interpretations of action and emotion. In logic, Geach's theory of relative identity—arguing that identity is sortal-relative rather than absolute—continues to feature prominently in debates on identity over time. The cites Geach's 1967 paper for addressing puzzles in diachronic identity, such as the , by positing multiple relative identity relations tied to concepts like "same ship" or "same planks." It also references his contributions in the entry on relative identity, where he introduced examples like the "surman" case to illustrate how identity depends on categorical contexts, challenging traditional absolute identity and influencing discussions on ontological relativity. Geach's legacy endures in Catholic philosophy, where his ethical writings advanced a Thomistic virtue theory that emphasized attributive goodness and the role of virtues in human flourishing. His 1956 essay "Good and Evil" and The Virtues helped revive interest in virtue ethics within analytic circles, portraying virtues as essential dispositions oriented toward divine ends, thereby inspiring a broader renewal of Aristotelian-Thomistic approaches amid mid-20th-century moral philosophy.

Bibliography

Major publications

Geach's major publications include a series of influential books and essay collections that advanced in areas such as logic, mind, ethics, and religion. These works often drew on medieval thinkers like Aquinas alongside modern logicians like Frege, establishing Geach as a bridge between traditions. His first significant original monograph, Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects (: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), examines in mental states, clarifying Wittgenstein's views on private language and the objects of thought. Reference and Generality: An Examination of Some Medieval and Modern Theories (Ithaca: , 1962; 3rd ed., 1980) analyzes quantifiers and general terms across historical logical frameworks, serving as a foundational text for subsequent work in formal semantics. Co-authored with Elizabeth Anscombe, Three Philosophers (: Basil Blackwell; Ithaca: , 1961) offers critical essays on Aristotle's Categories, Aquinas's metaphysics, and Frege's logic, promoting an analytic approach to . God and the Soul (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) collects essays rejecting Platonic and Cartesian conceptions of the soul in favor of an Aristotelian-Thomistic account integrated with Christian theology. Logic Matters (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972) compiles essays on topics including relative identity, logical paradoxes, and the semantics of natural language, influencing debates in philosophical logic. Providence and Evil (Cambridge: , 1977), derived from Geach's Stanton Lectures on the , explores theodicies, divine , and the ethical implications of suffering. The Virtues (Cambridge: , 1977), also from Stanton Lectures, establishes a teleological rooted in natural ends and theological commitments, emphasizing the cardinal and . A later collection, Truth and Hope: Essays in Ethics and Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), addresses truth-telling, promising, and human through logical and moral lenses. A comprehensive of Geach's publications through 1989 appears in Lewis (1991).

Festschriften

A dedicated to Peter Geach was published in 1991 as Peter Geach: Philosophical Encounters, edited by Harry A. Lewis and issued by Kluwer Academic Publishers as part of the Synthese Library series. This volume commemorates Geach's contributions across , featuring his own "A Philosophical Autobiography" alongside essays from prominent colleagues and interlocutors. The contributions are organized thematically around Geach's key interests, including logic, the , and , with no constraints on topics to encourage open engagement with his ideas. Notable essays include G. E. M. Anscombe's "On a Pattern of Argument," which critiques conditional reasoning in relation to Geach's work, and Anthony Kenny's "Form, Existence and Essence in Aquinas," exploring Thomistic metaphysics in light of Geach's interpretations. The volume also incorporates correspondence between Geach and W. V. O. Quine, illuminating debates on belief, , , and . In 1994, a honoring both Geach and his wife Elizabeth Anscombe appeared as Moral Truth and Moral Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe, edited by Luke Gormally and published by Four Courts Press. Comprising thirteen essays, the collection focuses on themes central to Geach's ethical philosophy, such as moral truth, , , and the integration of Thomistic traditions with contemporary . Key contributors include , whose essay addresses , truth, and justification in relation to Geach's critiques of and , and , who examines conditional intentions and their ethical implications. The volume underscores Geach's influence on moral philosophy by linking his views on as relational properties to broader discussions of and tradition. These festschriften reflect the esteem in which Geach was held by peers for his rigorous analyses in logic and , serving as markers of his enduring impact on analytic and Thomistic .

References

  1. https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/geach/
  2. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/1529/09_Geach_1820.pdf
  3. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/26/peter-geach
  4. https://philarchive.org/archive/NIEPGE
  5. http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-philosophical-autobiography.html
  6. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/untempted-consequences
  7. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/professor-peter-geach-ls7jmzkhk38
  8. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10572088/Peter-Geach-obituary.html
  9. https://cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-4438-4809-1/
  10. https://www.cantab.net/users/antoni.diller/pubs.html
  11. https://firstthings.com/g-e-m-anscombe-living-the-truth/
  12. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anscombe/
  13. https://academic.oup.com/book/61567/chapter/538238521
  14. https://firstthings.com/sweet-reason/
  15. http://philosophieweb0.001.free.fr/GeachRandG.pdf
  16. https://archive.org/details/mentalacts032358mbp
  17. https://ifac.univ-nantes.fr/IMG/pdf/Geach_Ontological_Relativity_and_Relative_Identity.pdf
  18. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/8873/1/PhD-Finaldraft10.pdf
  19. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/what-is-an-attributive-adjective/CE2422588254F2A54BC65E8078796502
  20. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/374/115p031.pdf
  21. https://books.google.com/books/about/Three_Philosophers.html?id=lhMCjhJN7G8C
  22. https://philpapers.org/rec/GEAXAE
  23. https://philarchive.org/archive/PATITA
  24. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-15356-5_3
  25. https://riviste.upra.org/index.php/ao/article/download/4322/3206/8716
  26. https://philarchive.org/archive/HOCSMM-2
  27. https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/truth-and-hope-the-furst-franz-josef-und-furstin-gina-lectures-delivered-at-the-international-academy-of-philosophy-1998/
  28. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-language/
  29. https://www.amacad.org/person/peter-thomas-geach
  30. https://acpaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Aquinas-Medal-Past-Recipients_2024.pdf
  31. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/151438210/peter-thomas-geach
  32. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15665399.2007.10819945
  33. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-time/
  34. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-relative/
  35. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44617355
  36. https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28109/chapter/212233491
  37. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-015-7885-1
  38. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-7885-1_1
  39. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-7885-1_10
  40. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-7885-1_5
  41. https://www.abebooks.com/9781851821587/Moral-Truth-Tradition-Essays-Honour-1851821589/plp
  42. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/637333/summary
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