Peter Geach 1916 – 2013
Peter Thomas Geach was a British philosopher of logic, language, and metaphysics, husband and long philosophical companion of Elizabeth Anscombe, and for most of his career professor at the University of Leeds. A devout Roman Catholic, he combined a strong commitment to traditional Thomistic metaphysics with the most exacting standards of modern formal logic. Mental Acts, Reference and Generality, and Logic Matters reshaped the philosophy of language, while Three Philosophers, written jointly with Anscombe and others, defended Aristotle, Aquinas, and Frege as a single philosophical tradition. His Providence and Evil and The Virtues argued for a robust conception of natural moral realism.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Peter Geach:
“There is no such thing as good in general; goodness is always relative to a kind.”
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Attributed to Peter Geach:
“Logic is the science of valid inference, not a substitute for thought.”
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Attributed to Peter Geach:
“What is to be morally evaluated is the human action, not its consequences alone.”
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Attributed to Peter Geach:
“Truth has no degrees.”
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Attributed to Peter Geach:
“God's existence is the most important truth that philosophy can establish.”