Wisdom, Arthur John Terrence Dibben

(1904– )

British analytical and linguistic philosopher. Wisdom was educated at Cambridge, and after a period in St Andrews returned to Cambridge in 1934, becoming professor in 1952. His work before this time is analytic in direction, and best represented by Interpretation and Analysis in Relation to Bentham's Theory of Definition (1931), and the five essays on ‘Logical Constructions’ published in Mind between 1931 and 1933. Under the influence of Wittgenstein he repudiated the approach, and later works attempt to explore the likenesses and differences between various attitudes to philosophical problems, with the emphasis being on a discursive and relatively open-ended journey around different viewpoints. His collection Other Minds (1952) is the most sustained attack on that problem using the new approach. Other works include Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (1953).