Peter Frederick Strawson

Life and Academic Career

Peter Frederick Strawson (1919–2006) was a leading British analytic philosopher whose work significantly influenced metaphysics, philosophy of language, and moral philosophy. Born in Ealing, London, he studied at St John’s College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. His university studies were interrupted by service in the Second World War, after which he returned to Oxford and rapidly established himself as a central figure in post-war analytic philosophy.

Strawson first gained wide recognition with his 1950 paper “On Referring”, which directly challenged the influential theory of descriptions advanced by Bertrand Russell. In 1968 he was appointed Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford, one of the most prestigious chairs in the subject, a position he held until his retirement in 1987. He was a fellow of University College, Oxford, and later of Magdalen College, and he helped shape several generations of philosophers through both formal teaching and informal discussion.

A member of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Strawson was widely honored for his contributions. He continued to write and lecture after retirement, remaining an active presence in philosophical life until his death in Oxford in 2006.

Descriptive Metaphysics

Strawson’s most influential book, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959), marked a turning point in analytic philosophy. At a time when many philosophers were suspicious of metaphysics, Strawson argued that there is an inescapable task for a certain kind of metaphysical inquiry. He distinguished between descriptive metaphysics and revisionary metaphysics:

• Descriptive metaphysics aims to describe the actual structure of our conceptual scheme—the framework of basic concepts through which we think about ourselves and the world.
• Revisionary metaphysics seeks to improve or replace that conceptual scheme in light of scientific or other theoretical pressures.

Strawson defended the legitimacy and importance of descriptive metaphysics, maintaining that an accurate account of the most general features of our thought—such as persons, material objects, space, time, and causation—is a central philosophical task.

A key thesis of Individuals is that “basic particulars” in our conceptual scheme are material bodies, among which persons occupy a special place. According to Strawson, we identify and reidentify both physical objects and other people against the backdrop of a shared spatiotemporal framework. Persons are not merely bodies nor merely minds: they are entities to which we ascribe both physical characteristics (such as location and bodily properties) and mental characteristics (beliefs, desires, experiences). He thus argued for the conceptual primacy of the person as the fundamental type of subject to which mental predicates apply.

Proponents view Strawson’s approach as a powerful alternative to both reductive physicalist accounts of persons and dualist views that separate mind and body. Critics contend that his descriptive method may be overly conservative, potentially privileging common sense over scientific advances, and question whether “our” conceptual scheme is as unified or universal as Strawson suggests.

Language, Reference, and Kant

Strawson’s early and ongoing work in philosophy of language had a lasting influence. In “On Referring”, he argued that Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions (such as “the present King of France”) mistakenly treated these expressions as referring expressions with hidden quantificational structure. Strawson maintained that what speakers typically do with such expressions is presuppose the existence of a unique referent, rather than assert it. If the presupposition fails (as in the case of “the present King of France”), the result is not a false statement but a kind of failure of reference.

This distinction between assertion and presupposition helped inaugurate a rich tradition of work in pragmatics and the theory of meaning. Supporters see this as a shift from a purely logical analysis of sentences to an analysis sensitive to use, context, and speaker intentions. Subsequent philosophers refined, extended, and in some cases rejected Strawson’s views, debating the precise nature and behavior of presuppositions and the semantics–pragmatics boundary.

Strawson’s engagement with Immanuel Kant is another major strand of his work. In The Bounds of Sense (1966), he offered a sustained reconstruction and critique of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Strawson defended what he took to be the enduring insights of Kant’s Transcendental Analytic, particularly the Transcendental Deduction of the categories, while rejecting much of the Transcendental Aesthetic and associated idealist commitments.

Strawson interpreted Kant as showing that certain fundamental concepts—such as object, causation, and experience of a unified world—are conditions of the possibility of experience and thought. He argued that these insights could be preserved in a more “austere” metaphysical setting that did not depend on Kant’s full transcendental idealism. Critics maintain that this approach risks distorting Kant, extracting “analytic” theses from what was meant as a more radical, idealist project. Nonetheless, The Bounds of Sense has been highly influential in anglophone Kant scholarship.

Freedom, Responsibility, and Legacy

In moral philosophy, Strawson is best known for his 1962 essay “Freedom and Resentment.” There he proposed a distinct approach to the traditional debate about free will and moral responsibility. Rather than asking in the abstract whether determinism is compatible with freedom, Strawson examined the “reactive attitudes”—such as resentment, gratitude, indignation, and forgiveness—that structure interpersonal life.

According to Strawson, our practices of holding people responsible rest on these reactive attitudes, which are rooted in our nature as social beings. We typically regard others as appropriate targets of such attitudes unless special “excusing” or “exempting” conditions apply (for example, when someone acts under coercion, or suffers from severe mental impairment). Strawson suggested that fully abandoning these attitudes in response to the possibility that determinism is true would amount to stepping outside ordinary human relationships in a way that is practically and psychologically unrealistic.

Defenders of this view, often labeled “Strawsonian compatibilism” (though Strawson himself was cautious with labels), argue that it shifts the focus from metaphysical speculation about agency to the normative structure of our interpersonal practices. Critics argue, on the other hand, that this approach may insufficiently address the underlying metaphysical questions about control and could risk simply presupposing the legitimacy of responsibility practices that themselves stand in need of justification.

Across his work, Strawson combined elements of ordinary language philosophy with more systematic ambitions, helping to move analytic philosophy beyond the narrow logical and linguistic concerns that had dominated earlier in the 20th century. His contributions to metaphysics, philosophy of language, Kant studies, and moral philosophy continue to shape contemporary debates, and his central ideas—especially about descriptive metaphysics, reactive attitudes, and the role of persons in our conceptual scheme—remain key points of reference in current philosophical discussion.