Ralph Barton Perry (July 3, 1876 – January 22, 1957) 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.[1]
He married Rachel Berenson on August 15, 1905, and they lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[2] Their son was Edward Barton Perry born at their home 5 Avon Street in Cambridge, September 27, 1906. In 1932, Edward married Harriet Armington Seelye (born Worcester, Massachusetts, May 28, 1909), daughter of physician and surgeon Dr. Walker Clarke Seelye of Worcester and Annie Ide Barrows Seelye, formerly of Providence, Rhode Island.
In 1919, he gave the commencement address for the first graduating class of Connecticut College, which had opened its doors in 1915.
Perry died at his home in Cambridge on January 22, 1957, and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.[6]
Selected publications
The Approach to Philosophy, (1905), New York, Chicago and Boston: Charles Scribner's Sons
Present Philosophical Tendencies: A Critical Survey of Naturalism, Idealism, Pragmatism, and Realism, together with a Synopsis of the Philosophy of William James, (1912), New York:Longmans, Green & Co.
Holt, EB; Marvin, WT; Montague, WP; Perry, RB; Pitkin, WB; Spaulding, EG, The New Realism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy, (1912), New York: The Macmillan Company
The Free Man and the Soldier, (1916), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
Annotated Bibliography of the Writings of William James, (1920), Longmans, Green & Co.
The Plattsburg movement: A Chapter of America's Participation in the World War (1921), New York: E.P. Dutton & company
A Modernist View of National Ideals (1926) Berkeley: University of California Press, Howison Lectures in Philosophy, 1925
General Theory of Value (1926)
Philosophy of the Recent Past: An Outline of European and American Philosophy Since 1860, (1926), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
The Hope for Immortality (1935)
The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols. (1935)
Plea for an Age Movement (1942) New York: The Vanguard Press [Talk at 1941 Princeton and Harvard Reunions]
Puritanism and Democracy, (1944)
Characteristically American: Five Lectures Delivered on the William W. Cook Foundation at the University of Michigan, November–December 1948, (1949), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949
Realms of Value, (1954), Harvard University Press [Based on Gifford Lectures]
The Humanity of Man, (1956), New York: George Braziller
"A Definition of morality". In P. W. Taylor (Ed.), Problems of moral philosophy: an introduction to ethics (pp. 13–24). Belmont, CA: Dickenson, 1967