Ted Honderich - Biography

Biography

Honderich was born Edgar Dawn Ross Honderich on 30 January 1933 in Baden, Ontario, Canada. An undergraduate at the University of Toronto, qualifying as B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy and English Literature, he came to University College London to study under the logical positivist A. J. Ayer, graduating with a Ph.D. in 1968. He has since lived in England and become a British citizen. After being a lecturer at the University of Sussex he became Lecturer, Reader, Professor and then Grote Professor at University College London. He was visiting professor at the City University of New York and Yale. He is author of many books and articles on such subjects as the correspondence theory of truth, Russell's theory of descriptions, time, causation, Mill's On Liberty, John Searle's view of free will and G.A. Cohen's defence of Marx's theory of history. He has also edited several series of philosophy books.

He has been involved in controversy for his moral defence of Palestinian political violence, despite his justification of the founding and maintaining of Israel in its original 1948 borders.

His papers in philosophical journals have been published in three volumes by Edinburgh University Press. He has appeared on radio and television, is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, has written a philosophical autobiography and is Chairman of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He is married to Ingrid Coggin Honderich.

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