W. R. Sorley

William Ritchie Sorley, FBA (4 November 1855 – 28 July 1935), usually cited as W. R. Sorley, was a Scottish philosopher. A Gifford Lecturer, he was one of the thinkers of the British idealist school, with interests in ethics. He was opposed to women being admitted as students to the University of Cambridge.

Life and career

William Ritchie Sorley was born in Selkirk, Scotland, the son of Anna Ritchie and William Sorley, a Free Church of Scotland minister. He was educated first at the University of Edinburgh, where he took a degree in philosophy and mathematics. This was followed by New College, Edinburgh where he studied theology with the intention of training for the church. He gave this up, and after winning the Shaw Fellowship he spent a year at Trinity College, Cambridge where he took Part II of the Moral Sciences Tripos. He subsequently spent several years at Cambridge where he was lecturer and in 1883 he was elected a Fellow at Trinity.

In 1886, he was appointed to a post at University College London. After two years he was appointed to a professorship at University College Cardiff, succeeding Andrew Seth as Professor of Logic and Philosophy.

In 1894 he was appointed Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, and finally in 1900 he succeeded Henry Sidgwick in the Knightbridge Professorship at the University of Cambridge. He held this post until his retirement in 1933. He received the honorary degree Legum Doctor (LLD) from the University of Edinburgh in April 1900, and was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1905.