Keele University
Politics, International Relations & Philosophy
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History of Keele Philosophy
The history of Keele philosophy begins in 1766, when the great Genevan political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was living near to the present site of the university, writing his Confessions. Rousseau had come to England at the invitation of David Hume to escape persecution for his views on politics and religion; he reportedly took great inspiration from walks in the Staffordshire countryside around Keele.
Keele University (originally the University College of North Staffordshire) was founded in 1949 at the initiative of A.D. Lindsay (then Lord Lindsay of Birker), who became its first Principal in 1949. Lindsay had been a professor of philosophy at Glasgow before becoming Master of Balliol College, where he was one of the main figures behind the introduction of the PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) degree in Oxford. In accordance with his Scottish background, Lindsay set up two departments of philosophy at Keele with two professors to head them; this was the traditional arrangement in Scottish universities. One was the Department of Philosophy, with W.B. Gallie as head, and the other was the Department of Moral and Political Philosophy, with Ernest Teale as head. Both Gallie and Teale had been Lindsay’s students at Balliol.
The first person to graduate from Keele was Margaret Boulds, who received her dual honours degree in English and Philosophy in 1954. This was the same year Antony Flew took over from Gallie as head of the Department of Philosophy. Flew, who had been a student of Gilbert Ryle, was the most famous analytical philosopher of his generation, and dominated philosophy at Keele until his departure in 1971. Flew was a public figure known for his atheism – he was the Richard Dawkins of his day – but he was just as easily provoked by socialist as by religious sympathies. Flew and Teale did not get on well, so there was considerable tension between the two philosophy departments for many years until Teale retired in 1968, and they were amalgamated into one unified Department of Philosophy.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
Andrew Flew |
Richard Swinburne |
Jonathan Dancy |
After Flew left in 1971, the department was joined by Jonathan Dancy (Keele 1971-1996) and Richard Swinburne (Keele 1972-1985). Swinburne, Head of Department throughout his time at Keele, was and remains a Christian apologist, best known for his arguments for the existence of God, and hence presented a striking contrast with Flew (that is, until an elderly Flew shocked the world with his 2007 book There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind). G.A.J. Rogers, who joined the department in 1962, took over as head after Swinburne left in 1985, and in 1987, he set up a profitable new unit, PEAK (Professional Ethics At Keele), to teach post-graduate courses in Medical Ethics; later, in 1993, he founded a new journal, the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, which was to become a world-leader in its field.
Dancy took over from Rogers as Head of Department in 1994, and when he left in 1996, two new professors were appointed: André Gallois and David McNaughton. McNaughton, who joined the department as a lecturer in 1970, was head until 1999, when the university management implemented a policy to replace departments with schools in order to create larger, more efficient administrative units. After lengthy negotiations, the departments of Philosophy and English merged to become the School of English and Philosophy, with McNaughton as Head of School. However in 2002, PEAK broke away to become an independent unit in the School of Law, and all the rest of the philosophy staff, except for Giuseppina D’Oro (Keele 1994-present), left for other universities or retired; English then became an independent department again.
New staff were hired, and in 2002-3 a new series of Royal Institute of Philosophy lectures was initiated at Keele; continuing to this day, this is now the most popular public lecture series at Keele. Meanwhile D’Oro negotiated with John Horton, a professor of political philosophy who had set up SPIRE, the School of Politics, International Relations and the Environment, and together they arranged for philosophy to move, in 2003, from its traditional home in Keele Hall to join SPIRE in the Chancellor’s Building. More new staff were hired, with philosophers such as Geraldine Coggins and Sorin Baiasu producing world-class research to maintain Keele’s international reputation, and the rest of the decade was marked by consistently excellent external examiner’s reports. In 2011, National Student Survey results confirmed philosophy’s position as one of the most popular undergraduate programmes at Keele, while philosophy’s postgraduate community steadily expanded.
