John Norris (philosopher)
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- For other men of the same name, see John Norris (disambiguation).
John Norris (1657 - 1711), philosopher and poet.
John Norris was born at Collingbourne, Kingston, Wiltshire, 1657. He was educated at Winchester School, and Exeter College, Oxford, gaining a B.A. in 1680. He was later appointed a fellow of All Souls (M.A. 1684). He took orders, and lived a quiet and placid life as a country parson and thinker.
In philosophy he was a Platonist and mystic and was an early opponent of Locke. His poetry, with occasional fine thoughts, is full of far-fetched metaphors and conceits, and is not seldom dull and prosaic.
From 1692 until his death in 1711, he held George Herbert's benefice of Bemerton, Wiltshire.
Among his 23 works are An Idea of Happiness (1683), Miscellanies (1687), Theory and Regulation of Love (1688), An Essay toward the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World (1701-4), and a Discourse concerning the Immortality of the Soul (1708). His most popular work is A Collection of Miscellanies, consisting of Poems, Essays, Discourses and Letters(1687).
He was an early critic of John Locke, whose An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) he attacked in Christian Blessedness or Discourses upon the Beatitudes in the same year; he also combatted Locke's theories in his Essay toward the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World.
[edit] References
- Richard Acworth (1979), The philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton: (1657-1712) (Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie : Kleine Reihe ; Bd. 6)
- Selections from the Worlds Devotional Classics
This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.
