George Blewett

George John Blewett (9 December 1873 – 9 August 1912) was a Canadian philosopher and theologian.

The Reverend George Blewett
Born	George John Blewett (1873-12-09)9 December 1873 Yarmouth, Ontario, Canada
Died	9 August 1912(1912-08-09) (aged 38) Go Home Bay, Ontario, Canada
Spouse	Clara Woodsworth ​ (m. 1906)​
Ecclesiastical career
Religion	Christianity (Methodist)
Church	Methodist Church
Ordained	1898
Academic background
Alma mater	Victoria University, Toronto Harvard University
Thesis	The Metaphysical Basis of Preceptive Ethics (1900)
Influences	Edward Caird G. W. F. Hegel
Academic work
Discipline	Philosophy theology
Sub-discipline	Historical theology moral philosophy philosophy of religion
School or tradition	Hegelianism idealism Social Gospel theological liberalism
Institutions	Wesley College Victoria University, Toronto
Influenced	E. J. Pratt J. S. Woodsworth

Biography

Born on 9 December 1873, in Yarmouth Township in Elgin County, Ontario, the son of William Blewett, a farmer, and Mary Baker, he was raised on a farm near St. Thomas, Ontario. In 1897, he graduated from Victoria University in the University of Toronto. He studied at the University of Würzburg in 1899 and received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in philosophy in 1900 from Harvard University. He also did postgraduate work at Oxford University and Cambridge University.

In 1901, he became a lecturer in philosophy at Wesley College, Winnipeg. In 1906, he became the Ryerson Professor of moral philosophy at Victoria University. In 1907, he wrote The Study of Nature and the Vision of God: With Other Essays in Philosophy. His second book The Christian View of the World was published in 1912.

He drowned while swimming, apparently the result of a heart attack, in Go Home Bay, Ontario, on 15 August 1912. He was buried in the Necropolis Cemetery.

References

Bibliography

• Armour, Leslie (1989). "The Canadian Tradition and the Common Good" (PDF). Maritain Studies. 5: 23–40. doi:10.5840/maritain198953. S2CID 263727826. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
• Blewett, George John (1900). The Metaphysical Basis of Preceptive Ethics (PhD thesis). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University. OCLC 76979155.
• McKillop, A. B. (2001) [1979]. Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0-7735-6892-1.
• Slater, John G. (2005). Minerva's Aviary: Philosophy at Toronto, 1843–2003. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-3870-8.
• Trott, Elizabeth (1998). "Blewett, George John". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 14. Toronto: University of Toronto / Université Laval. Retrieved 4 October 2019.