John Hospers was a central figure in American ordinary-language philosophy in the twentieth century. His academic interests have mainly been in the fields of aesthetics, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Neither his life nor his writings exemplify an "ivory-tower" approach: he is also an art critic and a political activist who in 1972 ran as the first presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party.

John G. Hospers Jr. was born in Pella, Iowa, on 9 June 1918 to John and Dena Verhey Hospers. The town had been founded in the mid eighteenth century by immigrants from Holland, including Hospers's great-grandparents, who were seeking religious freedom from the Dutch Reformed state church. It was a conservative, Dutch-speaking community--Dutch was Hospers's first language--steeped in Reformed Presbyterian Christianity. Hospers's childhood study of Calvinist theology fostered his interest in philosophy--although at the time he was not aware that such a subject existed--and the history of...