Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller, the British pragmatist philosopher, was born in Schleswig-Holstein and studied at Rugby and at Balliol College, Oxford. After teaching German at Eton, he returned to Oxford for his MA. In 1893 he went to Cornell University as an instructor and graduate student. In 1897, without receiving a doctorate, he returned to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was successively assistant tutor, tutor, senior tutor, and fellow and where he received a DSc in 1906. He served as treasurer of the Mind Association and president of the Aristotelian Society (1921), and he was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1926. From 1926 on, Schiller spent part of each year at the University of Southern California as visiting lecturer and then as professor; in 1935 he moved there permanently.

Pragmatism

Schiller's views, which he called at various times humanism, voluntarism, and personalism, as...