Caird, Edward

CAIRD, EDWARD. - English philosopher, b. at Greenock (Scotland) on 22 March 1835, d. at Oxford on 1 Nov. 1908. He held the chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1866 to 1893. He was subsequently rector of Balliol College until 1906.

C.'s scholarly activity, eminently historicist, can be considered in two phases. The first, almost exclusively expository, is directed at making German philosophy penetrate into England. To this period belong The philosophy of Kant explained and examined with a historical introduction (London 1876); Hegel (Edinburgh 1883-86); The critical philosophy of I. Kant (2 vols., Glasgow 1889), etc. The second phase, characterized by a personal reworking of Hegelian thought, is intended above all for the study of the religious fact, which C. interprets historically as a dialectical process of consciousness in its three fundamental moments: to the objective moment would correspond Greek polytheism (representational, external); to the subjective moment, the Hebrew religion (personal, internal); to the synthetic moment, the Christian religion, in which God would be at once immanent and transcendent. These ideas, which would also influence Tyrrel and Loisy, are set forth by C. principally in The evolution of religion (2 vols., Glasgow 1893); The evolution of theology in the greek philosophers (ibid. 1904), etc.

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