Sir Peter Frederick Strawson FBA (/ˈstrɔːsən/; 23 November 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Oxford.
After winning the John Locke scholarship in 1946, and the support of Gilbert Ryle, he went to University College, Oxford, initially as a lecturer, and then, from 1948, as a fellow.
In his book Individuals (1959), Strawson attempts to describe various concepts that form an interconnected web, representing (part of) our common, shared, human conceptual scheme.
What makes this a metaphysical project is that it exhibits, in fine detail, the structural features of our thought about the world, and thus precisely delimits how we, humans, think about reality.
After serving as a captain in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during World War II, Strawson married Ann Martin in 1945.
His obituary in The Guardian noted that "Oxford was the world capital of philosophy between 1950 and 1970, and American academics flocked there, rather than the traffic going the other way.
In its obituary, The Times of London described him as a "philosopher of matchless range who made incisive, influential contributions to problems of language and metaphysics".