Ralph Monroe Eaton (June 28, 1892 – April 13, 1932) was an American philosopher of Harvard University whose career was cut short at the age of 39.

He served in the United States Army during the First World War and wrote an unpublished memoir of his experiences.

In the late spring of 1917, Eaton volunteered for [perhaps after a draft notice], and was accepted to the U.S. Army Officers' Training Corps.

In the fall of 1917, he shipped out to France via Halifax, Nova Scotia, with the 26th "Yankee" Division, 103rd Infantry Regiment.

A line of ships, grey with wide zigzag stripes painted in black and white across their hulls, decks, and funnels; moves in the sunshine of a September afternoon, down the harbor at Halifax.

Bands are playing, flags flying, and under my lieutenant’s uniform little pimples of gooseflesh stand out all over my skin.

His division and regiment saw action at Chateau Thierry, at Belleau Woods, Saint-Mihiel, and in the Argonne.

[3] After the war, he wrote an unpublished memoir of his experiences, "Backward glances of a demobilized soldier" - a small portion of which were published by the Washington Post, on Nov. 11, 2001.

[4] Eaton obtained his undergraduate degree the University of California, Berkeley (Lit.

[1] He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1926, awarded for a study of the "philosophy, particularly the theory of knowledge in its relation to logic and metaphysics, with Professor E. Husserl and the phenomenological school of German philosophers, principally at the University of Freiburg, Germany; and for the writing in English of a critical account of the philosophy of this school".

As a result, in March the university withdrew his promotion, declared him emotionally unstable, and put him on leave until the start of the 1931–32 academic year.

[2] He became interested in psychoanalysis and the break from his Harvard duties allowed him to translate and write a preface to Secret Ways of the Mind by Wolfgang Müller Kranefeldt, with an introduction by Carl Jung, which was published in early 1932.

[5][6][7] It is possible that Eaton may have suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after his experience in the trenches of World War I.

380–392 Duke University Press, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2179048 "The Logic of Probable Propositions,"Author(s): Ralph M. Eaton.

44-51Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2939997 "The Meaning of Chance," Author(s): Ralph M. Eaton.