William Wallace (philosopher)

William Wallace (11 May 1844 – 18 February 1897) was a Scottish philosopher and academic who became fellow of Merton College and White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University.

In 1882, Wallace became the successor to Thomas Hill Green as White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, a position which he held along with the Merton tutorship until his death fifteen years later.

[3] He was highly regarded as a teacher and lecturer, usually speaking without notes in a style described as "humorous, elegant, and yet earnest" that "produced a unique impression of insight and sincerity upon his students.

"[1] He sought to encourage his students to think critically and aimed to explain the sometimes arcane and technical nature of philosophical constructs in a way that was both readily understandable and expressed imaginatively,[1] for instance commenting in one of his works that "the Absolute Idea [of Hegel] may be compared to the old man who utters the same creed as a child, but for whom it is pregnant with the significance of a lifetime".

[3] The translation was accomplished in a free and creative style accompanied by extensive explanatory notes on the text, drawing parallels between the philosophy of Hegel and classical figures such as Plato and Aristotle.

Wallace's work on Hegel focused on the themes that most resonated with a British audience, such as unity and community, while giving relatively less attention to more alien ideas such as the dialectic.

[3] In 1894 he published a translation of the last part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia under the title of The Philosophy of Mind, accompanied by five essays commenting on questions such as the method of psychology and how it related to ethics and theology.