William Mackintire Salter

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William Mackintire Salter (1853–1931) was the author of several books on philosophy and a critical and enduring major classic on Nietzsche. He was also a special lecturer for the Department of Philosophy in the University of Chicago[1] and a pioneer in the Ethical movement.[2]

Life and work[]

William Mackintire Salter was born in Burlington, Iowa on 30 January 1853.[3] Salter's parents were William Salter, a long-serving Congregational minister, and Mary Ann Salter (née Mackintire).[1] Salter obtained his BA and MA degrees from Knox College (Illinois) in 1871 and 1874 respectively. He also attended Yale Divinity School, and received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Harvard University in 1876.[2] Over the following two years, Salter studied at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and later (1881-2) at Columbia University.[2]

Salter married Mary Gibbens in 1885. Mary's sister, Alice Howe Gibbens, was the wife of philosopher and psychologist William James.[4] Their first child, Eliza Webb, was born on 20 January 1888.[5] On 2 December 1889[5] she died of the measles, and they later adopted Frank Gray, renaming him John Randall Salter.[3]

Salter founded, and served as lecturer at, the Ethical Culture Society in Chicago.[2] Between 1892-7, following nearly a decade in Chicago, he was a lecturer for the Ethical Culture Society in Philadelphia.[2] From 1897-1907 he was again in Chicago where, from 1909-13 he was a special lecturer in philosophy at the University of Chicago.[2]

Influence[]

The Ethical movement's founder Felix Adler, a friend and associate of Salter's, described him as 'one of the crown jewels of Ethical Culture'.[2] With other Ethical Culture leaders, he signed the call for the 1909 National Negro Conference, which led to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.[6] Salter's book, Ethical Religion, influenced Mohandas K. Gandhi, who published a summary in Gujarati in 1907.[7]

Salter has been called 'perhaps the most perceptive and prescient' of Nietzsche's early interpreters.[8]

Death[]

Salter died aged 78 at his summer home in Silver Lake, New Hampshire.[2] His wife, adopted son, and two brothers (Sumner and George Salter) survived him.[2]

Works[]

  • Do the ethics of Jesus satisfy the needs of our time? (1882)
  • Prayer and an ethical view of life (1882)
  • The ethical movement; its philosophical basis; its general aims, etc. Three addresses (1884)
  • Ethical religion (1889)
  • Anarchy or Government? An Inquiry in Fundamental Politics (1895)
  • The conflict of the Catholic Church with the French republic (1907)
  • Nietzsche the thinker; a study (1917) (at Internet Archive)

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Iowa: Its History and Its Foremost Citizens, 1918
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i "W. M. Salter Dies; Author, Lecturer". The New York Times. 19 July 1931.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b "Salter, William Mackintire (1853-1931) · Jane Addams Digital Edition". digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  4. ^ Whitehead, Deborah (2016-01-21). William James, Pragmatism, and American Culture. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-01824-3.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Biographical review of Des Moines County, Iowa. The Library of Congress. Chicago: Hobart publishing company. 1905. p. 1062.CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. ^ Ralph E. Luker, The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 204-5, 230, 262.
  7. ^ Hunt, James D. (2005). An American Looks at Gandhi. p. 148. ISBN 9788185002354.
  8. ^ Goodin, David K. (2013-04-01). The New Rationalism: Albert Schweitzer's Philosophy of Reverence for Life. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 978-0-7735-8815-8.

Further reading[]

  • William Dean Howells, Editors Study/Review — (IV), Harpers, August 1889.
  • Amy Kittelstrom, The Religion of Democracy: Seven Liberals and the American Moral Tradition. New York: Penguin, 2015.

External links[]


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