Charles Norris Cochrane

Charles Norris Cochrane (August 21, 1889 – November 23, 1945) was a Canadian historian and philosopher who taught at the University of Toronto.[1][2] He is known for his writings about the interaction between ancient Rome and emerging Christianity.

Early life and education

Cochrane was born in Omemee, Ontario. He attended the University of Toronto, graduating with a degree in Classics in 1911. He then attended the University of Oxford.[3]

Career

During the First World War, Cochrane was active in the Canadian Officers Training Corps and in 1918 went overseas with the 1st Tank Battalion.[4]

After the war, in 1919, Cochrane joined the Faculty of Ancient History at the University of Toronto.[2]

His Thucydides and the Science of History[5] appeared in 1929, and his best-known work, Christianity and Classical Culture, in 1940.[6][7] The latter work was praised by W.H. Auden,[8][9] and it was in addition described by Harold Innis as "the first major Canadian contribution to the intellectual history of the West".[10] In it Cochrane investigated the political and cultural interaction between the Romans and Christians in the early days of Christianity.[11]

In 2017, a new collection of Cochrane's post-humously published writings and collected essays appeared, Augustine and the Problem of Power: The Essays and Lectures of Charles Norris Cochrane.[12] The title essay in this volume was originally delivered as the 1945 Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectures at Yale University Divinity School. Cochrane expressed the opinion that the philosophy of Augustine largely replaced classical Greek philosophy as the dominant intellectual world view.[13]

In his philosophy and historiography, Cochrane was influenced by R.G. Collingwood.[10] The Hegelian philosopher James Doull was among his students.[14][15] Political scientist Arthur Kroker, pointing to Cochrane's writings about the conflict between Christianity and nihilism,[16] and his insight into the "generative origins of Christianity as a response to a larger cultural crisis that secular thought, whether Roman or Greek, could not solve for itself," deemed Cochrane "one of the leading 20th-century philosophers of civilization."[2]

Cochraine died November 13, 1945 in Toronto.[17]

References
  1. "Charles Norris Cochrane". 12: 95–97. JSTOR 137337. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. Kroker, Arthur. "Charles Norris Cochrane". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2017-10-10.
  3. " Obituaries: Charles Norris Cochrane, 1889-1945 H. A. I.". The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne d'Economique et de Science politique, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Feb., 1946), pp. 95-97
  4. "Charles Norris Cochrane fonds | UTARMS". utarms.library.utoronto.ca. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2017-10-10.
  5. W. S. Ferguson (April 1930). "Reviewed Work: Thucydides and the Science of History by Charles Norris Cochrane". The American Historical Review. Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association. 35: 584–585. doi:10.2307/1838425. JSTOR 1838425.
  6. Robert W. Cox (2013). Universal Foreigner: The Individual and the World. World Scientific. p. 316. ISBN 978-981-4452-71-7.
  7. Ian Wood (27 September 2013). The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages. OUP Oxford. p. 274. ISBN 978-0-19-165477-0.
  8. Bowersock, Glen Warren (25 March 2009). From Gibbon to Auden: Essays on the Classical Tradition. p. 195. ISBN 9780199704071.
  9. Wystan Hugh Auden (1995). In Solitude, for Company: W.H. Auden After 1940, Unpublished Prose and Recent Criticism. Clarendon Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-19-818294-8.
  10. Cox, Robert W (2002). The political economy of a plural world: critical reflections on power, morals and civilization. p. 148. ISBN 9780415252911.
  11. S.P. Foster (9 March 2013). Melancholy Duty: The Hume-Gibbon Attack on Christianity. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 240. ISBN 978-94-017-2235-3.
  12. "Augustine and the Problem of Power | WipfandStock.com". Wipfandstock.com. Retrieved 2017-10-10.
  13. Donald Le Roy Stults (25 December 2014). Grasping Truth and Reality: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology of Mission to the Western World. James Clarke & Co. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-227-90316-2.
  14. "President's Report 2003 - Publishing". Mun.ca. Retrieved 27 November 2017.
  15. Duncan, John (24 March 2005). "Philosophy and Freedom: The Legacy of James Doull (review)". University of Toronto Quarterly. 74 (1): 317–319. doi:10.1353/utq.2005.0036. Retrieved 27 November 2017 – via Project MUSE.
  16. Kroker, Arthur. "Augustine as the Founder of Modern Experience: The Legacy of Charles Norris Cochrane". Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory/Revue canadienne de theorie politique et sociale, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Fall/Automne, 1982) .
  17. Phoenix. 1. University of Toronto Press. 1947.
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