12 Facts About Dawes Hicks

George Dawes Hicks FBA was a British philosopher who was the first professor of moral philosophy at University College London from 1904 until 1928 and professor emeritus thereafter until his death.

Dawes Hicks initially went on to study law within his father's legal practice.

Dawes Hicks won a scholarship and went, in 1884, to Owens College Manchester to study philosophy.

Dawes Hicks then went to Manchester College, Oxford, and followed the lectures of Wallace, Nettleship and Cook Wilson.

Dawes Hicks gained his PhD at Leipzig in 1896 with a thesis on Kant which was to be published the following year.

On his return from Germany in 1897 Dawes Hicks became minister of Unity Church in Islington until 1903, and lectured for the London School of Ethics and Sociology.

Dawes Hicks was the first person to fill the position which had lain vacant since UCL first advertised for two Chairs in philosophy in 1827.

Dawes Hicks "ever saw clearly that the spiritual value of philosophical studies far outweighed their academic importance" but denied "that philosophy could legitimately serve as a substitute for religion or for religious faith".

Dawes Hicks retired from UCL the following year and thereafter lived entirely in Cambridge but continued his long serving work as a sub-editor of the Hibbert Journal to his sick bed and, as Stebbing reports, "was writing his famous 'Philosophical Survey' for that Journal when death came, rather suddenly at the end" on 16 January 1941, aged 78.

Dawes Hicks was a Christian theist in his personal life but authored The Philosophical Bases Of Theism, a work on philosophical theism based on his Hibbert Lectures from 1931.

Dawes Hicks rejected any form of mysticism and disputed the evidence of religious belief from mystical experiences.

Dawes Hicks donated his archive to University College London in 1941.