Sir Anthony Kenny, the historian of philosophy and former Roman Catholic priest, has died at the age of 95. He was active as a lecturer and administrator at Oxford University for more than 50 years.
From Priesthood to Oxford Philosophy
Kenny entered Oxford University in 1957, at a time when it was the centre of analytic philosophy, which seeks conceptual clarity through examining ordinary language. He had been ordained a priest and was still completing a doctorate for the Gregorian University in Rome. He joined St Benet's Hall, then a Catholic establishment.
Taught and befriended by Elizabeth Anscombe, a professor and fellow Catholic, Kenny became enthralled with Wittgenstein's later philosophy, which formed the basis of his own work and accelerated his religious scepticism. His dissertation, written at the start of a four-year curacy in Liverpool from 1959, was published as Action, Emotion and Will in 1963, the same year he left the priesthood.
Academic Career and Writings
The critical acclaim for his first book enabled him to join the Oxford faculty, teaching at Exeter and Trinity Colleges. In 1964, he was elected tutorial fellow at Balliol. Although he set out to do original work in philosophy of mind and action, Kenny soon saw his distinctive contribution as accessibly expounding philosophers of the past. He wrote and lectured on Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Frege, and Wittgenstein with verve and lucidity.
Among the subjects of his 50 books were the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Arthur Hugh Clough, both strugglers with religious faith, as well as Thomas More, nuclear armament, and mountain-climbing. He translated Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics and used stylometric techniques to argue that it was Aristotle's ultimate ethical work.
In Will, Freedom and Power (1975), Kenny attempted to reconcile "liberty of spontaneity" with "liberty of indifference". His compatibilism was regarded as ingenious but unsuccessful. Writing Freewill and Responsibility (1978) led him to study for the bar, passing exams in 1981-82 to tackle the legal issue of mens rea.
Leadership at Oxford and Rhodes House
From 1978 to 1989, Kenny was master of Balliol College, skillfully handling shifts in Oxford academia, harmonising student radicalism with traditionalism, and fending off bureaucratic intrusions and financial cuts by Margaret Thatcher's government. Under his watch, women were admitted to the college.
He was pro-vice-chancellor of the university from 1984 to 2001, when he retired from teaching. He became a fellow of the British Academy in 1974 and was knighted in 1992. As warden of Rhodes House from 1989 to 1999, he brought in reforms including funding educational projects in South Africa after apartheid.
Religious Doubts and Later Life
Born in Liverpool, Anthony was the son of Margaret (nee Jones) and John Kenny. His father, an Irish steamship engineer, left home when Anthony was two and died in the early years of the second world war. Educated by nuns until age 12, he entered Upholland Junior Seminary, inspired by his uncle, Alex Jones, a priest. From 1949, he studied at the Gregorian University in Rome.
Kenny became afflicted with doubt, realising that Aquinas's five proofs of God's existence depended on medieval science and failed to reconcile God's omnipotence and omniscience with His goodness. He also found the doctrine of transubstantiation relied on distorting Aristotle's distinction between substance and accidents. After an article he wrote in 1963 for a Catholic magazine, "Pope John Says Ban the Bomb", a rebuke from the future Cardinal John Heenan precipitated his seeking laicisation.
Describing himself as a "devout agnostic", he continued to oppose abortion. In 1966, he married the American singer and music teacher Nancy Gayley. Late in life, Kenny said he had found happiness after a miserable childhood. He and Nancy ran summer reading parties in a chalet on the slopes of Mont Blanc and went hiking and mountain-climbing with their sons. He is survived by Nancy and their two sons, Robert and Charles.
