Paul Elmer More

From Philosopedia.org

Paul Elmer More (12 December 1864 - 9 March 1937)

More, who was born in St. Louis, Missouri, was educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard University. He taught Sanskrit at Harvard (1894-1895) and Bryn Mawr (1895-1897).

As a journalist, he worked on The Independent, the New York Evening Post, and The Nation.

A classicist, scholar, and critic, he wrote

The Great Refusal, Being Letters of a Dreamer in Gotham (1894).

A Century of Indian Epigrams: Chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari (1898).

Benjamin Franklin (1900).

Shelburne Essays, Fifth Series (1908).

Studies of Religious Dualism: Shelburne Essays, Sixth Series (1909).

Shelburne Essays, Seventh Series (1910).

The Drift of Romanticism: Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913).

Aristocracy and Justice: Shelburne Essays, Ninth Series (1915).

With the Wits: Shelburne Essays, Tenth Series (1919).

A New England Group and Others: Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921)

He wrote several books after his retirement from journalism, including, Platonism (1917); The Religion of Plato (1921); Hellenistic Philosophies (1923); and his biography and last published work, Pages from an Oxford Diary (1937).

More's Greek Tradition, 5 vols. (1924-31), is generally thought to be his best work.

During the last 10 years of his life, More wrote several books of Christian apologetics, including The Christ of the New Testament, The Catholic Faith, and Christ the Word.

He collaborated with Irving Babbitt from before 1900 in the project later labelled New Humanism. Although Babbitt called himself a conservative, More went further, insisting that he was a reactionary. He would have nothing to do with literary romanticism or the breaking of classical rules.

More lived in Princeton, New Jersey. He died at the age of 73 and was buried in St. Louis, Missouri.

(See entry for Neo-Humanism.)