Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet FRSE (8 March 1788 – 6 May 1856) was a Scottish metaphysician. He is often referred to as William Stirling Hamilton of Preston, in reference to his mother, Elizabeth Stirling.
Early life
He was born in rooms at the University of Glasgow, He was from an academic family: his father Professor William Hamilton, had in 1781, on the recommendation of William Hunter, been appointed to succeed his own father, Dr Thomas Hamilton, as Regius Professor of Anatomy, Glasgow; he died in 1790, aged 32. William Hamilton and his younger brother, Thomas Hamilton, were brought up by their mother.
Hamilton received his early education at Glasgow Grammar School, except for two years which he spent in a private school at Chiswick in Kent, and in 1807 went as a Snell Exhibitioner, to Balliol College, Oxford. He obtained a first class in literis humanioribus and took his BA in 1811 (MA 1814). He had been intended for the medical profession, but soon after leaving Oxford he gave up this idea, and in 1813 became a member of the Scottish bar, as a qualified advocate.
Hamilton's life continued to be that of a student, while he was gradually forming his philosophic system. Investigation enabled him to make good his claim to represent the ancient family of Hamilton of Preston, and in 1816 he took up its baronetcy, which had been in abeyance since the death of Sir Robert Hamilton of Preston (1650–1701).
Early time as philosopher
Two visits to Germany in 1817 and 1820 led to William's taking up the study of German and later on that of contemporary German philosophy, which was almost entirely neglected in British universities. In 1820 he was a candidate for the chair of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, which had fallen vacant on the death of Thomas Brown, colleague of Dugald Stewart, and Stewart's consequent resignation, however he was defeated on political grounds by John Wilson (1785–1854), the "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine. In 1821 he was appointed professor of civil history and delivered several courses of lectures on the history of modern Europe and the history of literature. The salary was £100 a year, derived from a local beer tax, and was discontinued after a time. No pupils were compelled to attend, the class dwindled, and Hamilton gave it up when the salary ceased. In January 1827 his mother, to whom he had been devoted, died. In March 1828 he married his cousin, Janet Marshall.
Around this time he moved to live in a recently built townhouse at 11 Manor Place, in Edinburgh's west end.
Publications
In 1829 his career of authorship began with the appearance of the well-known essay on the "Philosophy of the Unconditioned" (a critique of Victor Cousin's Cours de philosophie)–the first of a series of articles contributed by him to the Edinburgh Review. He was elected in 1836 to the University of Edinburgh chair of logic and metaphysics, and from this time dates the influence which, during the next 20 years, he exerted over the thought of the younger generation in Scotland. Much about the same time he began the preparation of an annotated edition of Thomas Reid's works, intending to annex to it a number of dissertations. However before this design had been carried out, he was struck, in 1844, with paralysis of the right side which seriously crippled his bodily powers, though left his mind unimpaired.
The edition of Reid appeared in 1846, but with only seven of the intended dissertations, one unfinished. At his death he had still not completed the work; notes on the subjects to be discussed were found among his manuscripts. Considerably earlier, he had formed his theory of logic, the leading principles of which were indicated in the prospectus of "an essay on a new analytic of logical forms" prefixed to his edition of Reid. But the elaboration of the scheme in its details and applications continued during the next few years to occupy much of his leisure. Out of this arose a sharp controversy with Augustus De Morgan. The essay did not appear, but the results of the labour gone through are contained in the appendices to his Lectures on Logic. Hamilton had also drawn from the works of Wilhelm Esser in his explanation of laws in the language of agency. For instance, he cited Esser's definition of universal law, to explain the sense or "quality" of "necessary".