W. R. (William Ritchie) Sorley

Born in Selkirk, Scotland, in 1855, William Ritchie Sorley studied at the University of Edinburgh and later at Trinity College, Cambridge. He first prepared for the ministry, studying theology in Edinburgh, Tübingen, and Berlin, but he was not ordained. Instead, he built an academic career in philosophy, teaching at University College Cardiff, then serving as Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen before becoming Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge.

Sorley is best remembered as a moral philosopher and as part of the British Idealist movement. His major books include The Ethics of Naturalism, Recent Tendencies in Ethics, The Moral Life and Moral Worth, Moral Values and the Idea of God, and A History of English Philosophy. Across these works, he returned again and again to questions about ethics, character, and how moral values fit into a wider view of the world.

He died in Cambridge in 1935. Sorley was also the father of the poet Charles Sorley, whose life was cut short in the First World War. While some of his social views now feel distinctly of their time, his writing remains useful for listeners interested in the history of moral philosophy and the intellectual world of Britain before the Second World War.