Influential philosopher who sought to defend reason in an age when it was often under attack.
He cut short his studies at Oxford to join the British Army YMCA in World War I, spending his time in Southeast Asia before returning home to the U.S.
He argued there was an absolute universe that didn't change depending on how one looked at it, a stark contrast to the philosophies of empiricism.
He was born in Fredericksburg, Ohio. His father Francis was a Congregational minister and his fraternal twin Paul Beecher Blanshard was a noted freethinker.
He studied at the University of Oxford at the same time as T.S. Eliot and met the future great poet once or twice.
