William Ernest Hocking
William Ernest Hocking was an American philosopher and theologian who also worked as a university teacher and missionary.
Born on August 10, 1873, in Cleveland, Hocking pursued his education at Harvard University. His career encompassed the intersecting domains of philosophy, theology, and religious mission work, reflecting a sustained engagement with questions that bridged academic inquiry and religious practice. He wrote and taught in the English language throughout his professional life.
In recognition of his contributions, Hocking received an honorary doctorate from Leiden University. He died on June 12, 1966, in Madison, New Hampshire, having lived well into his nineties. His work as a university teacher placed him within the tradition of academic philosophy in the United States, while his role as a missionary extended his concerns beyond the lecture hall into the practical dimensions of religious life. The recurring themes across his career centered on the relationship between philosophy and religious thought.
Quotes by William Ernest Hocking
Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished.
It is right, or absolute right, that an individual should develop the powers that are in him. He may be said to have a “natural right” to become what he is capable of becoming. This is his only natural right.
Wherever moral ambition exists, there right exists. And moral ambition itself must be presumed present in subconsciousness, even when the conscious self seems to reject it, so long as society has resources for bringing it into action; in much the same way that the life-saver presumes life to exist in the drowned man until he has exhausted his resources for recovering respiration.
Mr. Rihani, we met once a thousand years ago and we may not meet again for another thousand years.
Principle II:;: The presumptions of the law are creative presumptions:;: they are aimed at conditions to be brought about, and only for that reason ignore conditions which exist.
Principle III:;: Presumptive rights are the conditions under which individual powers normally develop.
Nothing is more evident, I venture to think, as a result of two or three thousand years of social philosophizing, than that society must live and thrive by way of the native impulses of individual human beings.
Without good-will, no man has any presumptive right, except the right or opportunity to change his will, so long as there is hope of it.