R.S. Peters

Richard Stanley Peters  was an English philosopher. His work belongs mainly to the areas of political theory, philosophical psychology, and philosophy of education.

Peters was born in 1919 in Mussoorie, India. He spent his childhood with his grandmother in England. He was a pupil at Sidcot School, Winscombe, Somerset, 1933–1938. As a young man, his private tutor was Eric Blair (the writer George Orwell). As a conscientious objector in the Second World War, he served in the Friends Ambulance Unit and with the Friends Relief Service in 1940–1944.

From his marriage in 1942 to Margaret Lee Duncan (1917–1998), elementary school teacher and daughter of Alfred Duncan, engineer, came one son and two daughters.

Peters studied at The Queen's College, Oxford, and received the Bachelor of Arts in 1942. In 1944 he began teaching at Sidcot Grammar School. He became a part-time lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he also studied philosophy and psychology, receiving his PhD in 1949. From then to 1958 he was a full-time lecturer, moving on to be a reader in philosophy until 1962. In 1961 he had a one-year guest professorship for education at Harvard University. In the following year he went to Australian National University. From 1962 until retirement in 1983, Peters was Professor of the Philosophy of Education at the Institute of Education (founded 1947) University of London. In 1971 he was Dean of the Institute. Under his guidance the Institute grew fast and considerably influenced the development of the philosophy of education in England. At the Institute Peters collaborated with Paul H. Hirst, who later became Professor of Education at King's College, London, and then professor at University of Cambridge.

Peters died on December 30, 2011.