Richard Price
Richard Price (1723-1791) was a Welsh philosopher, mathematician, and Dissenting minister notable for his contributions to natural theology and moral philosophy. Born in Glamorganshire, he received an education that included studies under the mathematician John Eames in London after the death of his father. Price served as a pastor in various locations, most significantly at Newington Green, a hub for Dissenting thought, and was involved with the Bowood Group, which included other prominent thinkers of his time.
His philosophical works, particularly "A Review of the Principal Questions of Morality," argue that moral truths are intuitive, while his theological writings explored the intersection of Christianity and ethics. Price was also a prominent advocate for civil liberties, supporting both the American and French Revolutions, and his writings influenced key figures like Samuel Rogers and Mary Wollstonecraft. He contributed to the field of economics through practical applications of mathematics, such as compiling the Northampton Mortality Tables. Price's intellectual legacy includes a strong emphasis on empirical research and moral reasoning, making him a notable figure in Enlightenment thought and a precursor to later economic theories.
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Richard Price
Philosopher
- Born: February 23, 1723
- Birthplace: Tyn-ton, Glamorganshire, Wales
- Died: April 19, 1791
Biography
Richard Price was born on February 22, 1723, at Tyn-ton, Glamorganshire, Wales, the only son and eldest child of Dissenting minister Rice Price and his second wife, Catherine, née Richards. He attended various schools in Wales before his father died in 1739. At this time, his mother took his two sisters to live in Bridgend and he was sent to a Dissenter-run academy at Tenter Alley, Moorfields, in London, where he was taught by the mathematician John Eames, a former friend of Sir Isaac Newton. In 1744, he became a family chaplain in the home of George Streatfield in Stoke Newington. Legacies from Streatfield and his uncle Samuel gave him the means to marry Sarah Blundell—the daughter of a speculator ruined by the South Sea Bubble—on June 16, 1757.
From 1758 to 1783, Price was a pastor at Newington Green, a major center of Dissent. From 1762 to 1770, he also preached at Poor Jewry Lane, and after that at Gravel-Pit Meeting Place in Hackney. In 1771, he became a member of the Bowood Group, a “think tank” assembled by the Earl of Shelburne. His fellow members included the chemistJoseph Priestley and the pioneer of Utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham. Benjamin Franklin was his sponsor when he was admitted to the Royal Society in 1765, after editing the manuscripts of the mathematician Thomas Bayes, a pioneer of probability theory. His preaching was said to have influenced Samuel Rogers and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Price was a significant advocate of natural theology, which proposed that studying the design of the natural world was virtuous, because it cultivated insight into the schemes and methods of the Creator. His first important philosophical work, A Review of the Principal Questions of Morality, asserted that right and wrong are simple ideas incapable of further analysis, received by intuition. The Importance of Christianity set this thesis within a religious context, although Four Dissertations was his first work of formal theology, published in 1768, the year that he was awarded a doctor of divinity degree by Marischal College in Aberdeen.
Price’s mathematical skills were given practical application in the compilation of the Northampton Mortality Tables, a precursor of the classic nineteenth century surveys that analyzed the extent and consequences of poverty. Such empirical work formed the basis for theoretical economic studies, including his Observations on Reversionary Payments. His 1780 essay on population, whose optimism was based on incorrect data, was one of the works that the English economistThomas Robert Malthus set out to demolish in his Essay on Population.
Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America supported the American Revolutionaries, and was warmly received in the independent United States. He also supported the French Revolution; it was one of his sermons, delivered on November 4, 1789, that provoked Edmund Burke to write Reflections of the Revolution in France. Price routinely spoke of the colonies as “the British Empire,” intending the term pejoratively, but lent unintended assistance to those who thought it a proud title. He died on April 14, 1791, shortly after he and Priestley had become founding members of the Unitarian Society.