Henry Longueville Mansel

Henry Longueville Mansel (6 October 1820 – 30 July 1871) was an English philosopher and ecclesiastic. Born in Cosgrove, Northamptonshire, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London, and St John's College, Oxford, where he took a double first in 1843 and became a tutor. He was appointed reader in moral and metaphysical philosophy at Magdalen College in 1855, and Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in 1859. Mansel was a staunch opponent of university reform and the burgeoning influence of Hegelianism in Oxford. In 1867, he succeeded Arthur Penrhyn Stanley as Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, and in 1868, he was appointed Dean of St Paul's. He died in Cosgrove in 1871. His philosophical work, influenced by Aristotle, Kant, and Thomas Reid, emphasized the formal character of logic and the limitations of human knowledge to the "conditioned." His Bampton lectures, "The Limits of Religious Thought" (1858), applied metaphysical agnosticism to Christian theology, leading to a notable controversy with Frederick Maurice. Mansel's philosophy is also summarized in his article "Metaphysics" in the 5th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.