George Holmes Howison, the American personalist philosopher and mathematician, was a graduate of Marietta College in Ohio and professor of mathematics at Washington University, where he became a member of the St. Louis Philosophical Society. He taught philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the Harvard Divinity School, and at the Concord School of Philosophy before moving in 1884 to the University of California, where he organized what was to become an influential department of philosophy.

Howison, calling his system "Personal Idealism," maintained that both impersonal, monistic idealism and materialism run contrary to the moral freedom experienced by persons. To deny the freedom to pursue the ideals of truth, beauty, and "benignant love" is to undermine every profound human venture, including science, morality, and philosophy. Thus, even Personalistic Idealism (B. P. Bowne and E. S. Brightman) and Realistic Personal Theism (Thomas Aquinas...