Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge, the American educator, was born in Windsor, Ontario, and attended Amherst College, Union Theological Seminary, and the University of Berlin. He taught philosophy at the University of Minnesota (1894–1902) and Columbia University (1902–1937). At Columbia he also served as dean of the faculty of political science, philosophy, and pure science (1912–1929). Like his colleague John Dewey, he had great influence as a teacher. His influence was less widespread than was Dewey's and was more confined to professional philosophers, but it went deep and is clearly responsible for the revival in the United States of Aristotelian trends of thought. His successor at Columbia University as teacher of the history of philosophy, John H. Randall Jr., is a notable instance of his influence.

Realism and Naturalism

In describing his own philosophical position Woodbridge used the terms realism and naturalism. By realism...