William Tudor Jones (Q66200)

William Tudor Jones (1865-1946), was a Unitarian minister and philosopher. He served as a teacher at the Pontrhydfendigaid and Goginan schools in Cardiganshire, then decided to enter the Calvinistic Methodist ministry, studying at Aberystwyth and Cardiff university colleges. He later became minister of the Unitarian churches at Swansea (1899-1906), Wellington, N.Z. (1906-1910), Islington (1910-1915), and Bristol (1915-1933). During his ministry at Swansea he studied for a period at Jena and came under the dominating influence of Rudolf Eucken. He afterwards became recognised as the foremost exponent and advocate of Eucken's philosophy of life, which seeks to disprove all materialistic interpretations of history, and stresses the reality of universal spiritual life as the only key to man's divine discontent and ethical development. His own philosophy was an attempt at a further clarification and amplification of the idealistic trend of thought revealed in Eucken's Activism.