Percy Brand Blanshard was an American philosopher known primarily for his defense of reason and rationalism. Brand was born in Fredericksburg, Ohio, to Canadian parents Francis, a Congregational minister, and Emily Coulter Blanshard. Paul Beecher Blanshard, the freethinker and sometime editor of The Nation, was his fraternal twin. Their mother died in 1893, and the Rev. Mr. Blanshard took his sons to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for care by his mother, Orminda Adams Blanshard. Upon being diagnosed with tuberculosis, Francis was advised to seek the drier climate of the American West. In 1902, Francis bade his mother and sons goodbye. The family moved northwest to Bay View, Michigan, while Francis moved alone to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he died in 1904.
In 1910 the Blanshard brothers entered the University of Michigan where Brand discovered philosophy. After a mere three years at Michigan, he obtained a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Merton College, Oxford. Upon the outbreak of World War I, he interrupted his studies and joined the British Army YMCA, which sent him to Bombay and Amhara, where he witnessed poverty and the horrors of war at first hand. Fate reunited the Blanshard twins at Columbia University where Paul was studying the new field of Sociology. Brand obtained his M.A. from Columbia, and thereafter went into the US Army, serving in France. Once demobilized, he returned to Oxford to complete his BA (Hons) and then earned his doctorate at Harvard.
After a short teaching stint at Michigan, he taught at Swarthmore College from 1925-44. He spent the remainder of his career at Yale University until his retirement in 1961. At Yale, he served as chairman of the Department of Philosophy. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946 and the American Philosophical Society in 1948. In 1955 he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of Merton College.
Source: [Wikipedia](
