Biography
He graduated from Yale College in 1831 and was ordained as a Congregational minister in New Milford, Connecticut from 1836 to 1843. He served as pastor at a Congregational Church in Springfield, Massachusetts from 1843 to 1846. He was elected professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics at Yale in 1846.
Porter was inaugurated as President of Yale College on Wednesday, October 11, 1871. He continued to serve as head of the college until 1886
Porter edited several editions of Webster's Dictionary, and wrote on education.
Influenced by the German refugee writer and philosopher Francis Leiber, Porter opposed slavery and integrated an antislavery position with religious liberalism.
He was a frequent visitor to the Adirondack Mountains of New York, and in 1875 was among the first recorded to make an ascent of the peak later named Porter Mountain in his honor. Noah Porter, Jr. was the son of Noah Porter, one of the first ministers of First Church of Christ, Congregational 1652 in Farmington, Connecticut, and was the older brother of Sarah Porter, founder of Miss Porter's School, a college preparatory school for girls.
His best-known work is The Human Intellect, with an Introduction upon Psychology and the Human Soul (1868), comprehending a general history of philosophy, and following in part the "common-sense" philosophy of the Scottish school, while accepting the Kantian doctrine of intuition, and declaring the notion of design to be a priori. Of great importance were two other works, Elements of Intellectual Science (1871) and Elements of Moral Science (1885).
He died in New Haven.
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