Benjamin Gibbs

Benjamin Gibbs was born in New Zealand in 1937. After leaving school he worked as a merchant seaman for several years, before beginning studies in philosophy at the University of Canterbury under the great logician Arthur Prior. He graduated with an MA in philosophy in 1961 and entered the Order of Discalced Carmelites in Loughrea, Ireland. Within a year he had decided that he was better suited to academic life. He held a Commonwealth Scholarship for postgraduate studies in philosophy at University College, Oxford, from 1963-66. He was awarded the John Locke Prize in Mental Philosophy in 1965. After graduating from Oxford he taught for many years at the University of Sussex (Brighton, England) and the University of Waikato (Hamilton, New Zealand). He has published a number of scholarly articles and reviews in academic journals, mainly in the field of classical and mediaeval philosophy, and a book entitled Freedom and Liberation (1976), which has been translated into Spanish as Libertad y Liberación. He is now retired and lives in the Nazareth Community, Christchurch, New Zealand.