Anthony Woozley was the last surviving member of the group of Oxford philosophers, including J. L. Austin, who met informally at All Souls for philosophical discussion between 1937 and 1939. This was the beginning of what came to be known as “ordinary language philosophy”.

Besides Austin and Woozley, the group included Stuart Hampshire, Isaiah Berlin, Donald MacNabb, A. J. Ayer and Donald MacKinnon. After the war Woozley was a participant in Austin’s “Saturday mornings”, which were organised each term around some topic chosen by Austin. Austin’s terrific intelligence was a shaping influence on Woozley, but he went his own way, and made lasting contributions to philosophy of law, ancient philosophy, ethics and the study of Reid, Locke and Berkeley.

Woozley was born in 1912 in Beaconsfield, and educated at Haileybury and Queen’s College, Oxford. While an undergraduate, he was editor of Cherwell, and took on various positions with the Oxford Film Society; he was later, for many years, its president. He took a double first in Greats, and in 1935 he was awarded a prize fellowship at All Souls and the John Locke scholarship.

Rather out of the blue, at this time Woozley was asked to take on the editorship of the Oxford Magazine, a position which he held for only a short time, giving it up after he became a Fellow of Queen’s in 1937. He was librarian of Queen’s from 1938 on, and took particular pride in having managed the restoration of the Upper Library, one of the most beautiful rooms in Oxford. He was senior proctor in 1953-54.

Early in his teaching career Woozley was struck by the idea that there was a fundamental similarity between the way lawyers and philosophers went about their arguments, a similarity that was worth investigating. He took this up with the Law Fellow at Queen’s, who had no interest whatever in pursuing the matter.

But, fortunately for the study of law and philosophy, the Law Fellow became provost of Queen’s in 1948, and a new Law Fellow, Tony Honore, was appointed at Queen’s. When, after allowing Honore a decent interval after his arrival, Woozley broached the idea of their doing a joint graduate class in law and philosophy, Honore leapt at the idea. The class they organised in 1951 was the first class in law and philosophy at Oxford, and probably also the first such class in the UK.

Woozley was commissioned in the King’s Dragoon Guards in 1940, and served in North Africa, Italy, Greece, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, leaving the Army as a major; he was mentioned in dispatches. He was the co-author and editor of History of the King’s Dragoon Guards, 1938-1945.

In 1954 Woozley was appointed to the Chair in moral philosophy at St Andrews. Moving to Scotland, as it turned out, meant giving up cricket; it was too cold and he had only two pullovers. He took up golf instead, and won the staff singles competition two years running.

At St Andrews he edited The Philosophical Quarterly from 1957 to 1962, and collaborated with R. C. Cross, regius professor of logic at Aberdeen, on Plato’s Republic, a book of great lucidity, which, after more than 40 years, is still on reading lists for classes in ancient philosophy all over the English-speaking world. But the trouble with St Andrews from Woozley’s point of view was that the lawyers, who were in Dundee, had no interest in philosophy. While he continued his own research in legal philosophy, he greatly missed the stimulus of teaching and shared discussion.

When, in 1966, he was offered a professorship at the University of Virginia, he jumped at the chance. He moved to Charlottesville in 1967, and, with Calvin Woodard of the law school, introduced the subject of philosophy of law. He was also among the first philosophers in the US to teach undergraduate courses in philosophy of law, and was instrumental in developing one of the first combined degrees in law and philosophy in the US.

He continued to teach ancient philosophy, and combined two of his great interests — law and Plato — in his 1979 study Law and Obedience: the Arguments of Plato’s Crito. This work shows Woozley at his best; it is lucid, systematic and completely free of jargon, and of continuing interest not only to students of Plato but to anyone concerned with fundamental questions of social policy.

A “Woozlefest”, a conference in his honour focusing on questions of law and obedience, with contributions from Honore, Joseph Raz, J. L. Mackie and others, was organised by friends and students shortly before his retirement in 1983. He had been Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy from 1974 and Professor of Law and University Professor from 1977.

In late 1982 Woozley bought a computer, a Kaypro, and suddenly found himself thinking about totally different sorts of problems. The powers and possibilities of computers and the logical character of the problems with which they confront their users provided an entirely new field for a mind honed on classics and philosophy. He was particularly interested in questions that came up in using Nota Bene, a word-processing program designed for academic use. In his seventies he turned into a computer guru, much sought after by people using Nota Bene, and invariably patient, helpful and clear in his responses to questions. In 1993 he wrote a Customization and Programming Guide for the program.

After a stroke in 1996 Woozley found it difficult to maintain the kind of concentration needed for analysis of programs and problems but continued to enjoy working on the computer, and maintaining a database of the music he loved, until the end of his life.

He married first, in 1937, Thelma Townshend, with whom he had a daughter. He is survived by his daughter and his second wife, the philosopher Cora Diamond, whom he married in 1995.

Professor A. D. Woozley, philosopher, was born on August 14, 1912. He died April 6, 2008, aged 95