[lit-ideas] Re: Geachiana

  • From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2013 06:24:49 -0500 (EST)

Peter Thomas Geach was the son of a Cardiff-born philosopher, George Hender 
 Geach, who taught (the father, not the son) at Cambridge (briefly). Geach 
was  NOT born a Catholic, but was what Geary calls a 'Catholic convert'. It 
may be  that Geach's Catholicism was caused by his father who gave him to 
read, at age  13, McTaggart's book on the dogmas of religion.

Geach's father was in  India when Geach was born, but his mother (who was 
carrying Geach junior)  wasn't. Strictly, Geach was CONCEIVED overseas, but 
Geach's mother arrived in  England for Geach's birth. He was born in what is 
called Lower Chelsea (as  opposed to Higher Chelsea). But soon moved (by his 
mother, a German-born  daughter of Polish immigrants, Eleonora Frederyka 
Adolfina [Sgonina]) to  Cardiff. It is said that after childhood Geach never 
saw his mother again. (She  separated from Geach father and had a career as a 
poet in Oxford -- in one of  her poems she refers to her marriage with 
Geach's father:

I loved you for  a year
perhaps a little more 
And now it’s all over 
And I feel as  though I had never known you
I feel no gaps, no longing
Your passage  through my life 
was like the flight of a bird through the sky.

In any  case, Geach junior was educated at Llandaff cathedral school and 
soon sent to  CLIFTON (the same public school Grice was attending). While 
Grice got a  scholarship in Corpus Christi (Oxford), Geach became a student 
with 
 Balliol.

But unlike Grice's, Geach's connections with Balliol and Oxford  in general 
seemed to have been weaker. It is said, for example, that Geach  opposed 
"linguistic philosophy" of the type being practised in Oxford, as 'too  
informal' -- which while may apply to Strawson it doesn't to Grice.

Yet,  Geach was able to do things other than getting a philosophical (or  
'humanitarian' as we prefer, Lit.Hum) at Oxford -- he obtained a BA and a MA 
--.  He was also a Gladstone Student back in Wales -- St. Deiniol's Library 
in  Hawarden. At the same time, he was being instructed by a Dominican 
priest, Fr.  Frank Keohe, in Oxford.

He even managed to engage in some research at  "the other place", where he 
took courses -- labelled 'post-graduate' -- with Von  Wright and Witters.

An obituary of G. E. M. Anscombe (Geach's wife --  cfr. The Geachcombes) 
reads, rather in bad taste -- New York Times -- that while  Anscombe landed in 
Oxbridge, Geach's affiliations were 'less prestigious' (I  certainly don't 
share this regarding the Bridge): Birmingham -- or Brum as the  locals call 
it) and Leeds.

He was also, like Grice, a FBA.

Geach's  contributions to philosophy are multiple. He invented the 'donkey  
sentences':

Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it.

and later  complicated the contexts:

Hob thinks a witch blighted Bob's mare. Nob  wonders whether she killed 
Cob's sow.

In general, he was a source of  inspiration for G. E. M. Anscombe. On one 
occasion, Geach expressed:

"I'm  a big man, so I need a big dose of so I'll take ... you know. My 
father really  used to reason like that"

This gave Anscombe the idea that Aristotle's  practical syllogism had 
"I'll" as a consequence (cited by Mary  Geach).

Geach liked to engage in heterodoxies. Against R. M. Hare, and  the Oxonian 
establishment, Geach held that 'good' is a descriptive term, not  
prescriptive -- "a good xylopterometre" is a xylopterometre (whatever that is)  
which 
fulfils its function. We get a grasp of what 'good' descriptively means  
without needing to bother what 'xylopterometre' does.

He also challenged  Stevenson's emotivism, arguing that "Eating people is 
wrong" (the reluctant  cannibal) is not expressive in 'point'. 

In general, he was best in the  company of W. V. Quine, with whom he 
corresponded extensively. And he would  re-visit Oxford occasionally, at least 
once for a symposium held at Balliol on  the philosophy of religion. He indeed 
was made an Honorary Fellow of Balliol at  one point.

It was apt that his second Christian (indeed Catholic) name  was Thomas -- 
Peter Thomas Geach -- since he become a defender and formulator of  what has 
come to be called (by Haldane) "Analytic Thomism", with Kenny -- and  
Dummett?

He loved to 'read and marginally write' what he called -- in  
"International Who's Who", under 'leisurely interests', "bad old logic books",  
where we 
assume the implicature is versus the cliché "good old". Since, no book  is 
as bad as you can't find some good thing in it (as Aristotle said, oddly at a 
 time when books were mere parchments). It is especially ironic that Geach 
should  concentrate on bad old logic books, since he confessed (in the 
non-Catholic  'use' of this trick verb) that if he became a logician (as Grice, 
who is  described by Bartlett as "a British logician") that was because his 
father had  him read at an early age Keynes' 1887 logic manual, which, as the 
etymology  goes, Geach usually kept at hand -- usually the right one.
 
Geach's writing was copious and a bibliography of his work was composed for 
 a tribute to Geach edited by his Leeds colleague Lewis. Geach was kind 
enough to  contribute his own "Philosophical Autobiography" which is especially 
candid, and  forceful replies to the contributors who, while they included 
none of Grice's  strict circle -- but Hintikka and Quine was there -- they 
were nontheless very  notable! (Dummett, Williams, Norman Malcolm, von 
Wright, etc.)
 
Geach will be missed.
 
Cheers,
 
Speranza
 
---
 
CONTENTS TO "PHILOSOPHICAL ENCOUNTERS"
 
 Geach 
A PHILOSOPHICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
 
 QUINE/GEACH
SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE
 
 GEACH
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
 
 D. P. HENRY
ABELARD AND MEDIAEVAL MEREOLOGY
 
 A. J. P. KENNY
FORM, EXISTENCE, AND ESSENCE IN THOMAS  AQUINAS.
 
 WOLNIEWICZ
The DISCONTINUITY of Witters's Philosophy
 
 WRIGHT, G. H. Von.
POSSIBILITY, PLENITUDE AND  DETERMINISM
 
 PETER GEACH
LOGIC
 
 J E J ALTHAM
PLURAL & PLEONETETIC QUANTIFICATION
 
 ANSCOMBE-GEACH
On a queer pattern of argument
 
 HINTIKKA
GEACH AND THE METHODOLOGY 
OF the LOGICAL  STUDY of Natural Language
---- Hintikka also contributed to the  previous festschrift for H. P. Grice.
 
 McCAWLEY (linguist)
NATURAL DEDUCTION & ordinary  language discourse structure 
 
 DUMMETT
Does Quantification involve Identity?
 
 MUELLER
Conceptual surroundings of absolute identity.
 
 C. J. F. WILLIAMS
Sameness and selfhood
 
 GEACH
Philosophy of religion
 
 N. MALCOLM,
PHILOSOPHICAL CONFUSION AND SIN
 
 H. MEYNELL
On improving Christianity
 
 GEACH
REPLIES
 
 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS OF PETER THOMAS GEACH, son of George  Hender 
Geach, of Chelsea, educated Clifton and Balliol, Oxon, BA MA. 
 
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