Onora Sylvia O’Neill and Herbert Paul Grice have a few connections. “A few”
invites a few implicatures. And that’s not a paradox. There is perhaps easier
to find connections between O’Neill and Grice than, say, between O’Neill and
Popper – but as Popper would say, one never knows.
The connections start with Grice being strong at Greek (which he learned at
Clifton) and O’Neill being strong at German (which he learned at Germany – his
father moved from Ireland to Germany). Both later attended Oxford, and this
gives rise to Kantotelianism.
Kantotle is very often quoted by Grice, more often than by O’Neill – so you
have another connection there. Being enrolled in the Lit. Hum. Programme, it’s
natural Grice spent more time with the second part of “Kantotle,” i.e. the
Stagirite. O’Neill earned her BA and MA while at Somerville, and as she likes
to say, the fact that she was brought up in Germany ‘led the way’ to Kant,
almost naturally – she has, therefore, concentrated more on the first part of
“Kantotle,” the Koenigsbergian one.
There are various points of overlap. Grice’s tutor at Oxford was Hardie;
O’Neill at Somerville was G. E. M. Anscombe. Rather, it was Anscombe who noted
that O’Neill needed to be in touch with the philosophy tutor at Somerville.
Another point of contact is Judith Baker. Browsing through the Grice collection
at The Bancroft, one notices that Grice left a treasure on his interpretation
of key Kantian (and Kantotelian) themes. O’Neill has written long essays on the
bits of the Kantian system that interest Grice.
Then there’s the overlap with communication. While a Kantotelian, Grice’s
system of communication leans towards the Kantian. In the Harvard lectures on
conversation he takes Kant jocularly, but speaks of ‘maxims,’ ‘principle’ (of
cooperation), and conversational categories – O’Neill’s main focus has been on
what for Grice would be the ‘conversational category’ of Quality – that O’Neill
would say pertains to trustWORTHINESS – she makes a lovely point of
distinguishing between ‘trust’, “a mere response,” and ‘trustworthiness’.
(Warnock does the same in his “Morality” essay). The more technical issues of
universalizability are also dealt with by both Grice and O’Neill. Grice goes as
far as to mention a conversational immanuel (whose maxims would be
universalizable), and O’Neill has contributed to collections dedicated to this
tricky issue.
The Aristotelian side is more difficult to grasp, but surely there wouldn’t
have been a Kant without an Aristotle first, so we can always bring him in!
Cheers,
Speranza
