[lit-ideas] The Great Go and the Little Go
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:21:04 EST
McEvoy:
"philosophy was taught at
Oxford only via Classics or Greats - so only people who already had a
linguistic turn in dead languages (Ancient Greek being dead now, I think)were
allowed to touch the subject"
--- Thank you for your recollections, and am sorry you had a bad time at
Oxford with the philosophy of mind -- and ...? -- what other course?
Philosophy of Mind is quite a clique at Oxford. Since they only have TWO
chairs: Metaphysics and Morals -- I don't count LOGIC as Philosophy -- they
NEED
to have Readerships. Gareth Evans was thus Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy,
etc.
And if you're into mental, you're not into metaphysical, and all that.
But, as I wrote in my Little Go and Great Go, indeed, "Classic" was the gate
to Philosophy, but I'm not so sure that was a bad thing.
I can speak as an Indo-European speaker. Latin and Greek are Indo-European,
and so, not such a torture to learn, as if I were, say, Japanese -- McCreery
may inform us as to how Philosophy is taught in Tokyo.
So, it's more like a mental exercise, and linguistic turn, yes, I like the
idea -- by McGee that it was the first turn of the screw, as it were. Grice
admits that in a passage I've quoted elsewhere about the stonewalls of Oxbridge
being protrected by this 'sensibility of linguistic usage', etc.
If you think of it, life is pretty long, so having, say 5 years -- as the
Greats programme Grice engaged in was -- into Classics and Philosophy via the
Classics, you still have a lot of life to develop other subjects.
I think part of this is the idea that Oxford is so old and medieval, that it
would be a pain if you were to go through philosophy without being able to
grasp, say, William of Ockham's Summa Totius Logicae in the original -- given
that English translations are a murder.
Ditto for the Greeks.
Also, when you've 'imbued' in the Classics -- and they tend to be VERY
repetitive -- you realise that, say Locke, is fighting, struggling, to get a
philosophical idiom in the Vernacular.
It would be a pity if Oxford types were only taught ENGLISH philosophy
written in English, so as a foreigner for whom English is not a native
language, I
welcome that kind of xenophilic affiliation with the Classics. But I _am_
biased.
It's also the English personality; because you won't see in Oxford
philosophers an overwhelm of quotations of Classical authors, as you would find
in
France if somebody had done that curriculum -- Think Michael Chase.
The Classic curriculum was something they had to undergo, and kept it silent
and for themselves, without need to quote.
What the Classic background may explain is their idea to provide the same
kind of syntactic analysis for English idioms,
When you say, 'moving the arm', 'my arm moved'. I can picture an Etonian --
and Austin and Grice were public school boys -- who had mastered Latin and
Greek already in the 6th form, and who thus therefore had more time to explore
philosophy per se --unlike students coming from other backgrounds where the
Classic language requirement would be more like a 'filter' --.
And I can picture the tutor or classics master having the student translate
into English the idiomatic phrase in Greek or Latin. This had the big drawback
that ENGLISH grammar was underestimated and only the Categories of LATIN
grammar were seen as useful.
Classics were never taught _per se_ but as a mental exercise to have the
students aware of their English language background, etc.
It's interesting that Grice taught Classics for a year at Rossall just upon
getting his MA from Oxford. Apparently he did not like it, and came back to
Oxford as a post-graduate student with Merton (Harmondsworth Fellow) -- and
finally obtained his fellowship at St. John's.
It's misleading to think of a school, too, when one has been in Oxford, and
see the distance of it all. A whole city dedicated to philosophy, and things
pretty far away from each other. I can imagine Grice at his study at St.
John's not really having to SEE Pears at Christ Church.
And the figure master of the 'Oxford school' of the playgroup was really not
Ryle, as we know, but Austin. The man was so distant, that nobody (surely
Grice included) considered him his friend. He would spend Saturday afternoons,
and Sundays gardening in his rather country retreat --.
If you think of it, it's just as well, because it must be pretty boring to
think that one philosopher's FRIEND has to be a philosopher!
What is also very abstract is that the idea of "University of Oxford" is so
abstract. There are so many loyalties at play. Your alma mater, the
Sub-Faculty of Philosophy, the Ockham Society, the Jowett Society, the
Philosophy Club,
etc. The different colleges (although they don't say 'college').
Plus the thing is a TOWN -- and I did detect a sort of resentment on the
part of the GOWN that High Street is SO BUSY! And noisy!
Still, I think it would be the best place -- especially if you are attending
for the Spring of 1946 -- to engage yourself in the serious study of
philosophy.
Think of it also in political terms. Austin had fought in the War, and so
had Grice, Strawson, and most of them. So:
(1) They were pretty sceptical about human progress in general, and would
rather never again see a riffle.
(2) They wanted to be left alone doing what they wanted. And what they
wanted is TALK, in ways that examined what they were saying. Rather than
building
big systems and castles in the air.
Cheers,
JL Speranza
Argentine Society for Philosophical Analysis
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Author of "The History of Grice".
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