Grice and the Oxford Tradition in Philosophy

While Grice did leave Oxford in 1967, for "good", as Americans say, he didn´t. I mean, you read the latter Grice, and, for one reason or another, he keeps reminiscing, "with virtual detachment" but amusement, I think Chapman qualifies the thing, of the VERY early Oxford days: mainly the 1930s that he hardly saw!

He has unpublications entitled "Oxford in the 1930s" and one wonders because in tapes he refers to this period as maligned for him for "having been brought on the wrong side of the tracks". He was, after all a Scholarship Boy from the Midlans in the Midlands college of Corpus Christi, where all the big things were happening at All Souls with Austin.

He does have papers, too on "Oxford in the 1940s" and that´s more understandable. He also has papers entitled, this amused me, "Oxford in the 1960s" and I THINK, "Oxford in the 1970s" which I think may refer to his visiting the Place for the Locke Lectures. But, in true honesty, I think the paper, cited by Chapman, is "Oxford 1940-1970", which may round up 1967 (the year he left) to make it a decade.

In any case, anyone familiar with Oxford knows how fascinating the atmosphere was when Grice was there. This parochialism of Grice´s attitude is enriching, I find. For it looks for connections of a very local type, in discussions of a very local type, etc. -- beFORE you can engage in larger issues.

I always look for an Oxonian link to some view of Grice before I go on to compare it with Umberto Eco or Confucius.