Grice Takes The Lead, 1960-67

Of the Play Group that is.

From Owen, obit of Ryle, Aristotelian Society:

"In the later 1930s, two fairly jealously guarded groups of senior philosophers were meeting in Oxford. One inaugurated some ten years earlier, included

G. Ryle,
JD Mabbot

[of St. John's -- he mentions Grice in
his autobiography, Oxfod Memories, 1986. JLS],

H H Price, and
R. W. Hardie [Grice's tutor at
Corpus. JLS] and at different times

C S Lewis,
W C Kneale, and
D Cox.

It met fortnightly for dinner and discussion and was formally disbanded some
forty years after its conception. The younger group began later and
dissolved earlier. It included

JL Austin,
I Berlin [co-student with Grice
at Corpus, also tutee of Hardie],
SN Hampshire,
AJ Ayer,
HLA Hart, and HP Grice.

----

Grice confesses: "rarely -- I had been brought up on the wrong side of the tracks"

----

"Its weekly meetings were continued and enlarged after the war [when,
with loads of people going back to 'varsity, Oxford was _the place to be
doing philo_], and

carried on after the loss of Austin by Grice until he
left Oxford."

[That would mean 1967. JLS]

"There was no overlap, or only the most occasional and contingent, in the
membership of these groups. Their motivations were different [...] There
was no Vienna behind them [the first group]; as there was behind the group
that started in the 1930s. ... Neither of the two Oxford grups came near to
a cult,

though perhaps the later came nearer" (p. 270).

Etc.