"Professional philosopher and amateur cricketer"

Obituary of H. P. Grice, PFS. The Times, London.

Professor H. P. Grice: philosopher and amateur cricketer. The Times, Aug 30.
Professor H. P. Grice, who went from a distinguished academic career at
Oxford to hold the chair of philosophy at the university of California at
Berkeley between 1867 and 1980, died on August 28 at the age of 75. It
would be the view of many that, in power and subtlety, Grice's
philosophical gifts were unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries. He saw
both clearly and deeply, but above all he cultivated and exercised a
delighted mastery of intricate and protracted argument, both in support of
his views and perhaps with even more relish, in demolition of the
incautions pronouncement of others. If there was an objection to be found,
no one could be confidently relied upon to find it; if someone
generalisation was vulnerable to a counter-example, Grice would produce it.
He was not a good lectureer, chiefly because to each simple point that
undergraduate audiencesccould grasp, he could not bear to add the could of
subtle qualifications that he saw to be strictly required. He would
sometimes, indeed, put in the qualifications before reaching the point at
all. As a tutor also, if his interests were not fully caught by his pupil's
offerings, he could be formidably taciturn., He was at his best among
equals, formal or informal, will colleagues or graduate students: then, so
far from being taciturn, he could be almost unstoppable -- indifferent to
both food and sleep, and apt to take it ruthlessly for granted that his
interloctors were as tough and ineshaustible, both physically and
intellectually, as he was himself. He also wrote best, or at least most
readily, when he was wriging papers for discussion. He needed the stimulus
of actual or anticipated reaction, and seemed to find purely solitary
composition a depressing business. The question, naturally arises why, whis
his great gifts and prodigious energy, Grice should have published so
little. This was certainly not because of practical incompetence. It is
true that he was untity on a heroic style, living knee-deep in old clothes,
scattered papers and books, and (always unanswered, opten unopened)
correspondence. Be he could organise both himself and others most
effectively when he wished to; the superficial disorder of his life was
mainly a self-protecting choice, a way out of doing things it would have
bored him to do. NOr was it that he did not write, nor even that he did not
really want, or intend, to publish. The bloock appeared to be that he could
hardly ever bring himself to regard any work as finished, When not writing
for some immediate purpose, some lecture or seminar, but as it were for
posterity, he felt that his text ought to be absolutely invulnerable and
completely exhaustive, every objection or misunderstanding foreseen, every
loophole blocked, every loose end tied. Inevitably, given his own
unequaleed critical powers, he could hardly ever believe that this
condition had been adhived, and so insisted on holding on to this work fo
ryet further refinement: and regularly finding that further refinement was
possbile, he always felt himself vindicated in his doctrine of delacy. It
was a by produced of this attitude to publication that his rare published
work -- nearly all in the philosophy of language -- became sometimes, not
always elaborated to a degree that obscured, almost buried, its initial
insight; his original articlde on Meaning (_Philosophical Revie, 1957) was
thus, probably, more _useful_ than the far more ingenious, sophisticated
papers that grew out of it. He viewed publication, one might say, as the
day of judgment, and could never feel that his work was, _sub specie
aeternitatis, completely equipped for that tribunal. He did not in fact
believe that anyone else's was either, and sometimes contemplated with
depression the long record of philosophical failure to get anything exactly
right. Born in England, H. P. Grice educated at Clifto and Corpus Christi,
Oxford, where he was an open scholar, and took first and both Mods and
Greats. After holding a Harmsworth Senior Scholarship at Merton (1936-38)
he taught classics at Rossall School for a year, and was then elected to a
Fellowship in Philosophy at St John's, Oxford, in 1939, which he held till
1967. During the Second World War he served in the Navy, first in
destroyers on Atlantic Convoy, and afterwards on Admiralty intelligence. In
the post-war years he paid several visits to universities in the United
States, where his contributions to post-graduate seminars in Brandeis and
Harvard Universities were very highly valued. He was elected a Fellow of
the British Academy in 1966. He delivered the William James Lectures on
Logic and Conversation at Harvard in 1967, and in the following year
settled permamentnly at the Uniiversity of California at Berkeley. In
recent years he had continued, with unflaggingly active at Berkeley in both
teaching and wriging, to be sparing of actual publication. However, a
celebatory volume of essays on his work, PGRICE -- Philosophical Grounds of
Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends -- was published, and a book from
his own hand titled _Studies in the Way of Words- and based on the James
Lectures which he delivered at Harvard as at the dime of death finished and
published posthumously. Since then, two more books have seen the light: The
Conception of Value, ed. by J Baker, and Aspects of Reason, ed. R O Warner.
In Grice's life, while he was in England, the only rival to philosophy,
during part of the year, was cricket. He played sometimes for his country,
and regularly for half a dozen clubs; he would go on several tours in the
course of the summer, and for some years probably played as many innings in
a season as a full-time professional. He had an excellent eye, and became
an intelegant effective and prolifif batsman, He also bowled- medium pace
with the right arm, slow with the left arm - but, at least in later years,
not often or very seriously. As captain of one of his clubs, the Barnacles,
he was a tireless and efficient organiser, in iron disciplinarian, and
uninhibited critic, and a shrewd technician relentlessly bent on victory.
Once saw here one aspect of his formidable personality; once fairly
launched in pursuit of what he wanted, he was extremely difficult to
deflect. As A companion this tended to make him, whether in a classroom or
on the cricket field, alternately stimulating and exhausting, rather than
easy; but his capacity for enjoyment was as seeingly limitless as his
energies, and his company could never be dull. He had represented
Oxfordshire at Bbridge as well as at cricket. He was a good chess palyer,
again without regard for foor or sleep. Grice was a competent pianits and a
serious, though very intermittent, composer -- again unable, for the most
poasrt, to bring his work to what he could accept as comptetion. He was a
greatly gifted person".