Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Grice, Flew -- and Speranza! -- cited in excellent paper by Uschanov!
In his essay in a book, where Uschanov refers to the "Strange Death of Ordinary Language Philosophy", a few good references are given of Flew's response to Gellner's book -- also mentioned by Grice. Flew called it a 'juvenile book' --. The issue revolved around Dummett's insidious question, "is there an Oxford school?". In his Blackfriars "Oxford philosophy" essay, Dummett suggests there isn't. The 'school' was formed to get all the interesting posts in the aftermath. "Victory attained", writes sarcastic Dummett, no need to self-identify as a group was thought important. Gellner should be less of a heavy-weight, in that he is originally French and really interested in Mallarme and Verlaine.
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A version of the Uschanov essay is online here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.helsinki.fi/~tuschano/writings/strange/
Thanks. Yes. It is a good essay. I believe it got a first prize in a competition held by R. Vanegas. It must have been via my sharing Grice's views with Uschanov publicly that got me a credit. Uschanov certainly spent some time in looking for sources and things. The way he quotes from totally forgettable journals is just charming (just joking). The one to quote here is this Frenchman, Gellner. While nobody seems to have read (or taken seriously Dummett's "Oxford philosophy" because it came from WITHIN -- cfr. Weiss's essay by the same title --, people were just infuriated by Gellner. "Vulgar", I think was the way to describe that little thing. Uschanov considers the arguments in some detail, notably the Paradigm Case Argument. My ref. to Grice to Uschanov must have been to the "Postwar Oxford philosophy" bit in the WoW. ---.
ReplyDeleteGrice in "Reply to Richards" goes on to quote from Gellner (and disparage him) along with Bergmann (who at least, Grice says, had a sense of humour and call Grice and Company a bunch of "English futilitarians".
It's just amazing and shows the SPIRIT of the Dreaming Spires how a man (like Flew) who was NOT a philosopher nor meant to be just meets Grice and decides to become one. And he stays in the Dreaming Spires for a couple more years after the MA (nobody does a DPhil in Oxon, it's overachieving and looked down on), he never ceased to be an "Oxford philosopher". Never an Ealing one. Odd.
Oddly S. G. Brown, who loves an erratum, has this good passage which I've learned by heart:
"Educ: St John's. Infl: Personal influences include Paul Grice, John Mabbott and Gilbert Ryle" in THAT order. The thing is online and refers of course to Flew. Alas, Brown has Flew having been born in Cantab. would have rung the wrong bell in the ONLY place.