Grice in Post-War Oxford: This includes 1945 to 1988, the year of his death

--- by JLS
----- for the Grice Club.

GRICE NEVER LEFT post-war Oxford. Why should he? It was post-war Oxford that represents the best that Oxford has to offer.

"post-war" was Macmillan's slogan. Rationing, etc. and more rationing. Everything had to be 'postwar'.

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Grice was old enough when he returned to Oxford, but older enougher still was Strawson, his 'student'. Horn commented: "You saw Grice and Strawson together and you would hardly believe that one was a student of the other." Horn is talking from his Yale experience where HIS (female) students look like veritable bobby soxers.

On the other hand, Strawson was 'old as the hills'.

THEY HAD NO TIME TO SPEND. Dummett hints, obscenely, that "they would DIE to get a post". But no. Grice had been elected, safely, a Fellow of St. John's, and that's all he needed or wanted. Later he became "University Lecturer".

They: Austin and Grice, mainly -- had seen the tortures of wartime and wanted to "do" philosophy. They ignored ALL tradition: Bosanquet, Bradley, John Cook Wilson, Prichard, Price, Collingwood, Ryle -- who cares?

They insisted on TALKING about what the OTHER was thinking. "Other Minds", Grice on "Meaning", -- and they gathered new talent around them.

Hampshire did not count, because he was old and had known Austin from the pre-war years. But

R. M. Hare was a good addition to the play group.

And so was P. H. Nowell-Smith (In his obituary, last year, he wrote -- well, not 'he', but you get my drift -- "By the late 1950s, I was so overwhelmed by those clever chaps, Austin and Grice, that I simply had to leave for Leicester").

There was P. F. Strawson, of course, -- Grice's "Platonic" friend, i.e. with which he would discuss Socrates.

And there were more to come:

G. J. Warnock was a good addition. He is the quintessential (or sextessential, if we keep GRICE as the quintessential) English philosopher. He has this sensitiveness for English use that Grice admired. "How clever language is!" Grice said to Warnock. He meant it as a compliment, "How clever YOU are, Warnock".

Then there was J. O. Urmson, who, while old, was a charmer, and was NOT old enough NOT be rejected by Austin (he would not allow anyone his senior in his Saturday morning kindergartens).

There was H. L. Hart, the rich of the All Souls group.

And there was G. A. Paul.

And there was a new talent, who unfortunately got the Wittersian flu in later years: D. F. Pears.

And there was J. Francis Thomson, with whom Grice collaborated on 'philsophy of action'.

Add to that Grice's tutees: starting with A. G. N. Flew (the famous atheist), and a few others, and you wonder how he found time to philosophise.

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With the death of Austin it was even worse. Grice had to ORGANISE things. A student who attended the Saturday mornings post-Austin recalls: "the lack of a blackboard was something I missed. It was just impossible to keep in my head all the 'linguistic botanising' that Grice would drop at the drop of a hat".

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Add to that a busier schedule: symposium with the Aristotelian Society in 1961 ("Causal Theory of Perception"), having to entertain Quine a few years before that ("In defense of a dogma", with Strawson) -- crossing the pond to lecture at Brandeis, Princeton and Wellesey, and you get the picture.

By 1967 he had had enough. He decided to settle in this Spanish house he had seen in the Berkeley hills.

--- But he remained reminiscing about the Dreaming Spires his whole life.

--- He had, of course, to drop the names of Davidson, or Myro, or Yablo, or, you name them, but HIS thought was already 'framed' ('framework'). He could NOT get away wihout it. The methodology was there: linguistic sensitivity, linguistic botanising, a flirting with formal logic, an irreverent attitude that grew more irreverent with the years, and -- charm. For, where do you get that, today?