Grice and Geach on the longitudinal and latitudinal unity of philosophy

Speranza

Geach writes:

"In the preface to [Witters]’s Tractatus there is a well-known sentence in which he refuses any obligation to assign the sources of his thought; so he has been thought ‘ahistorical’ and even culpably ignorant."

But then Grice would refer to sources very implicitly. His 1948 "Meaning", for example, makes a passing reference to Stevenson's then sort-of newish book, "Ethics and language" (Yale University Press, 1944).

"Even in that preface," Geach goes on, "however, he owns his indebtedness to Russell and Frege; and though he read few philosophical works, he read certain works often and intensively."

Geach goes on:

"I remember on his book-shelves William James’s Principals of Psychology, a German-language selection from Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Augustine’s Confessions, and Frege’s Grundlagen."

"So," Geach concludes, "he is no precedent for anybody who would neglect the great thinkers of the past."

Monk goes on to note that Witters said that reading other philosophers made his own philosopher worsen!