Herbert Paul Grice and Gordon Park Baker

Speranza

Gordon Park Baker, philosopher, was born on April 20, 1938.

Herbert Paul Grice was born in 1913.

Baker died at Woodstock in Oxfordshire, of the untreatable consequences ofmelanoma, on June 25, 2002.

Baker was an Oxford scholar who collaborated on a thoroughgoing explication ofthe philosophy of Wittgenstein.
Baker will be best remembered as one of a distinguished band of scholars who made the exegesis of Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings a major part of their studies.

--- unlike Grice who overheard Austin, "Some like Witters, but Moore's MY man".

Gordon Park Baker was born in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1938.

Herbert Paul Grice was born in 1913 in the Heart of England.

Baker's father was a lawyer inNew York.

Baker's mother was a biochemist at the Columbia.

Following the educational pattern of "upper middle-class" (as we don't call them) Easterners, Baker entered the Phillips Exeter Academy and then Harvard, where he majored in mathematics.

A Marshall scholarship took him to Queen's College, Oxford, in 1960 to read philosophy, politics and economics, or PPE for short -- On the other hand, Grice held an old-fashioned Lit. Hum. degree.

Dissatisfied with the course, Baker mastered enough Greek in a few months to transfer to Greats -- Lit. Hum.

Baker began a doctorate in 1963 which he completed only in 1970, teaching meanwhile at the University of Kent and then as a fellow of St John's College, Oxford -- as Grice.


It was there that he began the collaboration with London-born philosopher Peter Michael Stephan Hacker made famous by their exegeticalvolumes on the work of Wittgenstein.

By the early 1950s, only two volumes of the writings of that enigmatic genius had appeared in print.

These were the TractatusLogico-Philosophicus of 1922 and the immediately posthumous Philosophical Investigations of 1953.

Each book had in its timecreated a considerable stir.

Commentaries on Wittgenstein's thought proliferated then and continue to do so at an astonishing rate.

At Oxford, Gilbert Ryle, D. F. Pears, G. E. M. Anscombe, Brian McGuiness and many others taught and wrote about him.

Wittgenstein's condensed and epigrammatical style contributed not only to the fascination with which his philosophy was regarded but also to many interpretations as to what message it conveyed.

Cfr. Oscar Wilde.

Indeed, Grice fell to Witters's charms and would often quote him if only implicaturally:

"That spoon looks like a flower".

With Peter Michael Stephan Hacker, Gordon Park Baker set about a massive scholarly project to unveil the philosophy of Wittgenstein in as clear and faithful a manner as possible.

Meanwhile, Grice was setting about a massive scholarly project to unveil his own philosophy in as clar and faithful a manner as possible. His Grice Papers are all available at the Bancroft Library, UC/Berkeley.

Wittgenstein revised and refined his reflections into thousands of paragraphs, and the product is so tightly woven that misunderstandings were rife.

Baker and Hacker began unpacking the condensedand subtle paragraphs into definitive readings.

This involved noto nly exegesis but also a thorough exploration of the history of the stages by which Wittgenstein reached the versions that we know.

"Baker and Hacker" is a collaboration of first-rate importance in the history of philosophy.

Two massive volumes emerged from the project in the 1980s, as well as several volumes of essays.
Those who did not leave ("never soon enough") for London and were otherwise privileged (as they may say at Oxford) to attend the Baker and Hacker class on Friday evenings at St. John's, recall Baker's enthusiastic stammer, his Gallic gestures, the lights glinting on his bald pate and the broad grin with which he accompanied some particularly telling point.

Baker's philosophical studies of the sources of Wittgenstein's thought led him into adjacent territories.

With Hacker Baker developed an interpretation of the work of Gottlob Frege, contrary in various ways to the received views expressed in the work of Michael Dummett.

Baker noted this in his contribution to the Grice festschrift: "Alternative mind-styles", where he almost childishly sets to analyse these two mind-styles neither of which were Grice's -- but Wittgenstein's and Frege's.

An amiable but deep-thrusting controversy developed between Gordon Park Baker and Michael Anthony Dummett, enlivening several of those Friday evenings at St. John's.

Grice would rather attend, decades before, the SATURDAY mornings -- cfr. his analysis of the implicature for "Thank God is Friday".

Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein's one-time amanuensis, also became a focus of scholarly interest.

The revisions of later editions of Waismann's textbook-like presentation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy owed a great deal to Baker's scholarship.

-----

In 1990, the Baker and Hacker partnership began to dissolve, largely over the question as to how far Wittgenstein's writings expressed definite philosophical theses.

Similarly, by the late 1950s, the Grice and Strawson partnership began to dissolve, largely over the question that they got bored.

In recent years, Baker's studies reached not only into territories adjacent to the Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein exegesis but also into reflections on Wittgenstein's professional relations with Bertrand Russell.

Baker also turned to the history of the philosophy of mind, with a book on Descartes' Dualism, co-written with his partner Kathleen Morris.

The insights of great philosophers are of use to us in various ways but not precisely if and when we have misunderstood them.

Baker's aim in whatever study he was undertaking was to make exquisitely clear what he took the author to have been saying -- or "meaning" at most.

His rigorous pursuit of this ideal led him not only into controversies over the philosophy of Frege but also into criticisms of what he believed to have been serious mistakes in the philosophy of language.
Baker's catalogue of scholarly achievement would have been remarkable if he had held a research chair in some well-endowedAmerican university.

But Oxford philosophers, alas, generally did their thinking and writing while the also engaged in tutorial teaching, and Baker was a busy college fellow with whom generations of Oxonians (notably at St. John's) were privileged to study.

Baker was not much inclined to administration, however, although he did serve as a trustee of the Waismann Fund, setup with the royalties that accrued to Oxford from the posthumouspublications of Waismann's writings.

In 1964, Baker first married Ann Pimlott, with whom he had three sons.

In Oxford his tall, gangly figure was often to be seen striding into the Real Tennis Court, racquet in hand, and from 1984 until last year he took part in the annual fathers and sons tournament.

Baker, like Grice, was also anaccomplished pianist -- and harpsichordist.

From 1978 to 1989 Baker and his family took part in the Oxford musicatl festival, tackling such works as Bach's Fourth Brandenburg Concerto.

Alongside his Oxford life, Bake  indulged a strange passion for the country of France -- this may have to do with his 'upper middle-class' American Eastern background.

Baker had a house in Perigord which he restored from semi-ruin.

Baker put his knowledge of the language to good use on many visits to Paris by introducing French philosophers to Wittgenstein -- since the vice versa was not feasible -- "introducing Wittgenstein to French philosophers".

Gordon Baker left his wife in 1992 and was living with Katherine Morris. (Grice never left Kathleen Grice).

Both of them survive him, as do the three sons of his marriage.