Max Black versus Herbert Paul Grice

Speranza

Speranza


Max Black, né Max Tcherny in Russia, was a philosopher, the eldest son of Lionel Tcherny.

Black read Mathematics at Queen's, Cambridge, where he attended Witters's classes and became interested in philosophy and logic.

After graduating he taught mathematics at the Royal Grammar School, in Newcastle before taking up a lectureship at London's Institute of Education.

He concurrently worked on a doctoral thesis on mathematical logic for which he was awarded a PhD.

Max Black and his family moved to America where he took up an appointment at the University of Illinois, moving to Cornell in Ithaca.

He helped to build the reputation of Cornell's philosophy department.

He wrote widely on language, logic and conceptual analysis: his magnum opus was his study of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

But he also wrote about Herbert Paul Grice for the "New Literary History", volume 4!