Onora Sylvia O'Neill and Herbert Paul Grice -- and Kantotelianism

Speranza

Onora Sylvia O’Neill and Herbert Paul Grice have a few connections. “A few” invites a few implicatures. And that’s not a paradox. There is perhaps easier to find connections between O’Neill and Grice than, say, between O’Neill and Popper – but as Popper would say, one never knows.

The connections start with Grice being strong at Greek (which he learned at Clifton) and O’Neill being strong at German (which he learned at Germany – his father moved from Ireland to Germany). Both later attended Oxford, and this gives rise to Kantotelianism.

Kantotle is very often quoted by Grice, more often than by O’Neill – so you have another connection there. Being enrolled in the Lit. Hum. Programme, it’s natural Grice spent more time with the second part of “Kantotle,” i.e. the Stagirite. O’Neill earned her BA and MA while at Somerville, and as she likes to say, the fact that she was brought up in Germany ‘led the way’ to Kant, almost naturally – she has, therefore, concentrated more on the first part of “Kantotle,” the Koenigsbergian one.

There are various points of overlap. Grice’s tutor at Oxford was Hardie; O’Neill at Somerville was G. E. M. Anscombe. Rather, it was Anscombe who noted that O’Neill needed to be in touch with the philosophy tutor at Somerville.

Another point of contact is Judith Baker. Browsing through the Grice collection at The Bancroft, one notices that Grice left a treasure on his interpretation of key Kantian (and Kantotelian) themes. O’Neill has written long essays on the bits of the Kantian system that interest Grice.

Then there’s the overlap with communication. While a Kantotelian, Grice’s system of communication leans towards the Kantian. In the Harvard lectures on conversation he takes Kant jocularly, but speaks of ‘maxims,’ ‘principle’ (of cooperation), and conversational categories – O’Neill’s main focus has been on what for Grice would be the ‘conversational category’ of Quality – that O’Neill would say pertains to trustWORTHINESS – she makes a lovely point of distinguishing between ‘trust’, “a mere response,” and ‘trustworthiness’. (Warnock does the same in his “Morality” essay). The more technical issues of universalizability are also dealt with by both Grice and O’Neill. Grice goes as far as to mention a conversational immanuel (whose maxims would be universalizable), and O’Neill has contributed to collections dedicated to this tricky issue.

The Aristotelian side is more difficult to grasp, but surely there wouldn’t have been a Kant without an Aristotle first, so we can always bring him in!