What Happens in Oxford

--- Stays in Oxford?

By JLS
for the GC

RECALL that these were NOT the days of multiculturalism! When Grice was directing the "Colloquium on British Contemporary Philosophy" at Oxford ("members of the colloquium will live at Brasenose" -- they don´t specify where they´ll die -- ah well). Grice was proud of his background. In his obituary, Geo. Richardson, a Glasgewian who is elsewhere described as "coming from a humble bakground" indeed instils this sort of "admiration" for a man who had had the best of public-school educations (Clifton), yet was -- well, accessible.

Warnock reminisces in "Saturday Mornings" how UNinterested they were in those days about publishing and stuff. The thing was to BE parochial. While Grice was engaged by the British Council to guide "overseas colleague" into the life and buildings of Oxford philosophy (!), he cared for the routine of weekly discussions. He loved an early evening seminar, and dwell with minutiae over this and that idiom. "How clever language is!" he told Warnock. Compare with the pessimism of Witters: "We are imprisoned by our lingo".

In those days, people had a renaissance education, and Grice was known as a "cricketer" in the North Oxford cricket club. He also led the Oxford Film Society ("The Third Man" and "The Secret Agent" were his favourite films and Norma Shearer his type of star), played bridge and stuff. None of the specialty we see today!

Consider Baron Quinton. He was the "voice" for the "linguistic movement", but there´s no way you´ll read something by Quinton on that that won´t also mention Witters. He was the Witters expert. Today, you need a P. M. S. Hacker to do just that!

Grice also saw the sort of "decline of privilege" in Oxford. In Reply to Richards he finds that Gellner and Bergmann were concerned that the "Establishment" had found a voice in a generation of "classics graduates" like Austin, Ryle, and Grice were -- these were the days before the "Philosophy, Politics and Economics" programme -- who had a capacity hardly shared by "hoi polloi". You would think: microbiology? ethnology? No way! Latin and Greek!

---- In those days, to quote too technical a piece of writing by a linguist (Grice cares to mention in "Reply to Richards" how he found Otto Jesperson (sic) "a man of the highest intelligence) was a no-no. As was to get a doctorate! As Quinton notes in his essay on "The Graduate School", doctorates were pursued at Oxford only by medics and theologians! (On the other hand, philosophy dons were just happy with keeping in touch with the old boys´ ties as their tutees joined the corridors of power in London -- vide his "Oxford in fiction" for a description of Powell´s Oxford-based novel). Imagine today! It´s tenure track and publish OR perish, where the disjunction is apparently EXCLUSIVE! Ah well.