Peter Strawson has died. There are obituaries in the “Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1709718,00.html and the “Times”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-2040505_1,00.html . I met him a few times, as I was briefly a member of the Magdalen SCR. Of his contribution to philosophy, I know little beyond “Freedom and Resentment”, but I shall always have an impression of an immaculately dressed figure smoking a cigarette in a peculiarly distinguished way and making witty conversation.
{ 18 comments }
Belle Waring 02.15.06 at 6:01 am
This is irrelevant, but from a young age I had a random association of Strawson and van Fraassen, on account of they rhyme. well, young wrt knowing about philosophy; I don’t mean, like, 8. still, requiescat in pace!
Daniel 02.15.06 at 7:45 am
christ, there was a time when the University College of North Wales (Bangor) not only had a philosophy department but had Peter Strawson in it! I do not blame him for only spending a year there.
des von bladet 02.15.06 at 7:46 am
The Graun says ‘Oxford was the world capital of philosophy between 1950 and 1970’, which strikes us as an odd spelling of ‘Paris’ even by their standards.
James Wimberley 02.15.06 at 9:33 am
I was a student at Oxford in the early 1960s. I’m forever grateful to Peter Strawson and Richard Hare for leading me to Kant, and Oxford philosophy back to the real thing. Does Des von Bladet think Derrida represents the real thing?
des von bladet 02.15.06 at 9:57 am
Derrida wasn’t a big deal until at least ’68, and his status as de facto straw-man of neo-scholastic attempts at anti-French rants is an uninteresting sociological quirk.
Sartre and de Beauvoir and Bachelard and Merleau-Ponty and Levi-Strauss and Foucault and Barthes and mad old Althusser and slightly less mad old Lacan and Kojève and Bourdieu and Ricoeur were the real thing, and Ricoeur even still is.
The last but a couple New Left Review had Badiou getting all misty-eyed about the same era at some length, so it isn’t just me.
Of course in France and elsewhere they never actually stopped reading Kant, possibly as a result of Strawson’s courageous interventions but also possibly not.
Syd Webb 02.15.06 at 1:54 pm
From the Graun:
He is survived by his wife, Grace, whom he renamed Ann
Ah, old school. These days the young wives seem to pick their own names. Is this progress? I wonder.
Matt 02.15.06 at 6:23 pm
Des,
That is a pretty good group, but Merleau-Ponty was dead much of that time, Sartre and de Beauvoir not doing accademic work, Bachelard and Kojeve pretty old (and dead, in Bachelard’s case) Bourdieu and Foucault just getting started through most of that time period, Levi-Strauss doing anthropology, Lacan and Althusser producing trash of various sorts, etc. So, it’s not such a slam-dunk, to my mind. While the Guardian’s statement is not obviously true, the Paris claim is also not totally obvious, either.
des von bladet 02.15.06 at 7:12 pm
Critique de la raison dialectique (1960) is too academic work; la Pensée sauvage (1962) picks an extended fight with it, and I’d quarrel with ghettoising Levi-Strauss even if it didn’t. And I like Althusser too so there.
Bearing, should you wish to, in mind that I hadn’t heard of Strawson when I woke up this morning, who _does_ make the Oxford team? Ayer and Ryle and Austin and Strawson and who? (It’s looking like a walk-over for _les bleus_ from here, but that could be out of sheer ignorance.)
cirdan 02.15.06 at 7:48 pm
I see your daft frenchmen and raise you Michael Dummett, Isaiah Berlin and HLA Hart.
des von bladet 02.16.06 at 6:04 am
Well I’ve at least heard of Mr Berlin, but what has “White Christmas” got to do with anything?
Harry B 02.16.06 at 7:59 am
Grice? (Strawson’s teacher, best of the bunch imho).
Come on Des, fame and popularity are no respecters of quality. Despite being a Brit, I’d add that it seems to me that Harvard has a better claim than Oxford in that period. Both better claims than Paris, though.
Matt 02.16.06 at 9:26 am
I suppose Des is pulling our legs a bit here, since I’m sure he knows full well that even if he really is ignorant of much of the important philosophy going on at the time (as, I’m sure, many English speakers are of the list he mentions) he knows that doesn’t mean they are not important. That said, Elizabeth Anscombe was also at Oxford for much of that time (before moving to Cambridge)as was R.M. Hare.
des von bladet 02.16.06 at 11:08 am
Matt extends me entirely too much credit, for sure. Is there a Greatist Hits anthology I could check out or something? My experiences with C20 Anglophone philosophy have been almost entirely underwhelming — Austin’s brilliant observation that most things persons say are not in fact intended as propositions with a stable truth-value even if you call them p being the highlight to date.
In an Anglophone-philosophical spirit, I put it too Matt that it is at least possible that the most important philosophy from 1950–70 was being done in Quechuan by someone none of us have ever heard of, and I look forward to hearing of his epic quest to check.
But while fame isn’t everything, or perhaps even very much, you shouldn’t underestimate the extent to which having Searle, Dennet and Fodor as the most conspicuous spokespersons (which they certainly were when I was younger) for your tradition is a turn-off the size of Argentina if not Brazil. Searle, in particular, is a large part of why I know so very little.
Chris Bertram 02.16.06 at 11:34 am
I’ve heard that some people dislike Marmite too, but I’m damned if I understand why. Fodor and Dennett are delicious in their different ways and I’m sorry that you can’t appreciate that Des.
des von bladet 02.16.06 at 12:33 pm
Ah well, some people don’t like salt lakrits (AKA drop) or Hollandse Nieuwe, also.
Me, I like both, and Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor and German bread and Swedish tabloids, so although I’d chew my own leg off to escape from ballet or Wagner and I have no taste for many philosophical schools insufficiently oriented (to my mind) towards the structure of the Lebenswelt, I do not especially feel short-changed by the universe.
Dabodius 02.16.06 at 9:26 pm
Stuart Hampshire should also be remembered among that generation. There were giants in those days.
josh 02.17.06 at 2:26 am
There were the Warnocks too, and Iris Murdoch and Phillipa Foot; one can question how high these individuals should be rated, but they did add something to the philosophical ferment. And, though it’s really comparing apples and oranges, I’d take any of them over Lacan, say. (And this is, of course, focussing just on faculty, and not grad students or undergraduates — Bernard Williams being one among the last category — who also shouldn’t be left out [says this grad student]).
des von bladet 02.17.06 at 5:37 am
From the Hampshire obit: “Although considering most continental philosophy vulgar and fraudulent, and contemptuous of hands-across-the-Channel “British Council philosophy”.” It’s funny, Althusser and Gadamer always spoke very highly of him.
But is Iris Murdoch any good at philosophy, though? She is — hands down, daylight second — the worst “serious novelist” I have ever read.
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