H. P. Grice and J. L. Speranza

 

Note to the Reader (on the “authorities” in the SCR) A convention, briefly. In the register that follows, certain figures are Romans in the historical sense but are treated, for the purposes of the dialogue, as if they could be discussed in St John’s by appeal to whatever passes, in Oxford, for local expertise. The Senior Common Room is therefore used as a standing committee of the relevant Tutorial Fellows and allied college authorities. This is not biography, still less influence; it is casting. Never complain, never explain. Accordingly, the names of the in-house authorities most likely to be pressed into service (1939–1967) are kept here, in reach. Philosophy. J. D. Mabbott. Later, at the end of the period, P. M. S. Hacker. Classics and Latin. Donald Russell. Ancient History (Roman). A. N. Sherwin-White. History (medieval, and the longer memory Oxford borrows when it wants to sound inevitable). R. W. Southern. Modern Languages (French). W. G. Moore. Economics (for when an Italian “philosopher” turns out to be, in fact, a financier, a census-taker, or a minister of supply). George B. Richardson, Official Fellow from 1951, and author of Economic Theory (1964). Physics (for when the conversation requires a plain fact to survive the metaphysics). Roger J. Elliott, Fellow and Tutor from 1957. Names retained as nearby St John’s contemporaries, whether or not invoked as authorities in the Roman-philosopher dialogues. Howard Colvin. Keith Thomas. Open questions left open, on purpose. The existence, under those exact titles, of a Tutorial Fellow in Psychology or a Tutorial Fellow in Sociology at St John’s in 1939–1967 is treated as a matter for checking against the College’s official lists, rather than assumed in advance.