H. P. Grice and J. L. Speranza

 

H. P. Grice and J. L. Speranza

J. L. Speranza did not encounter Grice as his tutorial fellow in philosophy, which was probably just as well. Had Grice stood to him in that official capacity, Speranza might well have taken little interest in him at all.

Still, that was Grice’s official distinction: from 1938 to 1967 he held the post of Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St. John’s, Oxford.

One need not be pedantic here, but the conjunction in that title is worth attending to. The more familiar expression “Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy,” though useful in distinguishing such a position from other kinds of fellowship, can obscure the dual aspect of Grice’s office. He was not only a tutor in philosophy, but also a Fellow, and thus a member of the Governing Body of the college. His role at St. John’s was therefore not merely pedagogical but administrative as well. As Tutor in Philosophy, moreover, he shared that responsibility with the only other holder of such a post at the time, J. D. Mabbott.

By the time J. L. Speranza encountered Grice, Grice had already entered the canon, and in the proper way, as neither Grice nor Speranza would have wished to say, “in the proper sense,” since senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. In the more continental habit of philosophical classification by chairs, Grice would naturally have been placed under the philosophy of language. Yet even that requires qualification. For what came first in Grice was “Meaning,” and it was there that one found the kind of subtle and sophisticated analysis bound to attract any philosopher concerned with the central problems of the philosophy of language. Conversational implicature came later, and in a sense secondarily, however prominent it would eventually become in the reception of his work.