H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA -- LA CONVERSAZIONE: VERBALI: RUTILIO

 G.: I must prepare this for the Examinations Hall with a straight face, which is always the first difficulty of philosophy. S.: And the second? G.: Hoping that members of the university may take something out of it without my being held responsible for what they take. S.: You are giving it publicly, then, not as a tutorial. G.: Certainly not as a tutorial. A tutorial is a weekly sentence with a carpet and a witness. S.: Whereas a class in the Hall is a freer animal. G.: Freer, yes, though never wild. Oxford only permits wildness when it can later deny it. S.: And this is one of your own classes, without co-seminarist. G.: Exactly. No Pears to civilise me, no Warnock to look judicial, no Austin to correct the weather. S.: Then you mean to leave time at the end for discussion. G.: I do, though one says that in a tone suggesting generosity rather than danger. S.: But you rather like the danger. G.: Only in others. In oneself it is called exposure. S.: Then what is the announced topic? G.: Rutilio, naturally, and the inconveniences of calling implicature a figure of speech. S.: Which is exactly the sort of thing that may attract every member of the university and satisfy only six. G.: Six is abundance in philosophy. Twelve is a movement and twenty a mistake. S.: You are thinking of the playgroup again. G.: I am always thinking of the playgroup when numbers become morally significant. S.: But this is not the playgroup. G.: No. The playgroup was para-professional marmalade. This is bread and butter presented with a napkin. S.: Yet you intend to speak as if conversation were still possible. G.: One must. A class without the possibility of conversation is merely dictation with upholstery. S.: Still, the Hall alters the thing. G.: Of course. In a tutorial the pupil has been assigned, prepared, and cornered. In the Hall he arrives under no duty except curiosity, vanity, bad weather, or an interval before luncheon. S.: So your public hearer is not a tutee. G.: Thank God. A tutee is a moral category as much as an academic one. S.: And your role is different too. G.: Entirely. In a tutorial I assign weekly essays and then punish their consequences. In a public class I publish a line of thought with no guarantee that anyone will carry it home properly. S.: So this is philosophy as free circulation. G.: Free in the Oxford sense. Available to all members of the university, though not necessarily equally survivable by all. S.: That sounds almost liberal. G.: It is merely administrative. S.: Still, you like this sort of thing better than the official lecture. G.: Better and worse. Better because one may try an idea in the open without packaging it for print. Worse because the open attracts persons. S.: Persons being the traditional hazard. G.: Especially members of the university. They arrive furnished with questions. S.: Which you invite. G.: Only at the end. One must never allow the discussion to begin before the distinctions have been laid out, or Oxford will mistake interruption for thought. S.: Then the class has a shape. G.: Naturally. Even free publication requires architecture. S.: How will you begin? G.: With the nuisance in the phrase, since nuisances are often where philosophy hides. I say implicature is a figure of speech. S.: You are reusing the opening. G.: Reusing is what civilisation calls remembering. S.: And from there to nous and lexis. G.: Yes. One must get the Greek nuisance on the table before the English tidy-mindedness makes a mess of it. S.: And Rutilio enters as custodian of schemata lexeos. G.: Exactly. A Roman at the door to keep the moderns from thinking rhetoric means peacocks. S.: That will disappoint some classicists. G.: Classicists are resilient. They have survived metre. S.: Then in the Hall you will say that all implicature is schematic. G.: I shall say it and then immediately retreat into explanation, as one does after dropping an undergraduate word like all. S.: You enjoy that moment. G.: It is one of the few remaining privileges of seniority. S.: And you will also say that even the dictum is figured. G.: Yes. Otherwise one leaves the audience with the consoling delusion that only the implicature is rhetorical while the said remains a marble bath. S.: You mean to disturb the worshippers of the plain sentence. G.: Gently. One does not smash idols in the Hall; one rearranges them and watches who notices. S.: Then the dictum arrives with neustic, phrastic, clistic, and tropic in tow. G.: The four subatomic particles of respectable utterance, yes. S.: That may be too much for some of the audience. G.: Good. A public class should contain at least one item that embarrasses the merely diligent. S.: And after that? G.: After that I move to the title question. Why De figuris sententiarum et elocutionis if the Greek keeps schemata dianoeas and schemata lexeos in tighter order. S.: You mean to bring in sententia and elocutio. G.: Of course. One cannot mention Rutilio in public and then deny the audience its genitives. S.: But will they endure the genitive? G.: Members of the university must endure something. Otherwise why keep the Hall. S.: Then you will say sententia is not quite your word. G.: Yes. I shall say that Grice, if he were feeling himself in Aspects of Reason trim, would prefer dianoia where sententia sounds already too public, too formed, too nearly the thing as available to others. S.: Because what a reasoner reasons matters to him before it matters to the audience. G.: Precisely. Though a public class is no place to sound too solipsistic. One must keep enough sociability for the Rector’s ghost. S.: And elocutio? G.: There I shall insist that the e- is not vacuous decoration. It marks not lace but the settled rhetorical noun for articulated expression. S.: Not mere locutio, then. G.: No. Locutio would be too loose, too everyday, too close to speaking as event. Elocutio is expression as formed saying. S.: Which helps your thesis that even the literal is figured. G.: Exactly. The so-called literal is only rhetoric whose clothes have become socially invisible. S.: Will you give an example? G.: I may mention cream in coffee if I feel the room has earned it. S.: That is generous. G.: I am not always. S.: And the manuscript business? Will you touch it? G.: Briefly. Enough to say that the oldest witness takes us to Florence and that one should never trust a title tradition to remain philosophically tidy. S.: So no codicological orgy. G.: This is the Examinations Hall, not a paleographer’s cellar. S.: Then where does the conversational theme enter most fully? G.: In the point that schemata lexeos are not ornaments added to content but public forms under which content is achieved, recognised, and made inferentially available. S.: So the public class itself becomes an instance. G.: Inevitably. I am trying to say something in a formed way to hearers who may or may not recognise why I say it as I do. S.: Which means the class about conversation is itself a conversational performance. G.: Yes, though with benches. S.: And without weekly essays. G.: Mercifully. The Hall does not return essays. It returns faces. S.: You make that sound worse. G.: It is worse. An essay at least lies still. S.: Yet this public form appeals to you. G.: It does. There is a peculiar pleasure in addressing those who need not be there. S.: Because they come under no compulsion. G.: Exactly. Tutorial duty produces a captive audience, which is useful but morally untidy. A public class gathers the voluntarily endangered. S.: And you know some will take something from it. G.: One hopes so. Not necessarily what I intended, but some residue, some distinction, some improved suspicion about “figure of speech.” S.: Even if uptake is uncertain. G.: Especially then. Publication without guaranteed uptake is one of the few civilised gambles left to a don. S.: You make it sound noble. G.: It is only less squalid than grading. S.: Will you mention the difference between your classes and Austin’s sessions? G.: Not explicitly. The Hall is no place for family gossip under another name. S.: Yet the contrast matters. G.: It does, but only obliquely. Austin’s occasions were controlled climates, para-professional and bounded. My public class is official in venue, unofficial in motive, and open enough to remind one that Oxford still occasionally behaves like a university rather than a sorting machine. S.: That is almost affectionate. G.: Do not spread it about. S.: Then what do you hope the audience will hear, if they hear anything worth hearing? G.: That the distinction between figure of thought and figure of speech is too blunt for the life of utterance, and that rhetoric, understood properly, belongs not merely to decoration but to the very possibility of publicly recognisable meaning. S.: That sounds almost publishable. G.: A public class is where one discovers whether a thought deserves the fatigue of publication. S.: So this is testing the line before it goes to paper. G.: In part. Also enjoying it before paper ruins it. S.: You really think print ruins things. G.: Print fixes what conversation keeps decent by movement. S.: Yet you publish. G.: I sin with the rest. But a class lets one leave a margin at the edge of assertion, a little air around the dictum. S.: And the discussion period after? G.: There the university may show whether it has listened or merely attended. S.: You expect a question about metaphor. G.: Certainly. There is always one person who thinks metaphor is the whole province and another who thinks it a regrettable suburb. S.: And perhaps someone will ask whether all this means that explicit content is impossible. G.: I shall say no, explicit content is possible, but only under forms of saying that are themselves not innocent of figure. S.: That will annoy the plain men. G.: Plain men need exercise. S.: And the classicists? G.: They will be pleased to hear Greek uttered in public and disappointed by my accent, which is the correct relation between Oxford and antiquity. S.: What of the tutees in the room, if some come? G.: They must enjoy the rare spectacle of their tutor speaking without immediately converting speech into assignment. S.: That may be the greatest philosophical novelty on offer. G.: Quite possibly. S.: And if no one asks anything at the end? G.: Then I shall have been clearer than usual, which would be a professional misfortune. S.: You prefer some resistance. G.: Naturally. A class without a question is either a triumph or a failure, and one should never too quickly decide which. S.: What sort of question would please you? G.: One that shows the hearer has seen that “of speech” does not mean “merely verbal,” and that “figure” does not mean “frill.” S.: What sort would displease you? G.: “Can you recommend a secondary source?” uttered with administrative innocence. S.: Someone will ask it. G.: Then the university will have justified its architecture. S.: Are you nervous? G.: Only in the healthy sense that public thought ought not to feel wholly upholstered. S.: And if the room is larger than expected? G.: Then I shall become more Roman and less conversational. S.: Rutilio in self-defence. G.: Precisely. S.: You do realise that what you like best in these occasions is not simply to teach but to release a thought into the university and see whether it breeds. G.: That is too biological, but not false. S.: So this public class is a form of philosophical sowing. G.: If you insist on agriculture. I should have preferred architecture. S.: Very well: a laying of stones in public. G.: Better. One lays them and watches who later mistakes them for a path. S.: Then perhaps that is the right contrast with the tutorial. There you assign a route; here you lay a few stones and leave the walkers to themselves. G.: Splendid. Keep that. S.: I thought you might. G.: It is exactly right. The tutorial commands labour; the public class offers orientation. S.: And the playgroup? G.: The playgroup tested companionship. S.: So there are the three forms. G.: Yes. Tutorial as weekly discipline, class as public orientation, playgroup as chosen conversational luxury. S.: Bread and butter, bread offered, and marmalade. G.: You have improved my menu. S.: I try to keep up. G.: Then perhaps I shall end the class by saying that if rhetoric belongs to the conditions of saying, philosophy ought not to blush at being heard in public. S.: That would be almost civic. G.: Examinations Hall encourages occasional civility. S.: And the punchline? G.: Since it is open to any member of the university, I shall probably say that if even the literal comes dressed for speech, then a public class is merely the university’s way of admitting that naked thought was never properly dressed for the Hall in the first place. S.: And what, in Oxford, is naked thought called? G.: Usually discussion after the lecture.