H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE: I VERBALI: PRETI

 G.: Preti, then. Filosofia e filosofia della scienza. I distrust the title already. S.: Because it repeats philosophy and then narrows it. G.: Exactly. Filosofia e filosofia della scienza has the air of saying philosophy and philosophy of, as if the latter were both inside and outside the former. S.: Which is not always absurd. G.: No, but it is often ugly. One wants to abstract the pattern first. Filosofia e filosofia della X. Or filosofia dello Y. Or filosofia di Z. S.: Yes. And then ask why some substitutions feel natural and others preposterous. G.: Precisely. Filosofia della scienza is intelligible enough. Filosofia del linguaggio, though I dislike it, has become naturalised. Filosofia della religione, tolerable. Filosofia dell’arte, old and respectable. S.: And then your monsters. G.: Obstetricy of rats. S.: You mean philosophy of rat obstetrics. G.: Exactly. Or ornithology of non-flying avians. S.: That is almost redundant. G.: That is why it is useful. Theology of paganism. S.: Which at least has a history. G.: Biology of invertebrates. S.: Perfectly normal. G.: Exactly. And that helps. Some genitives designate a coherent branch. Others merely expose an academic impulse to annex by suffix. S.: Then your complaint about filosofia della scienza is not that it is senseless, but that it invites the annexing mood. G.: Yes. It sounds less like a subject than a summons. Philosophy, back into uniform, and off to the laboratory. S.: You are repeating yourself, but dryly. G.: Repetition is the common-room form of principle. S.: Yet surely some philosophy of this or that is harmless enough. G.: Harmless until it becomes somebody’s official identity. “He is a philosopher of language.” I have overheard the phrase often enough, irritably enough. S.: Because you dislike “language” as an abstraction. G.: Detest it, except in one civilised case. The only language I admit is a formal calculus, with a specified vocabulary, formation-rules, and perhaps transformation-rules if one is feeling generous. S.: While Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, English. G.: Are not languages in that philosopher’s purified sense, but enormous historical muddles with poetry, taxes, invasions, and pronunciation. S.: So when someone called you a philosopher of language. G.: I wanted to reply that I had spent a couple of classes as CUF Lecturer arguing precisely against that abstraction. S.: Against language. G.: Against “language” as a misleading singularity. Ordinary people speak Anglo-Saxon derivatives, Anglo-Norman inheritances, Englishes plural, idiolects, dialects, registers, but not Language with a capital L. S.: The Italians at least know this through the Crusca. G.: Yes. Mere linguistic botanising, but honest botanising. S.: And the French ignore it through the Académie. G.: Quite. They legislate where they ought merely to prune. S.: Then philosopher you are willing to be. G.: Reluctantly, yes. S.: But philosopher of X. G.: There the trouble starts. Add too narrow a clause and philosopher no more. He becomes a local official. Our man at Oxford for nineteenth-century continental aesthetics. S.: A ridiculous title. G.: Entirely. Tomorrow we shall have another who supersedes him, and the day after perhaps two men. S.: Two men for nineteenth-century continental aesthetics. G.: Oxford can survive that sort of duplication if properly underfunded. S.: Yet every man at Oxford was, in some sense, a philosopher of ordinary language. G.: Was, yes, though I should prefer not to say it that way. S.: You mean ordinary-language philosopher. G.: Exactly. There is a distinction, and you may make it if you like. S.: Gladly. Philosophy of ordinary language sounds as if ordinary language were the object. Ordinary-language philosophy sounds as if philosophy proceeds by attending to what ordinary language already does. G.: Precisely. The philosophy is not about language, never mind ordinary language. It uses ordinary language as a check on metaphysical inflation. S.: So the hyphen saves a doctrine from a department. G.: Splendid. Keep that. S.: Thank you. G.: Then Preti’s title annoys me because it sits right at the edge of the departmental temptation. Philosophy and philosophy of science. As if philosophy could preserve itself by becoming the reflection-office of science. S.: Yet Preti may mean to secure philosophy by relation, not by subordination. G.: Perhaps. But titles are guilty before arguments acquit them. S.: That is severe. G.: It is economical. S.: Let us try another route. What is a philosopher. G.: Ah. There one enters the OED at one’s peril. S.: Or the degree statutes. G.: Worse. When I got my B.A., it was a baccalaureus in artibus from the Sub-Faculty of Philosophy of the Faculty of Literae Humaniores. S.: Which means you were not awarded a degree qua philosopher. G.: Precisely. It would have been impossible, or nearly so, for Oxford to certify me as a philosopher simpliciter. One was processed through arts, honours, faculties, sub-faculties, and only then philosophy. S.: So the institution did not quite know how to award philosophy as such. G.: No. It awarded literacy, civilisation, gradation, performance under examination. Philosophy entered under literae humaniores and survived there by stubbornness. S.: Then most of you were, as you once put it, graders. G.: Dependent scholars, yes. Having been pupils, then pupiling or tutoring pupils, grading, examining, producing one more turn in the degree-awarding machine. S.: That sounds faintly Marxian. G.: Merely collegiate. S.: But different from philosopher. G.: Entirely. A philosopher may be prone to general reflections on life, or professionally engaged in philosophical studies. S.: The latter is circular. G.: Exactly. S.: So the former. G.: I suppose so. One who reflects generally, systematically perhaps, but certainly beyond the local burden of his office. S.: Yet Oxford men lived by office. G.: For bread and butter, yes. Tutor, lecturer, examiner, fellow. Philosophy often entered only in the margins of those titles. S.: Which is why you resist “philosopher of X.” It makes the office the man. G.: Exactly. It gives one a portfolio rather than a mind. S.: Yet Austin liked the portfolios, in a way. G.: Austin liked control. That is adjacent, though not identical. S.: You mean the playgroup. G.: Naturally. He wanted it composed only of slaves. S.: A severe word. G.: Accurate enough. Graders, whole-time tutorial fellows in philosophy, junior enough not to preen, senior enough not to need instruction in the alphabet, but not too senior to threaten the chairmanship. S.: No pupils. G.: Certainly no pupils. No one upon whom one might show off pedagogically. Everyone present had to be safely within the machine. S.: So the playgroup was para-philosophical, but still professional in its social selection. G.: Exactly. It was not a free republic of wisdom. It was a controlled colony of the degree-awarding system. S.: One more turn in the machine, as you say. G.: Yes, except done on Saturday mornings and with better examples. S.: Yet Socrates would have objected. G.: Socrates objected to many institutional conveniences. S.: Because for him it was the love of wisdom. G.: Or the wisdom of love, if one is feeling Platonic after tea. S.: So Austin’s little polity was less eros than procedure. G.: Very much so. Though he had a genius for making procedure look like spontaneous intelligence. S.: Then philosopher in Oxford was already a compromised role. G.: Inevitably. One earned a degree not as philosopher, but as one who had survived arts, classics, literae humaniores, sub-faculties, collections, schools, and dons. S.: Which makes “philosopher of language” even funnier. G.: Yes. One has not yet been awarded philosopher, and already one is philosopher of. S.: You sound almost Roman. G.: Oxford is Rome with worse roads and better weathered stone. S.: Then back to Preti. Why Filosofia e filosofia della scienza, specifically. G.: Because the title almost dramatizes the split. Philosophy proper and philosophy under scientific annexation. S.: Or philosophy in relation to science. G.: If one is charitable. S.: And Preti was often charitable toward logico-scientific culture. G.: He was, and that is one reason he interests me. He sees rhetoric and logic as two cultures, not merely two words. S.: Yet his title still risks shrinking philosophy into supervision. G.: Precisely. I dislike any title that suggests philosophy survives by fastening itself parasitically to another discipline’s prestige. S.: But philosophy of science may still be philosophy if it asks sufficiently general questions. G.: Of course. That is why the matter is irritating rather than simple. One can do philosophy through science without becoming merely the porter of science. S.: Then your abstraction exercise matters. Filosofia e filosofia della scienza. Filosofia e filosofia della religione. Filosofia e filosofia dell’arte. These work because the second term names a field in which general questions can still arise. G.: Yes. Whereas philosophy of rat obstetrics. S.: Still very bad. G.: Delightfully bad. It exposes the mechanism. Not every genitive yields a discipline. Some merely record a librarian’s overeagerness. S.: And philosopher of language. G.: Is often philosopher of a badly made singular. S.: Yet your own work was later filed there. G.: Filing is one of the revenge-mechanisms of posterity. S.: So if you deny language as a philosophical singular, what do you allow. G.: Meanings, utterances, speakers, hearers, intentions, occasions, conventional signs if one must, calculi if specified, and the whole civilised muddle of Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and English if one is doing history. S.: But not Language. G.: Not as an occult substance. S.: Then the Italians with their Crusca. G.: At least collect words honestly, like herbs. S.: Linguistic botanising. G.: Exactly. And the French legislate because they cannot garden without uniforms. S.: A little hard on the French. G.: Not hard enough. S.: Then philosopher of ordinary language is wrong because. G.: Because ordinary language is not the topic but the methodical reminder. One does philosophy by returning to how expressions actually work in ordinary use. S.: Hence ordinary-language philosophy. G.: Yes. The philosophy is ordinary-language in temper, not about ordinary language as an object. S.: Though later generations blurred that. G.: Inevitably. Once a method hardens into a movement, someone will install a department for its relics. S.: Then philosopher again. If the professional definition is circular and the institutional degree does not certify it cleanly, philosopher must remain partly honorific and partly aspirational. G.: Very good. One becomes philosopher less by award than by habit of mind and perhaps by the dangerous willingness to generalise. S.: Dangerous because. G.: Because the institution pays one for particulars. Essays, tutees, finals, revisions, references. Generality is usually smuggled in under those burdens. S.: Which is why Austin’s playgroup mattered. G.: Yes. It gave one a para-professional margin in which philosophy could breathe without immediately becoming grading. S.: Yet even there, control. G.: Austin never fully forgot the degree-machine. He wanted whole-time tutorial fellows, no pupils, no public, no one likely to take notes for posterity. S.: So no one present could use it to show off to juniors. G.: Precisely. The hierarchy had to be flat enough to preserve inquiry and vertical enough to preserve Austin. S.: That is very dry. G.: It is also true. S.: Then Preti’s title perhaps belongs to another institutional world, where philosophy and philosophy of science can appear side by side without the same Oxford anxieties. G.: Quite. Pavia is not St John’s. Nor is Florence. Italian titles can be grander because they grow nearer chairs and systems, farther from weekly essays. S.: Whereas Oxford hid philosophy under literae humaniores and then under sub-faculties. G.: Like contraband. S.: So when Preti says filosofia della scienza, he may still be doing something more candid than an Oxford don would. G.: Very likely. The Italian can state the relation. The Englishman prefers to smuggle it through examples. S.: Retorica e logica, then. G.: A better title in some ways. At least one sees the contest. Two cultures, two modes, two claims on seriousness. S.: And there you are happier because rhetoric for you is not mere ornament. G.: Exactly. I find the rhetoric to the logic, if you like. The implicature to the explicature. S.: Preti, then, is useful because he sees that rhetoric and logic are not separable by mere contempt. G.: Yes. He knows that clarity itself has a style, and that anti-idealist plainness is still a rhetoric. S.: Which returns us to philosopher. G.: As one who can reflect on such oppositions without becoming merely their bureaucrat. S.: So “our man for nineteenth-century continental aesthetics” is the bureaucratic version. G.: Precisely. Today he handles aesthetics, tomorrow another man handles him. S.: Oxford by portfolios. G.: Oxford by accidental sovereignties over topics. A very bad way to think about philosophy. S.: Yet the machine needs labels. G.: Machines always do. S.: And degrees. G.: And degrees. Baccalaureus in artibus, sub-faculty, faculty, literae humaniores. Never simply philosopher. S.: Which may be salutary. G.: In one way, yes. It prevents precocity from becoming credential. S.: But it also obscures what the life is meant to be. G.: Exactly. One becomes adept at surviving structures and only later asks whether wisdom has entered anywhere. S.: Socrates again. G.: Always a nuisance in the best sense. S.: He would not have liked sub-faculties. G.: He would have corrupted them all. S.: Then Austin’s insistence on whole-time tutorial fellows only. G.: Was one of those Oxford oddities in which the para-professional is protected by making it more professional socially and less professional officially. S.: So the playgroup was free only within a carefully arranged servitude. G.: Splendidly put. S.: Thank you. G.: Keep that too. S.: I am beginning to accumulate permissions. G.: Do not become philosophical on their basis. S.: Too late. Then perhaps the final line on Preti is this. Filosofia e filosofia della scienza is an irritating title because it exposes the temptation to make philosophy survive by genitive annexation, yet it also reveals a real problem, namely how philosophy relates to the prestige and method of science without surrendering its generality. G.: Very good indeed. S.: And your own line on philosopher. G.: Philosopher, yes. Philosopher of X, only under protest, and only if X is large enough to fight back. S.: Language would not qualify. G.: Not as an abstraction. Lingo perhaps, in a pub, but never Language on a form. S.: Dry enough. G.: Sufficiently Oxonian. The degree-machine may go on awarding arts; wisdom will have to remain unofficial.