[hist-analytic] PPE, Quinton

[John W. Heintz]

Anthony Quinton was President of Trinity College Oxford in 1980.
PPE is Politics, Philosophy, and Economics

jh

On 10-Jan-10, at 6:19 AM, jlsperanza at aol.com wrote:

>
>
> Political Philosophy: The Oxford  Tradition
>
> In a message dated 1/9/2010 7:32:40 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> Baynesr at comcast.net writes:
> That would be Sir Anthony Quinton. Isn't he  librarian, or was, at
> Bodelian?
> In any case, this is a perticularly good  anthology. I read a number  
> of
> essays
> a long while ago, but I'm going to be  returning to this. Carritt's
> "Liberty
> and Equality" will be among the first  on my list, since it's  
> implications
> for Rawls (the second principle  qualifies the first as equality may
> qualify liberty) is crucial. Also, the  essays by Benn on  
> "Sovereignty"
> etc.
>
> ----
>
> That's very good. Indeed, Anthony, Viscount Quinton -- I am told his  
> title
> was a New Year's celebration from the Queen after Quinton's work on
> educational  policies. I first saw Quinton on a photo. And that's B.  
> Magee, "Men of
> Ideas",  the BBC book based on the BBC lectures. You see Quinton  
> sitting I
> think at  Trinity, his college, and talking about, I think, the  
> spell of
> linguistic  philosophy.
>
> Hampshire, who I corresponded on the matter of what Hampshire and I  
> called
> the 'old play group' -- the Tuesday evening meetings at All Souls --  
> told
> me  that Quinton possibly got influenced by Grice on matters of the  
> causal
> theory of  perception. I would have to revise the correspondence. I  
> tend to
> remember that  Hampshire told me that he (Hampshire) and Quinton  
> attended
> Grice's seminars on  perception. Those were the days when colleagues  
> of such
> statute would just 'sit'  like that for hours!
>
> ---- I think Carritt too has Oxonian associations, and so does Benn,  
> and so
> does Donagan, so your reading list looks amazingly amazing!
>
> Now, for a time PPEs were looked down at Oxford. You had to be a  
> Lit.Hum.
> to count. Strawson, for example, was a PPE -- I forget what it  
> stands for,
> but  one P is for Politics. I am unaware how the teaching of political
> philosophy is  organised. Hart taught Jurisprudence (the [...] Chair  
> of
> Jurisprudence]. I don't  think there is a chair of political  
> philosophy, which is just
> as well -- do not  multiply chairs beyond necessity, my Oxonian  
> motto. And
> I'm very pleased that  the three chairs that matter start with a W:  
> White,
> Waynflete and Wykeham. It  simplifies things so.
>
> Incidentally, I think you should distinguish between:
>
> -- Meinongian contracts
>
> -- other.
>
> Meinongian contracts are no contracts. They are irreal things. E.g.  
> Rawls
> and the veil of ignorance. Surely such a thing is a myth of not the  
> best
> Platonic kind. (Grice uses 'myth' but with other goals in mind -- vide
> Wharton,  last chapter in his "Pragmatics" books). Meinongian  
> contracts are
> metaphorically  so, but on the other hand they attain non- 
> metaphorical validity
> status. You are  supposed to be bound by a contract that their  
> appealers accept
> was never signed  or anything!
>
> We should also distinguish between: levels of pacting or compacting or
> contracting. Lawyers and accountants use the word 'contract' so  
> freely that
> they  give 'contractualism' a bad name. The scholastics took the word
> seriously. First  there was the Jewish, as you say, or Biblical,  
> alliance with God,
> which we need  not go over.
>
> But when it comes to authors of contractualism proper, we need to
> distinguish between the 'social' contract per se (that which  
> contracts 'pirots'  who
> can abide by this sort of contract -- e.g. non-rational pirots cannot
> really  engage in contracts), and the 'political' contract.
>
> When Moreno used the 'contract' theory to justify the Argentine  
> revolution
> against Spain, he was criticised for lumping when you can split.  
> Surely the
> Argentines were still _human_ when they rebelled against the King of  
> Spain
> (the  holder of the other side of the contract as it were). So the  
> social
> contract was  never broken or breached. It was the political  
> contract, rather.
>
> Whatever the complexities that follow from this are!
>
> I title this Grice's Myth, because the word is so used by Wharton in  
> his
> book for this policy by Grice of appealing to myths of this or that  
> type (his
> example is one for the origin of language) as having explanatory  
> power. I
> would  like thus to compare Grice's use of myth with other uses of  
> myths,
> say, in  political philosophy, as they involve contracts per se.
>
> Cheers,
>
> J. L. Speranza
>    for the Grice Circle
>
>