Renford Bambrough on Gilbert Ryle

Ix style c'est Ryle. I used these words in review of Dilemmas in the Cambridge . eview in 1954. If I had known that the 'affie words in the same order were the last sentence of J. L. Austin's review of The Concept of Mind in the Times Literary „Supplement in 1949 I should have expressed myself differently, and in swerving from the plagiarism might have come nearer to a just representation of Ryle's g posture and demeanour. What Austin and 11„ I said and meant is true enough, even if ; only because every philosopher worth reading signs every page with a manner that e constitutes rather than shows the work8 ing of his mind. Something that we said o Without quite meaning it is more true and more important: that Ryle does things with Style and dash, a determination to cut a fl and make a mark. He has recently written of his choice of a theme for his major work: Quite soon after I doffed my khaki in 1945, 6 Paton, as Editor of the new series, Hutchinson,.s

A Philosophical Library, invited me to contribute to it. I agreed, without yet having a clear if mind about the future book's theme. I did

re know, however, that I wanted to apply, and be I seen to be applying to some large-scale philo,1 sophical crux the answer to the question that h. ad preoccupied us in the 1920s, and especially in the 1930s the question namely "What constitutes a philosophical problem; and what

is the way to solve it?" It was time, I thought,

5 to exhibit a sustained piece of analytical .hatI chet-work being directed upon some notonous

and large-sized Gordian Knot. After a long

of enlightened methodological talk, what was needed now was an example of the method , really working, in breadth and depth and where it was really needed. For a time I thought of the problem of the Freedom of the Will as the most suitable Gordian Knot; but in the end I opted for the Concept of Mind . . . .

It would be unkind and unfair to think of Lear's threat to do such things (what they were he knew not) as should be the terrors of the earth, but this is at least reminiscent of Milton sitting down to decide whether his masterpiece should be epic or tragic, and whether on the theme of Macbeth or King Arthur or man's first disobedience. Collingwood was thinking of something different when he spoke of the grand manner of philosophical writing, of which he said that there were no examples in English between Hume's Treatise and the works of Samuel Alexander and A. N. Whitehead. T. his grand manner is not the mark of a period; it is the mark of a mind which has its philoso phical material properly controlled and digested. It is thus based on width and steadiness

of outlook upon the subject matter; it is essentially objective, concerned not with the thoughts of others, whether to criticise or ex pound, but with the features of the thing itself; i

a s marked by calmness of temper and can

dour of statement, no difficulties being concealed and nothing set down in malice or pas

sion. All great philosophers have this calmness of mind, all passion spent by the time their vision is clear, and they write as if they saw things from a mountain-top. This is the tone that distinguishes a great philosopher; a Writer who lacks it may or may not be worth reading, but he certai

ness. nly falls short of great

Now that we have two noble volumes of Collected Papers* to put beside The Concept of Mind, Dilemmas and Plato's Progress, we can form a juster estimate of an achievement which is like Wittgenstein's and Leavis's and Freud's at least in this, that it has been undervalued by some because it has been overpraised by many. The grand manner as painted by Coilingwood is not to be found here, though the control, digestion, calmness and candour deserve high praise. The touches of malice are few and slight, and the passion as carefully moderated as any in the Jane Austen of whom Ryle writes with respect and affection in one of the few of these papers that are not uncompromisingly professional contributions to philosophical debate. But for all that, and in spite of the unexceptionably wise words in Taking Sides in Philosophy, we can see in these pages the qualities of leadership that Ryle went on displaying after he had doffed his khaki, and which led some of his junior contemporaries to speak of "Oxford Philosophy Ltd.: General Manager, G. Ryle." For all the insistent digs at discipleship and Master-ship we can also recognise enough of a party spirit to understand why in the latest 'forties and earliest 'fifties at least one banner-waving pupil was known in Oxford as le feune ouvrier Ryliste. A crusade against the cult of personality is just as likely as any other crusade to breed a cult of personality.

But the bad reasons for paying attention to a philosopher must not be allowed to drive out the good. When the squabbles of inter-war and post-war philosophy have been forgotten many of these fifty-seven papers will deserve to be remembered. The collection adds up to more than the sum of its parts, since it combines an impressive range and variety of themes with a unifying concentration on problems of philosophical method and purpose. Besides the handful of papers that would have to be mentioned side by side with The Concept of Mind in any account of Ryle's influence on other philosophers C Categories ', 'Systematically Misleading Expressions ', Heterologi cality ''If ", " So ", and " Because " and Plato's Parmenides ', which was the first volley in a revolution in Platonic studies, there are twenty others that are widely known and read. Most philosophers will be able to turn first to papers they had long heard of but never seen, and even, unless they are unusually systematic and comprehensive readers of journals and collections, to some that they did not know about at all.

The division between the two volumes ('Critical Essays' and Collected Essays, 1929-68') is inevitably artificial. Volume I contributes' directly to the study of meaning, necessity, thinking and understanding as well as to the elucidation and criticism of the writings of Plato, Locke, Hume, Moore and Wittgenstein, phenomenologists and existentialists, on these and other topics. The same philosophers and numerous others speak up and are answered back in Volume H, whose themes range from Collingwood on the ontological argument to ordinary language from propositions, induction, prediction and abstraction and not differing between right and wrong. Some of the papers originally appeared in French. The publishers do not identify the translater who, it is implied, combines bilingualism with a Rylean turn of phrase hitherto unheard except from /a voix de son matt re.

A short review of a long book is not the place for discussion of a philosopher's arguments. RyIe would be the first to insist that this calls for space and detail, practised though he is on principle at the flash of epigram and the flare of aphorism. What does strike a sustained reader of this valuable and expensive collection is the relative scarcity of the argument that is constantly being said to be necessary for the purposes of philosophy. It is not that Ryle is dogmatic. Sometimes he simply asserts something, but what he asserts often needs no more argument than was offered or needed by the boy in the fairy tale when he pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes, and yet is still worth pointing out. More often he presents reasons, but they take the form of instances and illus. trations rather than premisses in favour of a conclusion. He is near to characterising his own method, which is practised by all good philosophers and preached by few. when he remarks in one place that in philosophical argumentation a conclusion cannot be detached from its premisses, and that in this field it may be inappropriate to speak of premisses and conclusions at all.

He is nearer still in his polemic against Carnap, where, as in the last chapter of Di/Pmmas, he sees the dangers of a professionalism more uncompromising than his own. Those who have learned from Moore and Ryle and Joyce and Eliot not to be sloppy amateurs have not given up the right to learn from Aristotle and Jane Austen that it is possible to be an amateur without being sloppy. The philosopher is as safe as the poet, priest or painter from having to give way to a mathematician or a machine.