ABSTRACT
An expression of ignorance cannot intelligibly be an expression of total ignorance. What BambroughRenford do not know must have a shape, a specification. In returning to the form and manner of a personal statement he is reacting against a reaction, and hence illustrating the dialectical pattern that he has described. Thirty years ago we thought that we were entering an age in which philosophy would and should be as impersonal as physics or logic. The omission of the autobiographical prefaces from the Third Series of Contemporary British Philosophy was one sign of the new times. The suggestion is sometimes made that all this confidence in truth and reason is anthropocentric arrogance, or even that it is egocentric arrogance. The philosophical equivalent of this classic stance is described if not achieved by Collingwood when he speaks of the grand manner in philosophy.
