ABSTRACT
During the last quarter of a century Oxford has occupied, or reoccupied, a position
it last held, perhaps, six hundred years ago: that of a great centre of philosophy in
the Western world. During the same period my predecessor in this Chair, Professor
Gilbert Ryle, has been the centre of this centre. We owe much to his vision, his
enterprise, and his devotion as a kind of overseer - a wholly non-autocratic overseer
- of the subject’s development and organization; we owe much more to his fertility,
his brilliance, and his originality as a philosopher.
