Closing Comments

Almost 40 years ago a student of mine in England was kind enough to give me a book he had come across in a second-hand bookshop in London, Norman Clark’s An Introduction to Kant’s Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1925). The gift was explained in large part by the book’s opening sentence: “It may seem strange that one perhaps more readily associated with the National Sporting Club [a club for gamblers, especially upon horse-races] than academic pursuits, should have written on Kantian philosophy.” Were I going to offer today a “philosophical autobiography,” or even just some more general autobiographical remarks, that might have been close to a good starting-point here too, but to the immense relief of all present I shall do no such thing. Aside from the “asquito”—(literally, a slightly nauseous feeling)—provoked in me by the very idea of my trying to do any such thing—you will surely appreciate how both my literary style and emotional life have been shaped by a recent Governor of Jalisco—along with my reluctance to follow in the footsteps of a young Carlos Monsiváis in seeking out so as to destroy all copies of an autobiography almost as precocious as that of Justin Bieber, I have always had—with one caveat—a marked preference for biographies rather than their auto-cousins. A competent biographer saves me at least from the often laborious task of reading between the lines, of trying to decypher quite what lurks within the caution or conceit (schoolmasters, observed Evelyn Waugh’s Dr. Fagan, must temper discretion with deceit). A bland and friendly example: is Strawson’s almost jarring remark in these politically correct times as to how his life was enriched by “the company of clever and beautiful women” best taken as a conscious echo of Hume’s, perhaps uncharacteristically, observing that in the context of the “particular pleasure” he “took … in the company of modest women” he had no reason to be “displeased” in the reception he “met with from them”? (Not that much labour is always necessary: understanding the former Knightsbridge Professor in Cambridge C. D. Broad’s albeit not so guarded remark in 1954 as to how he had “derived more happiness … than from any one other source” from his “power to make friends with the kind of young men” whom he liked and admired, “despite 184great disparity in age,” ¹ requires nothing more than passing knowledge of the treatment then handed out to (male) homosexuals in England (think of Alan Turing).)