RT list: "Slave of Passions"

As anyone who attends the Foyles' Literary Luncheons or visits regularly D.
 S. M. Wilson's home page at ucl will learn (know, be informed) that she is
the author of this lovely titled novel, as per header.
 
Anyone who takes Wharton's new book seriously will have to start
reconsidering Grice's claims to 'evolutionism' _and_ the relevance of "akrasia".

Akrasia is, roughly, weakness of the will. While Grice was a Lit. Hum.
(Oxon) he SHOULD have stuck with the Greek, but, call this the influence of
Judy Baker, he rather, in his joint article, spoke indeed of 'weakness of the
will' (in Hintikka/Vermazen).

Grice, like my tutor, Rabossi (who knew him) were _obsessed_ with weakness
of the will. In the case of Rabossi, I treasure the occasion when we were
lecturing (I was his assistant lecturer) on Grice, etc., and a reference
was made (by Rabossi) to 'akrasia', with a student displaying some disrespect
(this _is_ Buenos Aires!)
 
  "I think you have no authority to lecture us on
   akrasia when you are possibly instilling cancer
   on us due to your inability to stop reeking that
   bad old Brit pipe"
 
-- For indeed, Rabossi, whom tobacco lead early to the grave, alas, was a
pipe-chain smoker, and as I like to say, pipe-smoking was possibly what his
main legacy of his long years at Oxford was.
 
Most of Grice's own examples -- and the cigarette also lead him to a rather
 early death -- are not about smoking, but other things that may however
count as 'akrasia' -- but then smoking is NOT akrasia, _necessarily_. In
"Aspects of Reason" he narrates a story where he either prepares for his
lecture on the following day, or leave off and dedicate the day to play cricket.

For Grice, the point of 'akrasia' is what _does_ make us 'rational',
ironically. For we don't call a vervet monkey _akratic_, and it's not, _pace_
Sperber, or Neil V. Smith, that we have _evolved_ from vervet monkeys so that
we now have the pleasure of _being_ akratic, on top of things.
 
Grice possibly _was_ an evolutionary -- his talk on survival optimisation
bores me -- but with Grice dead, I cannot be an evolutionist. Nothing can
improve now: Tv programmes are going to the dogs, English is becoming
synthetic again, the English Season is not what it's used to be. How can evolution
theory hold water when we see "change and decay in all around"?
 
But back to 'slave of passions'. To me this is Frederick, the tenor hero in
 "Pirates of Penzance". And just to see how obsessed Grice was with this,
let's consider this magisterial passage in WoW, iii, when discussing his
modified Occam razor.
 
Grice writes -- and think of the review of D. S. M. Wilson, "Slave of
Passion" (Picador, 1991) in _mind_ (and to think that D. S. M. Wilson _typed_
this -- vide Wharton, "Grice on what is said"" makes it all the more telling!
 for it's a wonderful influence --! Of course Wilson's source is mainly
due, I understand to Prof. Zeldin's researches on the history of France -- and
her friendship with French author Dan Sperber -- French "writer", Grice
would have it, WoW, p. 371):
 
"Consider such adjectives as
 
        (a) loose
        (b) unfettered
        (c) unbridled
 
[vis a vis phrases such as 'slave of passions' or 'the slave of duty', in
G&S. JLS] in relation to a possible application to the noun 'life' [or 'day'
 as I prefer -- cfr. "A day in the life"]" -- yieldig
 
        (a') loose life
        (b') unfettered life
        (c') unbridled life
 
"I assume that such an application of (a), (b) or (c) to 'life' [or 'day']
would be NON-DERIVATIVE, or 'literal'."
 
"And I assume that 'a loose liver' would NOT involve a non-derivative SENSE
 if uttered censoriously to describe a particular man" [Grice could be
sexist even when he shouldn't].
 
"It seems to me that, in the absence of any further SENSE for either word
-- i.e. either of (a), (b) or (c) and 'life' --one migt expect to be able to
 
        MEAN more or less the same [thing] by
[at least] (a') and (b').
 
"However], the fact that, as things are, (a') is tied to
 
     (a'') DISSIPATION
 
whereas(b') seems to be QUITE GENERAL in meaning, suggest that perhaps (a)
does, and [cfr. 'but'. JLS] (b) does not, have a DERIVATIVE SENSE in this
area. As for (c'), which one might perhaps have expected, prima facie, to
mean much the same [thing] as (b'), the phrase is slightly uncomfortable,
because (b) seems to be
 
           _tied_
 
[as per expression meaning, or 'conventional' implicature? I do hope a
slave of passion can on occasion untie himself! JLS]
 
to such words as
 
             'passion' [(cfr. Wilson 1991)]
 
'temper', 'lust' and so on)" (Grice WoW, 48)
 
So the oddity, if I have followed this is that "an unbridled life" is a
"passionate life", and if it's unbridled -- for whose life is totally
_bridled_? -- the phrase 'slave of passions' is oxymoronic (which is not). And if
it is, it is genially ironically and echoically and mentionally meant _not_
to be?
 
Cheers, and Happy New Year to All.
 
D. S. M. Wilson, more than anyone, has to be congratulated and cherished
for having brought so much passion, slaved or not, to a few Griceans the
world over!
 
J. L. Speranza
   for the Grice Club.
 
 
Received on Thu Dec 31 20:30:54 2009