Colin McGinn: ‘The Making of a Philosopher’

I’ve just finished reading McGinn’s intellectual autobiography. I gutted it in a single evening. It’s a good read, although I must admit that I skipped a lot of the philosophy to get down to the gossip! McGinn seems to be very good at attracting controversy, whether its because (as he claims) he’s brutally honest, or because of ‘short man syndrome’ (he’s only five foot six). He’s certainly unforgiving of others. To give you an impression of McGinn’s style, here’s some choice epithets:

- Christopher Peacocke was a postgrad at Oxford with McGinn in the seventies. At that time they met regularly to discuss philosophy, but their friendship was terminated when McGinn came to the conclusion that “professional rivalry was more important to [Peacocke] than friendship”. Peacocke’s philosophical work is later described as being “almost preposterously unclear”.

- Later, when McGinn was Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy, he attended a discussion group of which Michael Dummett was also a member. During one meeting, in which McGinn presented a paper, Dummett attacked him “rudely and condescendingly” – “it was a nasty moment”, McGinn writes, “petty and ill-willed”. He pointedly concludes that “Trying to bully and intimidate junior colleagues is not tolerable”.

He certainly doesn’t pull his punches! Unfortunately, the book was published before his recent spat with Ted Honderich, so there’s no further information to be gleaned on that. Notably, after the incident with Dummett, McGinn left the discussion group because he no longer wished to have anything to do with his senior colleague. This seems to be fairly indicative of McGinn’s general approach to relationships – do one thing to piss him off, and that’s it. No doubt he’d call this ‘integrity’, but one wonders if he shouldn’t really be a little more understanding of others. Dummett, after all, was notorious for his temper, and he did subsequently apologise to McGinn, though admittedly only after being pressured into doing so by other members of the group (if McGinn is to be believed, of course).

On the philosophy side of things, what I have read so far is very clear and seems accurate (although I should emphasise that I haven’t read it carefully or completely). I would certainly recommend this book to someone thinking of doing a degree in philosophy, because it introduces many of the more obscure ‘analytic’ topics that you won’t otherwise come across before going to university – at least, not in as clear and colloquial a form. McGinn introduces Twin Earth, Grice’s analysis of meaning, Davidson’s theory of meaning, Kripke on Wittgenstein on meaning and rule following, Kripke on proper names, and (of course) a lot of his own work – mysterianism, the “dual component” theory of meaning, and so on. Importantly, he introduces these topics in away which explains their wider significance, so that they no longer seem as dry as old newspaper burned into the pavement. I think my degree has certainly suffered at times because lecturers fail to convey this wider significance: wondering how a name refers to a thing, when not placed in the wider context of the attempt to naturalise meaning and the social aspect of language, can seem dull beyond belief.

A brief note for those of you who read my earlier blog about McGinn and Miller’s discussion of theism. I was surprised that when asked about the infamous ontological argument, McGinn didn’t introduce the standard objection that existence is not a property. The reason for this becomes clear in the last chapter of McGinn’s book, when he writes about his current philosophical work in logic. One of his topics of interest is existence, concerning which he has reached the conclusion that existence really is “a genuine property of objects”, as the surface grammar of sentences suggests. I won’t go into McGinn’s reasons for this just now, because I have a philosophy of mind exam in five days that i haven’t started revising for yet, but I may do at some later date. Saying that, I’d better get on and do some proper work!

One last thing: reading the book has fired my enthusiasm for philosophy again, which is no mean feat considering I’ve thought about it constantly for three years and am in the midst of my finals. If you’re suffering from burn out, reading this book might just recharge your intellectual batteries…