The Melbourne Spectrum

Chapter 7 The Melbourne Spectrum T IS an old saying that philosophy begins with a sense of wonder. That is a source of philosophy, but there is another one, the sense Ithat ‘that’s all bullshit (and I can explain why)’. Different philosophers draw on these sources in differing proportions. An uncritical sense of wonder leads one out of philosophy altogether, into the land of the fairies, to start angels from under stones, find morals at every turn and hug the rainforest. A philosopher near the other extreme — or one, like David Stove, actually occupying the extreme — will at least still be doing philosophy, but it will consist entirely of criticism of others. In the Australian intellectual tradition, the wonder/criticism mix varies not only according to individuals but according to cities. At least, it has since 1927, when John Anderson arrived in Australia and Sydney and Melbourne set off on different paths. Various writers, mainly from Melbourne, have discoursed at some length on the con- trasts between the two cities in their styles of thought, and with all due allowance made for the hot air factor, there is undoubtedly some distinct difference to be identified. Where Sydney intellectuals, fol- lowing Anderson, tend to be critical, pessimistic, classical and opposed to ‘meliorist’ schemes to improve society, Melbourne’s unctuous bien pensants are eager to ‘serve society’, meaning, to instruct the great and powerful how they ought to go about achieving Progress and the perfection of mankind.1 Manning Clark — and it is characteristic of 1 J. Docker, Australian Cultural Elites: Intellectual Traditions in Sydney and Melbourne (Sydney, 1974); V. Buckley, and J. Docker in The Sydney– Melbourne Book, ed. J. Davidson (Sydney, 1986), chs 10–11; J. Quinlem, ‘The rule of saints?’, Observer 16/5/1959, pp. 303–4; B. Kingston, ‘Letter from Sydney’, Australian Historical Studies 116 (2001): pp. 141–5; Sydney 132 Corrupting the Youth optimistic, pompous Melbourne that its guru should be a historian rather than a philosopher — saw a difference in the secular faiths of the two cities: ‘Sydney because of its different historical situation came under the influence of Nietzsche, just as Melbourne became a child of the Enlightenment.’2 By this he meant that Melburnians strive to build a secular Jerusalem, or at least advise on how to do it, while Sydney thinkers do not care about the poor, and sit around admiring their own ability to criticise and to live free from illusions. Philosophical idealism, as we saw in the last chapter, was the domi- nant tradition in philosophy in the late nineteenth century, and Mel- bourne has never broken with it quite as decisively as Sydney. It was represented first by Henry Laurie, a journalist with Scottish philosophical training who campaigned for the first position in philosophy in Australia and was offered the job he had created. He later wrote a sound book on Scottish philosophy and an interesting article in Mind on inductive logic.3 His successor was W.R. Boyce Gibson, appointed in 1911. One of his referees assured the University, ‘Melbourne will both obtain a safe man and yet avoid the danger which is very real in the case of colo- nial universities which import their professors from the home coun- try, viz, that of having foisted on it a second-rate representative of a declining school, simply because the other men who belong to it are well known by name and have commended him.’4 Gibson’s position was a ‘personal idealism’, a version of idealism more Christian than the usual Absolute Idealism, in holding that human life is not a mere ‘incident in the life of God’.5 ‘A sweet old scholar, redolent of the scepticism about perfectibility in J. Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (London, 1970). 2 M. Clark, ‘Melbourne: An intellectual tradition’, Melbourne Historical Journal 2 (1962): pp. 17–23, at p. 19; further in M. Clark, ‘Faith’, in Australian Civilization, ed. P. Coleman (Melbourne, 1962). 3 S. Grave, A History of Philosophy in Australia (St Lucia, 1984), pp. 14–16; E. Morris Miller, ‘The beginnings of philosophy in Australia and the work of Henry Laurie. I’, AJPP 7 (1929): pp. 241–51; H. Laurie, ‘A plea for philosophy’, Victorian Review 5 (Nov, 1881): pp. 76–89; H. Laurie, Scottish Philosophy in its National Development (Glasgow, 1902); H. Laurie, ‘Methods of inductive inquiry’, Mind 2 (1893): pp. 319–38. 4 F.C.S. Schiller, quoted in Grave, History, p. 31. 5 Grave, History, pp. 28–31, 41–5; ADB vol. 8 pp. 659–60; obituary in AJPP 13 (1935): pp. 85–92; papers in University of Melbourne Archives no. 756; recollections in K. Fitzpatrick, Solid Bluestone Foundations (Melbourne, 1983), pp. 169–70; More Memories of Melbourne University, ed. H. Dow (Melbourne, 1985), pp. 6–14; A. Chisholm, Men Were My Milestones (Melbourne, 1958), pp. 107–8; R. Priestley, The Diary of a Vice-Chancellor, ed. R. Ridley (Melbourne, 2002), pp. 5, 35. 7. The Melbourne Spectrum 133 nineteenth-century days when Germans had their poets, philosophers and dreamers instead of jack-booted militarists’,6 he kept students abreast of the latest developments — on the Continent as well as in England and America, which is more than could be said of most Australian philosophers then or later. As will be noted in chapter 9, he visited Husserl and translated his work. At his death in 1935, he was succeeded in the chair by his son Alexander (Sandy) Boyce Gibson. By that time, idealism itself was becoming untenable, but Sandy continued in general his father’s personalist and Christian themes.7 Another contrast with Anderson’s Sydney lay in Boyce Gibson junior’s presiding over rather than ruling his department. He did not appoint clones of himself. As a matter of principle, he favoured balance, hoping it would lead to ‘a fruitful tension of opposites’.8 In the 1950s, he even appointed a Sydney Andersonian, David Armstrong, who stayed for a few years until appointed Professor at Sydney. Earlier, when the department threatened to become dominated by linguistic philosophers in the tradition of Wittgenstein, Boyce Gibson made an effort to achieve balance by appointing an anti-Wittgen- steinian with views similar to his own. The unhappy result was that he had Sydney Sparkes Orr on his staff. One of Orr’s two publica- tions in philosophy was a long article on ‘the Cambridge approach to philosophy’, taking Wittgensteinians to task for ignoring the extent to which scientific knowledge and even sense knowledge are intellectual and, so to speak, philosophical.9 It was rumoured that Boyce Gibson gave Orr a glowing reference to get rid of him, but later research showed that on the contrary he nobly warned the University of Tasmania what it was in for.10 6 G. Hutton, in Dow, More Memories, p. 28. 7 Grave, History, pp. 70–5; ADB vol. 14 pp. 264–5; papers in University of Melbourne Archives no. 7417; recollections in E. D’Arcy, ‘Christian discourse’, Australian Biblical Review 14 (1966): pp. 3–8; J. Hanrahan, From Eternity to Here (Melbourne, 2002), p. 125; Priestley, Diary of a Vice- Chancellor, pp. 345, 383; obituary in Australian Academy of the Humanities Proceedings (1973): p. 39; A.B. Gibson, Theism and Empiricism (London, 1970); The Challenge of Perfection: A Study in Christian Ethics (Melbourne, 1968); The Religion of Dostoevsky (London, 1973); ‘The riddle of the Grand Inquisitor’, Melbourne Slavonic Studies 4 (1970): pp. 46–56; radio talk transcripts at Australian War Memorial AWM series 80 items 1/178 & 11/287. 8 Grave, History, p. 74. 9 S.S. Orr, ‘Some reflections on the Cambridge approach to philosophy’, AJPP 24 (1946): pp. 34–76, 129–67, on Wittgenstein at pp. 140–1, 162–3. 10 C. Pybus, Gross Moral Turpitude (Melbourne, 1993), p. 207. 134 Corrupting the Youth Melbourne University Philosophy Department, 1950. Back row, left to right, Douglas Gasking, `Camo’ Jackson, Sydney Sparkes Orr, Barbara Coates, Olga Warren, Don Gunner, Kurt Baier. Front row, Peter Herbst, Dan Taylor, Prof. A. `Sandy’ Boyce Gibson, Charles Ogilvie (Melbourne Uni- versity Philosophy Department) The result of his policy of diversity was a gradual divergence in philosophical style between Sydney and Melbourne, partly reflecting and partly causing the wider intellectual differences between the two cities. Melbourne philosophers were broader in outlook, more ready to see religion as a serious option. Politically, they supported the development of the welfare state, if not positions much further to the left.11 A typical Melbourne view of Sydney was ‘the philosophy there seemed to an outsider [i.e. Melburnian] to be not only inbred and impervious to outside developments, but narrow, doctrinaire and negative into the bargain.’12 The difference in style was evident at the annual Australasian philosophy conferences, where papers could be given under either ‘Melbourne rules’ or ‘Sydney rules’. Sydney rules meant that Anderson read a paper, then members of the audience could make comments, followed by Anderson’s reply to such points as he chose. Under Melbourne rules, a single point could be discussed 11 A. Donagan, ‘Introduction’, in Contemporary Australian Philosophy, ed. R. Brown & C.D. Rollins (London, 1969), pp. 15–19. 12 W. Ginnane, ‘John Anderson’s book’, Bulletin 20/10/1962, pp. 36–7. 7. The Melbourne Spectrum 135 by everyone until it was finished with, leading to a much more spontaneous and focused discussion.13 In the 1940s, a generation of remarkable Melbourne students who were to become prominent in the US — notably Alan Donagan, Michael Scriven and Paul Edwards —

Load more