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The Northern Line

No 2 Apr. 2007

An on-line journal dedicated to the life and work of John Anderson

Edited by Mark Weblin. This journal is funded entirely from donations. Please forward any donations to 282 Blaxland Rd, Wentworth Falls 2782 Email: [email protected]

In this issue:

John Anderson and Idealism...... 2

The Lincoln Inn ...... 6

Anderson/Walker Correspondence Feb. 1952 ...... 10

The Andersonians...... 18

In this issue of The Northern Line, four separate items are published. The first is a contribution on John Anderson and Idealism which will be published in an up-coming volume The Dictionary of British Idealism (Thoemmes Press 2007). This article discusses the initial influence of Absolute Idealism on Anderson, his rejection of that position and then examines the evidence which suggests that he may have been moving back to a position which could be called ‘Idealist’ in his later life. Such a view will obviously be controversial amongst Andersonians, but it is a view that I first tentatively proposed over a decade ago and despite the passage of time, I have only become more certain that such a view is correct. The evidence, it must be said, is not conclusive, but it is the only conclusion I have consistently come back to on the basis of comments made by John himself. The second item is an impressionistic history of the Lincoln Inn Coffee Shop. Readers of the first issue of this journal may recall that I asked for a copy of the Lincoln Scrapbook and Index compiled by George Clarke in 2002. Ewan Maidment sent me an electronic copy of both documents and on the basis of this I have summarised the following history of the Lincoln Inn. The purpose of the article is not to provide a detailed history of The Lincoln for such a project would take more time than I can devote to it. Hence I have attempted to capture the main personalities, themes, locations and conflicts which characterised the brief life of The Lincoln. I am confident that there will be errors – either of fact or of omission – and I welcome any comments or corrections to the article. The third item continues the publication of the Anderson/Walker correspondence from 1952. This collection has extracts from February 1952 by which time Ruth has settled in to Crosby Hall at London University College and is attending seminars by Popper and Ryle. John has not yet started his university year and is reading the Scottish philosopher Robert Adamson and the English historian, Leslie Stephen. The final item is a continuation of my autobiographical outlines of the Andersonians. In this issue, I discuss briefly the careers of , Doug McCallum, Jim Baker and David Armstrong. Again I welcome any corrections or additions to the text. I hope in time to have a fairly complete biographical outline of anyone who would have regarded themselves as an Andersonian.

Since the publication of the first issue of The Northern Line, Jim Packer has completed and published his item listing of the entire Anderson archives at University. This has been an immense undertaking for Jim having taken the last three years to complete and I would like to publicly state my appreciation of the work he has done. Finally I would like to apologise for the long delay between the first and second issues of The Northern Line and anticipate that future issues will appear more regularly.

Donations received: H.N. $50; P.H. $100; E.F. $20; 2 John Anderson and Idealism

John Anderson was born on November 1, 1893 in the village of Stonehouse, thirty miles southwest of Glasgow and died in Sydney on July 6, 1962. He was the third born, and second son, of the marriage of Alexander Anderson, the headmaster at the local school with radical political tendencies, and Elizabeth Brown, also a schoolteacher but with literary interests. Anderson attended his fathers’ school until 1907 when he transferred to the Hamilton Academy. In 1910, he came first in the All Scotland Bursary Competition, a feat not repeated by any Scottish philosopher of his generation. Anderson entered Glasgow University in 1911 and studied Greek, Latin, mathematics and natural , winning the Cunninghame medal in mathematics in 1915. He then studied for an M.A. in moral philosophy, logic and political economy, winning the Caird medal in moral philosophy in 1917. During this period Anderson was exposed to a wide range of intellectual influences, including William James, John Burnet, Dosteovsky, Vico, Ibsen, Mathew Arnold, , Georges Sorel, Freud, Marx, G.E. Moore and , although the predominant influence during this period were the 1917/18 Gifford Lectures of the Australian philosopher, Samuel Alexander. Following graduation, Anderson accepted a visiting lectureship to Cardiff but returned to Glasgow on a Shaw fellowship in 1919, where he remained until his move to Edinburgh University as a lecturer in 1922. It was in this year that he married Janet (Jenny) Baillie whom he had known since his school days and had courted during and after his study at university. Their only child Alexander (Sandy) was born in the following year.

Anderson arrived in in 1927 to take up the Challis Chair of Philosophy at Sydney University from which he eventually retired in 1958. He remained in Australia until his death leaving the country on only one occasion in 1938, when he visited Scotland, and America. Although Anderson was a regular contributor to the Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy (A.J.P.P.) during this time, he published only one book in his lifetime, a slim volume, Education and Politics, in 1931. At the time of his death, he was working on the index for Studies in Empirical Philosophy which was published posthumously in the same year, with an introduction written by John Passmore. Since his death, four more collections of Anderson’s writings have appeared, Art and Reality, Education and Inquiry, A Perilous and Fighting Life and Space-Time and the Proposition, dealing with his aesthetic, educational, political and ontological writings respectively. During this time, there have been three books written on Anderson, Anderson’s Social Philosophy, Australian and A Passion to Oppose. The John Anderson web site contains many of Anderson’s lectures, articles and addresses and can be found at http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/anderson/.

John Anderson’s early exposure to philosophy was in the form of the Scottish Hegelianism as articulated by Henry Jones, professor of philosophy at Glasgow. During his undergraduate years, Anderson appeared to accept the general doctrines of Idealism and many of his student essays, including his prize winning ‘The State as a Moral Agent’, defended the general Idealist perspective. The decisive shift in Anderson’s philosophical development occurred when he attended Alexander’s Gifford lectures and from this point his philosophy can be described as a Realist and Empiricist position. By 1922, he had articulated a clear statement of his new ‘positive’ philosophical position and in 1926 he used this position to criticise the humanism of F.C.S. Schiller. In the first five years after his arrival at Sydney University in 1927, Anderson publicly defended his Realist and Empiricist philosophy from criticisms by the Australian Idealists in a series of articles in the A.J.P.P.. On the basis of these articles, Anderson’s philosophy is often regarded as a set of unchanging doctrines which included such as , Positivism, Realism, Objectivism, Naturalism, Pluralism and Determinism.

Anderson’s philosophy is most widely known as a Realist philosophy, a which emphasises its opposition to Idealism and which has three closely connected meanings. The first is the epistemological meaning that the object of knowledge exists independently of either the subject of knowledge or the relation of knowing. The logical form of this doctrine is ‘s/R/o’. The second is the ontological meaning that the qualities that a thing has must also be independent of the relations that it has, thus implying that no qualities are relations and no relations are qualities. The third was the logical doctrine of external relations where in any relationship ‘a/R/b’, the terms of the relation are independent from each other and of the relations between them.

After his arrival in Australia, Anderson engaged with the Australian Idealists on a number of fronts and the clearest statement of his philosophical position at this time appeared in his 1931 article, ‘Realism and some of its critics’. In this article, he argued that Realism stands opposed to Idealism – Idealism is in fact ‘unintelligible’ – and develops into a pluralist, empiricist and positivist position in reaction to the monism, rationalism and relativism of Idealism. 3

Firstly Realism develops as a pluralist philosophy and as such not only stands in opposition to the monism of Absolute Idealism but also to the of Russell and the young Moore. Any occurring situation is both simple and complex and therefore there can be no monistic ‘Absolute’ in which all difference is contained, but nor can there be any logically simple ‘atom’ from which reality is built. It is this view which marks out the distinctiveness of Anderson’s place in twentieth century philosophy for as a systematic Realist Anderson turned his face against the analytic Realism of Moore and Russell and the whole analytic tradition which followed them.

Secondly Anderson argued that Realism develops as an empiricist philosophy and as such is opposed to rationalism. However Anderson did not understand these terms in the traditional sense of ways of knowing, but adopted Alexander’s ontological meaning of these terms. Hence rationalism was defined as the division of reality into separate realms of the changing, everyday experience of ordinary things and the immutable and unchanging forms or ‘ideas’ of things while empiricism is the doctrine of a ‘single way of being’, of every occurrence understood as a spatio-temporal situation. Central to Anderson’s Empiricism was his contention that Space-Time (the ‘togetherness’ of Space and Time) was infinite and not as Alexander had held, a finite ‘stuff’ which constitutes the universe. Indeed Anderson rejected the very notion of ‘the Universe’, arguing that if Space-Time is infinite then there can be no term which expresses the ‘totality of things’. The existence of a thing is simply its occupation of a spatio-temporal location and in so existing, will also have a number of categorical forms such as particularity, universality, quality, quantity, identity, difference, order, number and relation. Although Anderson’s philosophy is most commonly described as Realist philosophy, it is significant that the first and last articles he wrote in Australia were ‘Empiricism’ and ‘Empiricism and Logic’ and his major work was titled Studies in Empirical Philosophy. A more accurate description of Anderson’s philosophy then would be as an Empiricist philosophy.

Thirdly, Realism develops into a positivism although this doctrine should not be confused with the of the . Whereas the Logical Positivists regarded experiment as the criteria of truth and falsity, Anderson believed that it is simple experience which determines the truth and falsity of propositions. Anderson’s Positivism was a positive account of logic which held that all propositions or judgements are either true or false independent of the context of judging and hence he rejected any conception of logic as relative or absolute, such as that of the Idealist’s like Bradley and Bosanquet where ‘the Absolute’ determines the truth or falsity of propositions or F.C.S. Schiller’s claim that the particular context of judging determines the truth of propositions and judgements. An integral part of Anderson’s ‘positive’ logic was his theory of the proposition which was also intimately related to his Empiricist . Anderson argued that the copula of the proposition - ‘is or is not’ - is to be explicated in terms of Space- Time and he also adopted Russell’s theory of propositional function, arguing that the subject places or locates the thing under consideration, while the predicate characterises or qualifies the subject of the proposition. The combination of propositional function and the spatio-temporal analysis of the copula yielded the propositional form ‘S is or is not P’, an expression central to Anderson’s logic. Further, Anderson argued that the proposition could also be analysed in terms of quantity, and, by treating ‘All’ and ‘None’ as universal propositions, he arrived at the four forms of the proposition. This defence of the traditional syllogistic logic also marks out Anderson’s distinctiveness in twentieth century philosophy.

This article is the clearest exposition of Anderson’s philosophy and its relation to the declining Absolute Idealism and emerging analytic Realism of the early thirties. His criticism of Absolute Idealism can be summarised in terms of two central contentions. The first is a consequence of his view that the opposition between contradictory propositions means that no proposition can be both true and false. In other words, the proposition ‘All S is P’ is contradicted by ‘No S is P’ and if one of these propositions is true then the other must be false. This implied that any theory of dialectic – whether Hegelian or Marxist – where the partial truth of the thesis and the partial truth of the opposed antithesis are resolved into a higher truth of the synthesis, is illogical. Secondly he held that the Absolute Idea expresses the fundamental dualism between the immutable and unchanging forms of things – that which exists ‘ultimately’ – and the changing existence of everyday things – that which exists ‘relatively’ – with the relation between these realms being neither ‘absolute’ nor ‘relative’ and hence is unintelligible. However unlike other Realist philosophers of his generation, Anderson’s criticisms of Idealism didn’t prevent him from appreciating the writings of the Absolute 4 Idealist R.F.A. Hoernle were “…a welcome sign that philosophy is alive in one quarter at least.”1 Nor was Anderson reluctant to praise the philosophy of Hegel as when in 1932 he speculated whether philosophy had actually gone on since Hegel’s death for no such system as Hegel’s had appeared since his time. Apart from these statements, there is no evidence from the thirties to suggest that he was deviating from his Realist philosophy.

By the start of the forties, however, Anderson began making statements that didn’t fit neatly into a theory of systematic Realism. The most significant of these occurred in his 1942 lectures on Ethics and Aesthetics where he stated that beauty is not a quality of things. In his aesthetic writings during the thirties, Anderson had described beauty as a character or feature of things and had consistently argued against a relational account of beauty. Given that Anderson’s Realism was based on the firm distinction between quality and relation – no quality can be a relation and no relation can be a quality – it is reasonable to assume on the basis of his denial that beauty is a relation that he took beauty to be a quality of things. However by asserting that beauty is not a quality, Anderson appears to be questioning the whole notion of a Realist aesthetic. If beauty is neither a quality nor a relation, then in what sense could his aesthetic theory be said to be Realist? Anderson is faced with the dilemma of either treating his aesthetic theory as outside the general scope of his Realist philosophy and thus breaking up the integrity of his system or else retaining aesthetics within his general philosophy but admitting that the defining feature of that philosophy is not Realism.

How far Anderson faced up to the implications of this remark is difficult to assess but apart from the fact that from 1940 onwards he began reading and being influenced by Idealist philosophers such as Croce and Vico, in his lectures he continued presenting his Realist criticisms of Hegel and for the rest of the forties there is no evidence to suggest that he was departing from his Realist position. However in 1949, in a letter to his colleague Ruth Walker, he stated that “I don't think anyone but you would appreciate my ‘idealism’” and in another letter to Walker in 1950 he stated: “I seem to be going more and more Hegelian”. In neither case did he elucidate the meaning of ‘Idealism’ or ‘Hegelian’. Further, in a letter from 1952, Anderson praised Walker’s ‘non-atomistic mind’ and stated that “…in these times, its certainly atomism that’s the enemy (hence my revived Hegelianism!).” Finally, writing again in 1952, while emphasising the importance of ‘reviving philosophy’ in the present time, Anderson argued that a ‘different line’ is now needed and in that respect his studies of the past dozen years – the years that had started with his study of Croce and Vico – need not be ‘thrown away’. Such statements are puzzling for a philosopher renowned for his Realism and appear to suggest that he was working towards a new position in his philosophy where Hegelianism and Idealism are prominent. However the absence on any further elucidation of these terms means that no precise meaning can be attached to what this reformulated philosophy might be. One possible explanation for Anderson’s use of a term such as Idealism can be found in writings from the fifties, where he defended Croce’s concept of immanentism – the view that human activities are not governed ‘from above’ but can be found in human activities themselves – which he defined as ‘humanistic idealism’. In this sense, Anderson’s Realism could be regarded as consistent with this use of the term ‘Idealism’.

While this historical and anecdotal evidence is suggestive of a transition occurring in Anderson’s philosophy towards Idealism, it does not in itself constitute proof of such a movement. The view that Anderson was beginning to formulate an Idealist definition of his philosophy in his later years is controversial and heretical among his surviving students, although the evidence in Anderson’s own hand certainly suggests that some such process was in fact taking place. However there are several arguments and criticisms of Anderson’s philosophy which strongly support the view that Anderson was in fact moving in this direction.

The first argument concerns the notion of form. The distinction between form and content had been central to Anderson’s exposition of logic since his arrival in Australia and the notion of categorical form played a central role in his discussion of the metaphysics of Samuel Alexander in his lectures to students during the forties. From the start of the fifties, Anderson developed and extended his systematic conception of philosophy and the term most consistently used in this discussion was that of form. In 1952 he asserted that in aesthetic criticism questions of form and content go together and without formal or common aesthetic principles there could be no such thing as aesthetic criticism. In 1953, in discussing the psychological aspect of his ethical theory, he emphasised that people belong together in

1 Anderson, J. 'Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy' A.J.P.P. VI, 3, Sept. 1928 pp 223 - 228 5 common forms of activity and in 1955, in criticising various religious theories, he argued that if something, such as God, is bound up with everything, then this will be a question of form.

These varied references to the notion of form are suggestive of the importance that it might play in Anderson’s mature philosophical theory, although he did not at this time articulate an unambiguous statement of such a role in the reformulation of his philosophy as an ‘Idealism’. However on the occasion of his retirement in 1958, he did provide a clear statement that the opposition between Realism and Idealism that he had emphasised more than twenty five years earlier was not as clear cut as he had then believed. In this address to a gathering of students and colleagues, he spoke of the common mistake of taking Idealism to be the enemy of Realism and praised the Hegelian doctrine of objective mind as a strenuous effort to get rid of dualism in philosophy, with the step from it to a general objectivist position being only a short one. The real object of Realist attack, he argued, is rationalism, with its doctrine of ‘natures’ or essences of things and it is significant that Anderson singled out Moore and Russell as contributing to this movement away from Realism and towards rationalism. It is also significant in this respect that in one of his last articles on philosophy he singled out as also contributing to the movement towards rationalism in philosophy. In this article, ‘Empiricism and Logic’, Anderson clearly asserted that the distinction between form and matter is the basis of the distinction between philosophy and science – “...philosophy is concerned with the forms of situations or occurrences, science with their material; but it is only as forms of such material, as material with such forms, that they can be known.” – and also emphasised that a ‘common measure of terrestrial events’ could not itself be some material thing but could only be something formal.1

Anderson mature philosophical position was significantly different to that first articulated in 1931. Idealism is not necessarily the enemy of Realism and the Hegelian doctrine of objective mind is an important step towards the development of an objectivist philosophy. The concept of form appears regularly and in significant contexts during the fifties and is the basis of the distinction between philosophy and science, is the logical basis of aesthetic criticism, and is the ground for a common measure of terrestrial events. Finally, if, as he argued, philosophy is concerned with the forms of situations and if these forms could not themselves be material things, then philosophy is concerned with immaterial or logical forms. The description of such a philosophy as a Realism rather than an Idealism would appear to be merely a verbal preference. It will be objected by some of Anderson’s students that too much emphasis is being placed on isolated statements made by Anderson to support a complete re-assessment of the defining features of his philosophy and while there is some justification for this view, it remains puzzling that Anderson did make these assertions and at the very least they do provide the basis of a case for considering the question of whether Anderson was in fact moving towards an Idealist position.

However there is a second and stronger argument to support this view that derives from the core of his philosophy and is the basis of one of the most challenging criticisms of his entire philosophy. A central feature of Anderson’s philosophy was his theory of the categories. Although he never published on this theory during his lifetime, his 1944 and 1949 lectures on Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity were regarded by many students, including John Passmore, as the core of his philosophy. In these lectures, he discussed the general theory of the categories, their order, and their relation to his theory of the proposition. Under the general headings of logic, mathematics and physics, he discussed a total of thirteen categories, relating each grouping to a particular function of the proposition. On Anderson’s theory of the proposition, the only meaningful or ‘speakable’ propositions are those which have real or existing terms. Hence God, unicorns and the present King of France are all excluded as terms in the proposition. However Anderson also argued that the categories cannot themselves be things, for in being categories they are what is universal to things. This implies that any discourse about the universal, formal and non-material categories cannot be propositional discourse which means that they must be ‘unspeakable’.

The logical difficulty for Anderson is that either we admit that the ‘unspeakability of the categories’ is a central criticism of his ontology and conclude that his theory of the proposition cannot provide a basis for any meaningful discussion of the categories, or we accept that there is another form of discourse which is not ‘propositional’ but then must wonder in what sense this philosophy is a Realism, let alone a Propositional Realism. There appears to be no other conclusion than to admit that categorical discourse is ‘Idealist’. However once this concession is made, other difficulties follow. If categorical propositions have ‘ideal’ rather than ‘real’ terms, then they cannot be related by the

1 Anderson, J. Studies in Empirical Philosophy pp 183, 185-6 6 copula of existence as is the case with ordinary, empirical propositions. Anderson recognised this difficulty when in 1944 he asserted that “any significant term must have a significant opposite; but the categories have no significant opposite”, but did not propose a solution to this problem.1 But if categorical terms are not connected by the copula of existence, then Anderson’s criticism of Hegel’s dialectic, which was based on the assertion of the unambiguous copula of existence, collapses.

There is little doubt that John Anderson commenced his career as a systematic Realist philosopher. However from the nineteen forties onwards, doubts and qualifications began to appear in his thinking and the tension between the Realist basis and the systematic intention of his philosophy began to manifest itself. During the fifties, the concept of form began to occupy a more prominent role in his philosophy and by the time of his retirement he openly stated that the real enemy of Realism is not Idealism, implying that Idealism could in fact be an adequate description of his philosophy. Although Anderson never confronted these problems directly, he did show that he was aware of them. However Anderson was not one to reside in an easy doctrinal orthodoxy and while many of his students have attributed such doctrines to him, he appears to have been moving away from a narrow and doctrinal conception of philosophy defined as Realist to one with a systematic structure and unity which, in any other situation, we would be happy to describe as Idealist.

The Lincoln Inn

During the war, the intellectual life of Sydney was centred on the University but by the start of 1945 this focus began to blur and alternative venues began to be established. Initially there was an Andersonian flavour to this activity. Towards the end of the war, a small group of Anderson’s students began to meet in various houses to discuss his ideas. The informal membership of the group included leading students in English, French, German, History, Philosophy and Science such as Paul Foulkes, Ernest Foulkes, Henry Harris, Noel Hush, Neil McInnes, George Munster, Jim Baker and Bill Maidment.2 Apparently John Anderson coined the name ‘The Poseurs Push’ for the group and the term ‘The Push’ must have given Anderson a certain satirical pleasure for few years later he used it again to describe meetings of a different group of students as ‘The Proletarian Push’. At the same time as The Poseurs Push began to meet, Paul Foulkes and Peter Gibbons rented a room in Jamieson Street near Wynyard Station which soon became a scene of ‘many small parties and long talk evenings’.3 John Anderson and Ruth Walker would visit regularly, as would Doug McCallum, Jean Ferguson, John Rybak, Joan Meredith, Jim Baker and Bill Maidment, while more occasionally Sandy Anderson, Charlie Grimshaw, , John Meredith and Tom Rose would call in.

While such venues were important for Andersonians, other venues were beginning to establish themselves. At Kings Cross there was the infamous ‘Lois Hunter Dungeon Academy’ where young minds eager for an education away from the constraints of the University would be fed bread and marmite and cups of tea as they read their ways through mildewy copies of Doestoevsky, Chekhov, Kafka, Cocteau, Nietzsche and Gertrude Stein until Lois felt they were ‘educated’ enough to enter the world. Another alternative venue was a huge bed-sit in Wylde Street, Kings Cross. A young literature student, Madeleine Haydon, shared it with a number of women friends who in turn attracted a number of young male students from the university, most of whom had studied philosophy under Anderson although there were some radicals who were beginning to react against the Andersonian orthodoxy.4

There were also a variety of coffee shops and tea houses where students, poets and artists might meet. The Repins coffee shops were popular meeting places for students, with the King St shop attracting university students and art students from the East Sydney Technical College, while the Market St shop was popular with left wing and Communist intellectuals. The Moccador in George Street near Wynyard, the Arabian Coffee Shop in the Cross and the Kashmir Coffee Shop in Macleay Street were also popular meeting places for students wanting a place to meet and discuss ideas. For those who wanted something a bit more substantial than tea or coffee there was the Florentino’s restaurant in Elizabeth Street with its fixed menu of minestrone, pasta and salad, and coffee, Lorenzini’s wine bar, Packie’s night

1 Anderson, J. Space-Time and the Proposition p 36 2 Baker, A.J. ‘The Poseurs’ Push’ Heraclitus No 100 November 2002 p 12-13 3 Baker, A.J. ‘Anderson’s Intellectual Development’ Heraclitus No 34 4 Harrison, G. Night Train to Granada p 129 7 club in Elizabeth Street or the ‘stand-up’ bar (Ladies Allowed) out the back of the Newcastle Hotel in George Street. Occasionally the Port Jackson Jazz Band would play at the Ironworkers Hall at the top end of George Street. However at the start of 1948, a venue was established that would quickly, if briefly, eclipse them all as the centre of intellectual conversation and meeting place for diverse groups and individuals.

The ‘Lincoln Inn’, the ‘Lincoln Coffee Lounge’, the ‘stinkin Lincoln’ or simply the ‘snake-pit’ occupies a mythical status in the intellectual life of post-war Sydney. The Lincoln opened in early 1948 in Rowe Street just off Martin Place. It was a strategic location being just across the road from the Long Bar at the Australia Hotel and handy to the Theatre Royal, the society restaurants Prince’s and Romano’s, the GPO and the head offices of the main banks and newspaper offices. Rowe St. also had a number of art supply shops which was no doubt important for its initial attraction to the art students who were the main customers early on. (The National Art School was part of the East Sydney Technical College housed in the old Darlinghurst jail buildings and students would catch trams down Oxford Street to the city centre.)

The owner was a John Barry, a former Gunnery Lieutenant and successful real estate agent, who said he simply wanted to open a place where he could play a little chess. Barry’s partner in the enterprise was Eric Darklen, and Barry’s mother, Eleanor, a former actress, ran the kitchen. The owners employed an artist from East Sydney Art School, Joe Barry (no relation), to paint the inside of the Lincoln – ‘a dark blue star studded ceiling’ – who mentioned the opening to another art student, Fahy Bottrell. However Bottrell’s girlfriend, Dorothy Dale, was being courted by Eric Darklen, the co-owner of the Lincoln, and Dorothy told Fahy to invite people to the opening night. Bottrell passed the word on to Sonny Norbury/Norwood (aka Kathleen McCormack) who invited a lot of university people. On the opening night, things didn’t begin too well. Only about five people came in over the first five hours and Eleanor Barry decided to let the food they had prepared cool down. But the opening had clashed with a Society of Realist Art (SORA) meeting and Fahy Bottrell invited the entire group to the opening. As a result about twenty people turned up quite late and late hour operation henceforth became the norm.

The subsequent history of the Lincoln is a relatively brief story. A weekly party at 15 Lower Fort St soon became a regular occasion after the Lincoln closed for the night and the group had moved on to one of the Repins coffee shops. By June 1949, the Lincoln was an ‘established and flourishing institution’ and featured in the daily press on a couple of occasions. Throughout 1950, its reputation as an alternative meeting place was firmly established, although by June 1951, the local ‘bohemians’ were annoyed by ‘staring tourists’. A Lincoln regular and Arts student, Ann Butler, recorded her irritation: “Many of the people who come here now don’t believe in Lincolnism. Lincolnism is a state of intellectualism which promotes friendliness and discussion. That can occur only when all are true believers. Eavesdropping tourists stifle freedom. They also take up too much room in the place.” The high point of the life of the Lincoln occurred on March 6th 1952 when The Lincoln Anthology was published, but within two weeks came the news that the Lincoln had been sold to a based chain of ‘toney’ coffee shops. However by this time the Lincoln had already became a central part of the mythology of post-war . For one young male poet it resembled the underworld: “..one looked down on almost Stygian gloom, punctuated by the gleam of minute kerosene lamps, which sent pungent fumes to mingle with those of tobacco and the aroma of coffee, to welcome one into the underworld. On the walls were would-be Satanic paintings by Rosaleen Norton…”.1 However for a woman writer the view was slightly different: “Literally a dive, it was entered by steps descending from Rose [Rowe] Street directly into the crowded, poorly lit, underground room, whose atmosphere was so rich with cigarette smoke and rank cooking smells from the kitchen, those who were not used to it could hardly breathe. At least half its clientele were women: it was musky, feline, female, womb-like.”2

The artists were the first to come to the Lincoln in any numbers and the group from the SORA meeting on the first night made the opening the success that it was. But others soon came. John Olsen and his future wife, Mary Flower, were regulars, Barbara Patterson, future wife to Charles Blackman, visited occasionally, the sculptor, Bob Klippel first heard of John Olsen at the Lincoln, the painter Francis Lymburger was a regular, and Cedric Flower, uncle to Mary, did artwork for the Lincoln which probably included the famous finger-pointing sign near the entrance in Rowe Street. Other artists included Piers Bourke, a one time stockman from Queensland who organised an exhibition at the Lincoln

1 Appleton, R. ‘And then, to the Lincoln’ Heraclitus 99 Sept. 2002 p 10 2 Ogilvie, J. The Push p 61 8 and received a pair of socks as a deposit, Joe Barry – ‘pale complexion, dark straight shiny hair, who wore a beautifully cut velvet blue jacket’ – painted the Lincoln out for its opening night, Clem Millward, a SORA member and later a successful artist, Lawrence Alcock who exhibited on the walls of the Lincoln, and John Xenodohos and Stan de Tilga, both art students who attended the opening night. There was also a number of people associated with the cartoonists from the papers including Bruen Finey, a sculpture student and son of George Finey, the cartoonist for Smiths Weekly and The Labor Daily. Two other regulars, Dan Russell, a doctor, and Willie Russell, a photographer, were nephews of Jim Russell, creator of ‘The Potts’ cartoon strip.

The one artist of that period who did not frequent the Lincoln was Charles Blackman. Blackman was a graduate of the ‘Lois Hunter Dungeon Academy’ and lived in Ma Porteus boarding house with members of the Port Jackson Jazz Band such as Bob Barnard and Ray Price. Barbara Patterson had come down from Queensland in 1949 and lived with in North Sydney where she first ‘linked up’ with Blackman. Blackman was good friends with Will Sewell and together they hitch-hiked to Melbourne to ‘genuflect’ at the art galleries. Sewell – ‘big, strong, silent, gentle, erudite and ironic’ – was from Annandale and lived with Blackman in Ma Porteus’ Rooming House at 104 Dowling Street. He also ‘graduated’ from the ‘Lois Hunter Dungeon Academy’, although unlike Blackman he did frequent the Lincoln. Sewell could levitate himself horizontally from an iron railing, bend a tram sign into a corkscrew and sang Bessie Smith songs with fervour. He was one of the first longhaired, barefoot, tight jeans men of Sydney, before moving to London in the sixties and distinguishing himself as an animated cartoonist at the BBC..

The Lincoln soon became a favourite with a number of other groups including writers, musicians, poets, actors and students from the university. The leader of the writers and poets was undoubtedly Harry Hooton and he was ably supported by Lex Banning and Bob Cumming. George Johnston and Charmain Clift visited the Lincoln and Johnston wrote an article on the Lincoln for The Sun. Robert Close, the author of Love Me Sailor, which had been banned by the authorities, also frequented the Lincoln. Richard Appleton was a regular, as were Tommy Deane, Stan de Teliga, Derek Hoste and Clive Hunter. P.R Evans captured the cultural atmosphere of the Lincoln:

There in the airless cellar dimly lit, The Saints of esoteric culture sit: Free verse, free art, , freethinking thrive, Mens sana in – a body just alive. while Richard Preston bemoaned the values of the regulars in his ‘For a Lincoln Virgin’:

All they want is my body, That’s all they’re after They don’t want my soul It only causes laughter. and Roger Cox located the cause of this loss of values in his ‘To a Lincoln Newchum’:

BEWARE, BEWARE THE ATMOSPHERE REEKS, SNARE. SAD PSEUDO WIFE IS FUTURE STRIFE STOP, BEWARE ! You are young and full of care. Here careless hands Seek your care full mind

Jane Gardiner, on the other hand, cared less for rhyming couplets than couples rhyming:

There was a young lady named Jane Who not only now and again but again and again’ and again and again And again and again and again. 9

However for the more serious poets, such as Richard Appleton, the Lincoln gave them solitude to find their way:

Disdaining the plodding hordes who no minds own But considering those who rashly claim to think….. The only pleasing company is one’s own And the only social function is to drink. and for Lex Banning, the source of the loss of meaning:

My verse, you say, is void of rhyme, And, likely, void of reason. Alas, my friend, in this, our time, Both things are out of season.

However, as always, it was Harry Hooton who had the last and best words to say:

No matter how angry we may become we must always remember that there is ONE side to every argument – our own side, the right side, the outside.

A variety of musicians and singers were also regulars such as Kathleen McCormack who was there for the opening night. She lived in a flat with Bottrell and worked at the Independent Theatre in North Sydney and the Sydney Repertory. She later lived at 15 Lower Fort St under the Harbour Bridge and went on to establish a successful career as a folk singer. Bob Barnard, a jazz musician, was an early regular, as was Ron Grainer who later went to England and achieved some fame by composing the theme music for Dr Who. June Cairns and Bob Elliot were a duet whose singing was fondly remembered and other musicians included the guitarist Ray Price, John Robertson who played trumpet with the ABC orchestra, Richard Preston, Beth Doran (Schurr) and Judy Bodkin, better known as ‘Black Judy’. Another regular was art student and musician, Brian Mooney, who took a young Barry Humphries around the sly grog shops of Melbourne. On one occasion ‘six con students’ sang the Ninth Symphony at the Lincoln.

A few dancers were also represented including Moira Claux – ‘Dancer as an occupation, but versatile by inclination’ – and Eileen Kramer, both of the Bodenwiser Ballet. Moira’s father, Kleber – ‘a true Frenchman with generous French emotion, but no French arrogance’ – had the fruit barrow outside the Liverpool St Courthouse and she also worked there on and off. However from a young age she was posing for the SORA meetings and is the subject for Max Dupain’s ‘Moira in a Mirror’. She travelled widely with the Bodenweiser Ballet and between trips she was a regular at the Lincoln. In the mid-fifties she married Bruen Finey and they had four children together at the Barrenjoey lighthouse. Eileen Kramer also travelled with the Bodenweiser and was a regular at the Lincoln, often in the company of Harry Hooton and Murray Sayle.

Journalists were a large group who frequented the Lincoln and included Tony Delano from The Truth, Ronald Monson from The Telegraph, David Rowbotham from The Bulletin and Jim Macdougall from the Sydney Morning Herald. Young freelance journalists like Murray Sayle and Ted Morrisby also frequented the Lincoln and during 1948 and 1949 when Sayle was working for the Daily Mirror he would frequent both the Lincoln and the Journalists Club and at the latter establishment would encounter Ken Slessor ‘reduced to glum silence as a writer of editorials for The Sun’. Another prominent group at the Lincoln was the science fiction group led by Graham Stone and Vol Molesworth. Others in this group included Michael McGuiness, Arthur Haddon, Lou Herbst, Phineas Glick, Harry Brunen, Rosemary Simmons, Sid Dunk, Alan Wilkes, Royce Williams and George Dovaston.

The other large group who would frequent the Lincoln were the students from the university. The leader of this group appears to have been the irrepressible Lillian Roxon who started university in 1949 and during that year took many to the Lincoln including Sylvia Lawson, Barbara Paterson and George Clarke. Roxon’s famous sparring partner, Neil C. Hope (‘Sope’), was also a regular as were other students such as Bill Harcourt, Grahame Harrison, and his future wife Verna Scott, Doug McCallum, Gordon Barton, Michael Baume, Martin Haberman, Lucy Gruder, Judy Gollan, Myfawny Gollan, and Roslyn Izzatt. Many of the university students had studied philosophy under Professor 10 John Anderson and a few of them went on to further careers in philosophy including David Armstrong, Jim Baker, Vol Molesworth and John Rybak.

There were also many who went to the Lincoln who were not part of any particular social group. These included Nadine Amadio who modelled for art classes, the beauty therapist June Cairns, ‘Edie’, the waitress at the Lincoln, Alex Diamantis, a translator, toolmaker Fred Egan, Yoga instructor Moira Grant, Peter Hellier, Les Hiatt, later a professor in anthropology, John Hilberry, Mike Hourigan, Maiben Howe, Peter James, Alvin Karpin, Harry (M?) Miller, the proprietor of the Sydney Stadium, Madelaine Moriaty, Brian Noakes, Rosaleen Norton, the ‘witch of the Cross’, Margaret Percival, a nurse at Sydney Hospital who committed suicide in 1949, a fellow nurse, Jo Sindel, the Communist, Harry Reid, Donald J. Richards, a show business manager, Ian Scott-Orr, Jack Shadwell, Wendy Shaw, Roelof Smilde, Cedric and Julie Smith, Ann Torrens, Bernice Wagner, great grand-daughter of Richard Wagner, Dick Woodward and the brothers, Edgar and Darcy Waters. Others who came to the Lincoln included Monica Clutterbuck, Don Beaton, Tommy Dean, Margaret Williams (nee Wills), Ann Barrett, Diane Wilkes, the barrister Duane Delano, Harry Peters, Peter Tranter, the solicitor Stenyak Weiss, Ley Wolfe, Bill Lindberg, and Ann Bryson, who married Paul Foulkes. Actors Roger Cox and Harry Griffiths frequented the Lincoln as did doctors such as Ken Merton and Ross Byrne and solicitors Barry Kennedy and Joe Lynch. The scientist, John Simons, was also a regular. There was also the contortionist Nikki Dent who would roll herself into a ball and was then lifted up by Louis Herbst who would hold her in his palm above his head.

There is little doubt that during the brief flowering of the Lincoln coffee shop that it was the centre for bohemian activity in the post-war period before the start of the . Its collection of artists, musicians, journalists, philosophers, writers and a multitude of others simply interested in an alternative meeting place meant that the Lincoln was the place to meet during the early years of the fifties. By the time the Lincoln closed in March 1952, it had achieved a reputation amongst those who met there which has survived for more than fifty years. But the movement started at the Lincoln didn’t end with its closure. For several years, many of the Lincoln patrons had been going to the Tudor Hotel in Phillip Street where the licensee allowed women to drink. Judy Ogilvie, who had found the Lincoln ‘musky, feline, female, womb-like’, had a rather different impression of the Tudor:

There was lots of serious discussion going on in The Tudor about freedom, religion and aesthetics. Everyone was crammed into the tiny lounge bar, which was only a narrow landing or mezzanine in the elbow of the stairs between the public bar downstairs and the Ladies Lounge upstairs. An outsider came to the top of the stairs, heard some of the conversation and backed down again, shaking his head… The Tudor was coldly, aggressively masculine, like most Sydney pubs. Its furnishings were the colour of beer, its bars were harshly lit with fluorescent tubes and the loud assertive voices of its customers bounced off the bare walls.1

However for a young philosophy lecturer it was a place where there could be a more open exchange of views than could be found around the quadrangle at the university.

…(In 1950) I started to drink in the Tudor Hotel in Phillip Street (the first great Libertarian Push pub), where I found the numerous students etc. who drank there to be intelligent and interesting to talk to, but by and large not quite as dedicated to Andersonian philosophy as comparable students had previously been… Philosophy students did predominate, but there were various artists, poets, wits (especially Sope and several of the women), Communists and others in the social group. They all seemed to have bohemian/libertarian tendencies.2

When the Lincoln closed, the Tudor became the place to meet for the Lincoln crowd and by the time the Tudor closed its doors in 1955, The Sydney Push was a pulsating and thriving social movement.

Anderson/Walker Correspondence Feb. 1952

1 loc cit 2 Baker, A.J. ‘1951: The first Libertarian Society, Libertarians and John Anderson’ Heraclitus 89 July 2001 p 14 11 6/2/52 RW Not hearing, political innocents and necessary truths1

One of my difficulties over here is simply not hearing what some people say. With M. (Margaret) MacDonald I hear so much and then lose a final phrase and the other night when we were generally disagreeing on things, I had to say ‘I just can’t hear you’. For a moment I thought she was going to tell me to clean my ears or something, but matters proceeded more or less amicably.

I still have this book on Holloway to review and may have some jab at Ryle in dealing with it. But oh dear such political innocents are dull.

And after Lazerowitz today I feel again that over here people say so little in such a long time. I found myself nodding which is not my usual reaction to a philosophy lecture. Lazerowitz of course is American but he has some of the local style and is concerned to state his position in relation to the current views without (I think – tho this may be too early to say) having a clear cut opposition to them. Also he makes little jokes which I don’t care for and he introduced a rather messy symbol <> where there was really no need to. He wanted to show that a ‘necessary truth’ could not have a contingent consequence and the argument (which would really seem to show that it can’t have any consequence) was in terms of the impossibility, if p is a necessary truth and q is its consequence, of saying that there were three possibilities: p false, q false; p false, q true as well as p true, q true; there would only be the last possibility where p is true. Again he said if p is self-contradictory and supposed to imply q, we could not rule out the fourth thing p true, q false: any inconsistency in that would already lie in p, or something like that. I am not sure whether the symbol signified necessity or whether it was possibility and had negations added, but it was used both in relation to a proposition being necessary or self-contradictory and it connection with its being impossible, given p implies q, for p to be true and q false. It didn’t seem especially useful in any of these cases.

8/2/52 JA Ryle seminar: Relations and Propositions

There is a point in your description of the Ryle affair that I didn’t quite get – i.e. about the intervention you wanted to make. Did you want to say that some people are so obsessed with relations that that they treat the proposition as a relation? Or did someone say that, and you wanted to say that, even if it isn’t a relation, there’s a difference between subject and predicate – a difference which makes difficulties for idealism? I incline to the latter alternative, but I wasn’t quite sure from what you said. The view that it’s ‘obvious’ that relations can’t hold between propositions is certainly an odd one; it seems that you, as well as Sandy, are getting the chance to see the difference in level (!) between discussions here and discussions elsewhere; and I remain impatient with those who are impatient with me for what I haven’t done and don’t think more about what I have done.

8/2/52 JA ‘little science’

The phrase you were hunting for, about discussions on ethics, I imagine to have been Sorel’s ‘the little science’ rather than anything of Nietzsche’s. I think I mention it in ‘Marxist Ethics’.

8/2/52 JA ‘my private Sahara’

Sometimes you seem very near; sometimes I’m lost in my private Sahara, without even a camel on the horizon. I’m a bit annoyed, in fact, with my up-and-down-ness but on the whole I think I’m going to get ahead;

8/2/52 JA Adamson’s ‘History of Logic’

I have struggled through Adamson’s ‘History of Logic’; it didn’t help me with Bacon and Descartes (and was horrid on Aristotle) but after that it perked up – or I got more used to the translation of the stuff into my own terms – and has given me a point or two. I hadn’t realised how near-Hegelian Adamson was or how he constantly said ‘knowledge’ when the question is of ‘reality’. What he seemed to me to bring out about the Cartesians is that they take thinking as a thing (not a relation); I suppose I knew that before, but Adamson seems to set it out in a clearer

1 In a later letter, Anderson discusses these three subjects. The following comments are the basis of his discussion. 12 light. Also some of his final points on nominalism (the forcing of relations on isolated units) seems to me quite good.

11/2/52 RW On Popper

The noticeable thing about Popper is that he loves to get the phrase to put a theory before you and in general terms seems to like ‘pictures’. He talked of natural sciences not having a ‘ceiling’ while the social do, and in the other what we’re concerned with is to find the right ‘hook’ to hang some fact on. Our ‘hypotheses’ will be truisms and the hypothetical element won’t be related to their being true or false. And the social ceiling seems to consist of – or at least this seems to be the thing called in chiefly – rational individualism. Just what this amounts to I’m not sure, because Popper stresses that its methodological individualism he’s concerned with, and also he allows that there are phenomena such as group hysteria which could not be dealt with in terms of it. Here he talks about a biological side.

Popper talks about the Abstract Society (as the concrete group) in which no person hears, smells (most important) etc. another, and all communicate by means of symbols. Here we had pictures of all using the teletype and having children by artificial insemination. By reference to this abstract society we can build models and explain an astonishing number of social facts, eg a great many facts dealt with by anthropology. These notions of abstract society and rational individualism go together and along with them is a notion of the logic of the situation which comes up, more too clearly in ‘The Open Society’. Another closely linked notion which I haven’t got at all clearly yet is that of the absence of Constants in social sciences. In natural sciences there are natural constants which are always vital and because of this there can be no ceiling, but any universal proposition can in principle be replaced by a more universal one.

Popper gives me the impression of being able to talk utter nonsense tho he is so opposed to mystical talk. I feel he could elaborate a thing a great deal but the great thing is that he doesn’t see, or just won’t see that he is dealing with truisms in a sense with his talk of rationality.

14/2/52 JA Bohemian indulgence, austerity and the inspirational touch1

I seem to have gone a bit slack again, in spite of some self-criticism and efforts at reform. The reform so far amounts to a cessation of card-playing, but it looks as if something more drastic, and analytic were required; even my reading of books like Adamson’s ‘History of Logic’ and making a few notes as I go may be a form of self indulgence. What precipitated the criticism was the drink question; I went to have a stout with Tom (he had beer) and had four stouts; later I went to have a beer with Jim (he didn't even ask me to have one but just said, as we were walking to Central, that he was going to have one) and had five beers. Also, while I may say now (with references to performances of last year) that Bohemian indulgence is 'insipid', the question remains 'why did I sip?' It looks as if there were some element of non-austerity in my soul - an element which too easily takes command - and just how far it goes in my life, how much it has been involved not only in papers to students but in lectures (in my general 'inspirational' touch), is a question that might have a very disquieting answer. I was thinking in this connection that while I criticise Peter (and Jim and Tom for that matter) for wanting more from me when they haven't got all that could be got from what I have put out, I should have been criticising myself for not following up what I'd written, i.e., for treating it as something finished (an inspiration, an oracle) instead of something that needed improvement. It looks as if I were saying "There is a work of art; admire it; learn from it", instead of treating it as a passing phase in the process of inquiring2.

1 This and the subsequent paragraphs are good examples of Anderson’s ‘self-criticism’ and many of the themes raised here – particularly austerity and reversion – are discussed in later letters. 2 A rendition of this phrase appears at the beginning of ‘Democratic Illusions’ (which appeared in Hermes later in the year) and was also used by Ruth in later correspondence (27/2). 13 14/2/52 JA Reversion as phantasy

It occurred to me too, to wonder why, in spite of all my criticism of Jim, I find myself (sometimes at any rate) more at ease with him than with Tom. It may be that what I criticise in Jim (at 'austere' times) is just the sort of unbending or relaxing that (from its quantity even if not from its quality) is criticisable in me. But it struck me that, if alcohol promotes a certain reversion, Jim and I revert back to student days, whereas Tom never had student days in the same sense (his were responsible) and so reverts to an earlier phase - one in which a certain heavy playfulness would be more in evidence than verbal fireworks (Jim is perhaps, in this connection, somewhere between Tom and me.) However larger points suggest themselves - first (as hinted above) how far the student attitude comes out in my whole life and not just in my dissipations (or how far my whole life is one of relaxation), and, second, the nature of 'reversion'. Presumably it is like dream or phantasy - a falsification of the past, a substitution of imaginary or symbolic success for actual failure. At any rate, it strikes me now - at least as a possibility - that, unless I can do a bit of analysis (perhaps just thinking) and see what I'm falsifying, my 'austerity' (or interest in objectivity) will always be liable to be toppled over, whether the solicitation is cards or liquor or shockers or admiration - the response to my 'putting on a show' of one kind or another.

14/2/52 JA austerity, objectivity and Romanticism

Here I would say that, although I have not always given it a fair chance or responded to it properly, austerity or objectivity is part (and a big part) of what has attracted me in you. Romanticism (which is the thing that can seduce me)1 consists in turning qualities into relations – more particularly, relations to (significations of) the Absolute; the sort of thing I have called in connection with Hegel, a philosophy of powers – each particular thing being a certain power of the Absolute or being the Absolute ‘raised to a certain power’ – so that all differences are differences of degree. It is a species of , in opposition to the recognition of absolute differences in quality – recognition of ‘intractability’. You have stood for such differences (you have been, in some sort, my ‘clue to quality’2); and it seems likely to me that on occasions (on some occasions at least) when I couldn’t understand your criticisms or your difficulties, the obstacle (or the target) was some streak of reductionism in me, some explaining away of differences. I feel pretty sure about this, though I can’t at the moment give chapter and verse.

14/2/52 JA Arnauld and austerity

In this connection I’m wondering (though I’m so badly informed in the field that it can be only a guess) whether Arnauld3 wasn’t more ‘austere’ than his contemporaries – whether anti-reductionism (incomplete, of course) wasn’t his distinguishing mark. Then again I’ve been thinking that the doctrine of ideas (apart, or largely apart, from its representationist character) can be taken as a reductionist doctrine, a doctrine of the ‘elementary constituents’ from which things, or knowings, are built up and into which they can be broken up – and also as a primitivist doctrine, a finding of the ‘true reality of things’ in their source or first state.

14/2/52 JA Baier, Herbst and Ryle4

…philosophy is on a shocking state when creatures like Baier and Herbst can get a standing. I must do my best to annihilate Ryle when I get round to it.

1 This phrase and the previous sentence are interesting in giving John’s view of the reason for his attraction to Ruth (initially her ‘austerity’ and later on her ‘recognition of absolute differences in quality’ or ‘intractability’) while he can be ‘seduced’ by Romanticism or reductionism, the turning of qualities into relations. At the very least, this is an alternative hypothesis to Kennedy’s claim that John ‘seduced’ Ruth (A Passion to Oppose p ) 2 This phrase was central to Alexander’s philosophy who found the ‘clue to quality’ in ? 3 Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) was a Jansenist philosopher and theologian (as was Blaise Pascal) and one of the most brilliant minds of the seventeenth century. At the Sorbonne, Arnauld criticised Descartes’ Meditations and wrote the handbook on logic, the ‘Port-Royal Logic’. Arnauld was also involved in an extended controversy with Nicolas Malebranche on the nature of perception. Arnauld was first mentioned in a letter by Ruth on January 16th and then taken up in discussion in subsequent correspondence. 4 Herbst and Baier had worked at Melbourne University during the war, although they both now appear to be residing in Britain. The Ryle reference is to Ryle’s article, ‘Logic and Professor Anderson’ A.J.P. Vol. 28, No. 3 (1950) pp137-153. John Mackie wrote a response to Ryle’s paper and Peter Herbst responded to Mackie’s paper. 14

14/2/52 JA Glibness and effrontery

…glibness and effrontery are passports to academic preferment in England at the present time.

14/2/52 JA Popper’s appointment

The Senate did no dirty work on Popper.1 It must have been one member of the Senate who spilled to the press the news of his appointment and started that ‘Australians and ex-soldiers first’ agitation of R.S.L. and other people; but the Senate as a whole accepted the Board’s recommendation and (I think) with no particular fuss. The public row was such as to cause Popper to withdraw, but he had been appointed; and Selle and I persuaded him to withdraw his withdrawal – but eventually he withdrew again, having decided to await his chance of the London appointment which he finally got.

17/2/52 RW Popper seminar

At the seminar it is, thank goodness, possible to smoke, though today’s was rather weird as the chap opening it was hardly allowed to get more than a sentence or two out before he was hauled up by somebody. From what he did say I think his paper is poor but a lot of the early querying would have been saved if he had been allowed to get continuously to the point at which we stopped. His thesis was that psycho-analysis is really biology and therefore not a ceiling or social science, and I think he was ‘showing’ this by just taking up the biological things in Freud, and then telling us how biology was now following these up. It is fairly clear that Popper has a considerable contempt for psycho-analysis so that I don’t expect anything much to emerge, but the curious thing today was the way the poor student was treated. Popper was ‘shocked’ at what he was saying here and took a lot of it to be ‘trivialities’ – I don’t really know how the lad managed to keep his temper since he really was hardly given a chance to build up anything.

17/2/52 RW Ryle seminar: Relations and propositions

As regards the Ryle seminar the interpretation to which you inclined was the right one. It seems to me quite natural to say that the S. (subject) and P. (predicate) of a proposition are distinct tho related or connected without thinking that you are dealing with something on all forms of parenthood or what not. Also I rather suspect that Ryle himself would be involved in reducing qualitative predicates to a variety of relations. This is just a suspicion but the theory of dispositions which he has seems to amount to reducing some description to a set of relations, which his emphasis on ‘occurrences’ (in his sense) suggests that all manner of descriptions would become dispositional for him. However this is rather different though if a person did take all the predications to be (of?) relations he might easily substitute the relation for the copula, I imagine.

20/2/52 JA Leslie Stephen and Jim Baker

Over the weekend I was a bit uneasy – feeling that having replied in part to your letter of 6th – 7th Feb., I should go right on and complete the job. However I went on, instead, with Leslie Stephen’s ‘English Thought in the Eighteenth Century’2, and found that my comments on that get connected with points I could make to you – in fact, having your letter at the back of my mind was distinctly helpful; only I think I’d better make L.S. my last piece of note-taking reading until my decks (= study) are cleared for action. I’ve got quite a pile of stuff now, taken in connection with Adamson. Boyd’s ‘History of Western Education’ (not much there) and Stephen – of course some of it is (not strictly connected) thoughts for the modern course, the lecture on Freud, the lecture, and (perhaps) the settling of Ryle. My latest project is an article on ‘Hypotheticals’ for the Journal; Jim is determined to write on that subject for

1 In 1945, , then working at the University of Christchurch was offered a position as a lecturer in Anderson’s department. However the subsequent public controversy concerning the claims of servicemen for the position, led Popper to withdraw his application. Anderson went to some effort to have Popper resubmit his application, although this was in turn withdrawn as he waited for news on his ultimately successful application to the London School of Economics. See Franklin op cit p 315 and Archives 2 It is a little surprising that Anderson, having been criticised by Ryle a year earlier which led to the subsequent article by Mackie and Herbst, should be spending his spare time reading a historian such as Leslie Stephen. 15 Mind – nothing will shift him from ‘the thing he wants to do’ to something on which he wouldn’t be borrowing the bulk of his stuff – and I’ve decided that I won’t have my pitch queered by letting him have prior publication of an important part of my doctrine – or his version thereof.1 It’s a nuisance disturbing the order of my work, but it seems to be a matter of great present interest to the Ryleans, as it may all be for the best.

20/2/52 JA Not hearing, political innocence and necessary truths

Well, the points in your letter that rang bells were a) necessary truths, b) political innocence c) not hearing (with Miss MacDonald).2 Though what I said to Peter about ‘subjectivism’ in the Ryleans started off from his remarks about his thesis on necessity. I hadn’t been thinking thoroughly enough about the way in which the dualism of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ (with the various ‘correspondence’ devices which don’t get over it) is connected with the ‘certainty’ ‘uncertainty’ one.

I've just been suggesting to Sandy, who is up against the 'sentence' (versus proposition) talk, that I should bring together the sorts of points I was making on certainty in The Science of Logic with the stuff on correspondence in Mind as Feeling. 'Words' take the place of 'ideas' with the linguisticists, they go on as if there were a priority of (our knowledge of) words to (our knowledge of) what they mean - as if we were ever confronted with just words - and this is a version of 'inwardness' and 'certainty'; we're supposed to be quite sure of the sentences even when we're quite unsure of the facts (or whatever they may choose to call the postulated 'externals').3 I think B. Russell has been a real mischief-maker in all this; still I’m pleased to see the questions falling in order. Of course, I’ve been attacking conventionalism and instrumentalism all this time (this is the third point coming second) but I might have set it out in a more orderly fashion.

Anyway, I have frequently connected not hearing with not understanding through the notion of what's omitted (or taken for granted) in (the sound-making as well as the sense-making of) different groups or 'movements' - national, local, professional and so forth; and this links up again with 'provinces', with the diverse forms of ability to which forms of speech and of expression generally 'belong'. This is what makes Ryle particularly silly, with his notion that there's a common or central usage (though, of course, I don't argue for an absolute separation of provinces); and Popper also, with his humanitarianism. (this is the second point now) It's these utilitarians, instrumentalists, reductionists who are political simpletons, i.e. those who think there is a common good, common aims etc., instead of seeing politics as a balancing of diverse interests. But the objective, all the time, is security (certainty); and that's why they can't understand us, why they look for our dogmas. They think there must be a criteria ("method", instruments) distinct from that of which they are criteria.

27/2/52 RW On Popper

I’ve been having a quiet period after my initial bouts and think that talking at Popper’s seminars is going to be fairly tricky. The blighter continually interrupts and when the sufferer wants to object to give some interpretation and criticism, he blandly says ‘just a moment’ and goes on with his exposition. It seems extra hard when he himself so obviously casts around for the right way of putting things and would want a person to use some nous in dealing with what he has said and not pick at it… I do enjoy Popper’s things in spite of suffering them in one way or another, tho it sounds as if you are going to give vent on the subject in a later letter. From the last lecture on paradoxes, even allowing for their introductory character, it appears in this connection also that there is something that must remain, tho the heavens fall, namely mathematics as she is. And so he takes up a linguistic position of a kind tho primarily he is a realist, concerned with what we deal with in language, and as a linguisticist he is conscious of the historical origins of the show and not someone going in for a fashionable game. This is a sort of rendering, of course, of his view of himself, not my judgement.

1 This comment explains an often made charge against Anderson that he was ‘possessive’ of his work and discouraged ex-students such as Jim Baker from writing on key aspects of Anderson’s philosophy. 2 See letter of 6/2. 3 Anderson’s point here is an interesting one for in effect he is accusing linguistic philosophers of being Idealists. ‘Mind as Feeling’ was republished in Studies but the ‘Science of Logic’ was not and can be found in the AJPP 1933 16 27/2/52 RW ‘eternally greeting a new self’

Your remarks about student days as what you and Jim revert to sent me off on the tangent that I wish I could revert to student days. I feel that I had some kind of responsibility then and perhaps in my early teaching days, which has gone now. But this is no doubt just my own brand of romanticism and I really want to go on eternally greeting a new self1, feeling that I am ‘improving my soul’ or something. I had something like this in mind when thinking about the ‘Appeal of Descartes’2, i.e. that there is an appeal (for some minds) in the notion of a period of discipline tho perhaps this is all the greater if the butterfly stage is taken as something one can only approximate to. And perhaps there is some connection between this and a notion that if a person does produce something with some independence and completeness, that he can’t treat it as a passing phase in a process of inquiring. At least there is some danger, I think, in the stressing of problems giving rise to further problems, of some dangerous fascination in the notion of a continuing process of inquiring.

27/2/52 RW Holloway review

This brings me to my decision to get going on some Arnauld soon. I’ve been reading too many detective stories and making slow going on the review of Holloway.3 I should get this done soon and send it to the journal via you, if you have no objections. It is another book which tries to debunk an illusory ‘classical’ position but also with this rather Rylean material, he combines rather curiously stuff from Waismann. Even if these two aren’t in disagreement, their interests seem very different and following both leads to a production of a rather curious book.

27/2/52 RW themes to letters

I don’t think we should strive to get a theme for our letters and turn the whole thing into some organic whole. But I am finding some special problems in the way letters pass each other – things are simpler when one letter of A’s follows just one letter of B’s, and B then replies to A etc. But if we don’t yearn after some neat arrangement I think things should go alright. I always get a thrill when a letter comes from you, tho I sometimes in replying make it too much of a task. And it sounds as tho you might be doing something similar. You will see from my remarks in connection with Findlay that I have a general bother about letter writing; the products are just a bit too far from ‘works of art’ for my liking even tho I don’t aspire to becoming an artist in letters. One trouble is that I tend to gnaw in on myself, not to be able to write clearly or without continual modifications, and with some effect of trying to present me in the process of writing a letter. At least I think the last sometimes happens – perhaps I want to communicate myself in some impossible way.4

28/2/52 JA 20th century philosophy

What he (Peter) and the others don't seem to understand is the enormity of what passes for philosophy in these days and the consequent fact that one can't simply treat it as an occasion for friendly argument. When, 25 years ago, I was (as Peter puts it) giving a stimulus to realism... the question confronting me was one of philosophical development - there certainly was a bit too much Cambridge-ism around (the theory of 'types'.. etc.) but other tendencies seemed healthy enough, though in fact they have faded away. But now, when the question is of reviving philosophy, a different line is needed; and, from that point of view, I don't think my studies of the past dozen years or so have been thrown away.5 I know J.A.P(assmore) used to suggest that I was particularly fitted to tackle B. Russell and

1 Margin note by JA above this phrase: ‘Hear, hear’ 2 The ‘Appeal of Descartes’ was a paper Ruth gave to an AAPP conference in 1949?, although no full report of the paper appears to have survived. The following reference to the ‘butterfly stage’ is not clear as to its meaning. 3 Despite Ruth’s statement of intention here, the review of Holloway’s book continues to occupy her for several months, taking her away from the work on Arnauld which she appears to have made very little progress on. I know of no written work by Ruth – either published or in the Walker Archives – on Arnauld 4 These few sentences give a good indication of Ruth’s high expectations of herself in the writing of letters and also of her self-doubt when she does write. 5 This sentence gives a good indication of Anderson’s assessment of the decay of philosophy over the preceding twenty five years. It is also important to note that he thinks that his studies of the past dozen years (presumably since his return to Australia in 1939) have not been wasted. What is of interest here is that his interests during that time were primarily questions in ethics and particularly psychological, social 17 Wittgenstein on their own ground, but, even if that was true, I don't think it was the best line for me; in particular, the view took no account of the historical side of what made positivism and so on flourish at the present time - and, failing recognition of that, I'ld have been lost in a lot of gladitorial contests (these being, I fancy, what our young enthusiasts want) which wouldn't have affected the trend of things one iota. If revival is to come, it will be from history of philosophy, as part of 'history of ideas', from the alliance of philosophy with historical disciplines and this is my job (in which, I think, you are the only one fitted to help me), even if, when I do break out in it, there will still be a gladatorial element in my performances. J.A.P. himself, of course, is coming out on the historical side, but he hasn't, I'ld say, a broad enough sweep in his ideas - he at least tends towards docketing and labelling procedures, 'scholarship' in the bad sense.1

28/2/52 JA Popper

Popper is another sign of the times - a man coming to philosophy from the outside, forcing his categories on it and leaving room for a lot of arbitrariness and ignorance (a lot of dualism)… I don’t know exactly what he means by ‘constants’, but I guess that ‘no constants in social science’ amounts to ‘no laws in social science’ (how it comes to be science is then a question) – no true universal propositions, but just particulars capable of manipulation – the sort of attitude I call servility. In that case, the ‘ceiling’ would be just postulates we feel impelled to make, method as distinct from subject-matter, devices for ‘ordering’ the material, for proceeding as if certain universals were true while leaving a loophole in case we’re challenged – a general ‘instrumentalist’ procedure in which policy governs theory while itself dodging theoretical criticism. Evading criticism in this way, we can get our ‘abstract’ scheme or ‘deductive system’ which we can then use on the facts (the main use, I think, would be allowing us to ignore inconvenient facts) and so the postulate (‘rational individualism’ or whatever) is justified; it ‘enables’ me concentrate on a, b, c, and ignore x, y, and z, which is what I wanted to do. There would, in any case, be a lot of fallacy in the details, but its sufficiently in accordance with current voluntarism to get away with a lot. It’s all very Austrian, I think; the Austrian school of economists (late 19th C.) made fashionable this sort of ‘working from the abstract to the concrete’ (illustrated by what E. R. Walker means by ‘deductive’ in the book Perce reviewed – ‘From Economic Theory to Policy’); …In my view, then, Popper is already talking ‘utter nonsense’ in the stuff you mention; and its not only connected with his humanitarianism (his general search for ‘betterment’) but with his trying to get a social theory from a physical starting point (cf. ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities; and Whitehead on the ‘bifurcation of nature’). On the one hand, it’s reductionism; but where that is felt not to answer, the recourse is to sheer invention (phantasy).

28/2/52 JA Qualities as relations

Do you feel like following up the point about qualities as relations? I see the unspeakable Baier is collaborating with Toulmin on Descriptions – I only looked at the beginning but observed that descriptions can’t be true or false – this would seem to suggest that they are relative, or inseparable from the describer; additional candidates for the no- man’s-land of ‘ideas’ – and that reminds me both of Alexander’s ‘tertiary qualities’ and of you on Arnauld.

28/2/52 JA Seminar interruptions

I do think these interruptions at seminars are deplorable, but it’s quite in accordance with ‘gladiatorial’ notions – or the notion of ‘spontaneous’ philosophy; minds always sparking. (Romanticism – away with dead things like books).

and political theory. Representative papers during this period would include ‘Mythology’ (1939), ‘History and Consciousness’ and ‘Obscenity’ (1940), ‘Freethought and Sex’ (1942), ‘The Meaning of Good’, ‘The Servile State’ (1943) and ‘The Politics of Proscription’ (1948) while his lectures included ‘Ethics and Aesthetics’ (1942), ‘Political Theory’ (1942) and ‘’ (1945). 1 Despite Passmore’s wide reputation, based especially on his A Hundred Years of Philosophy, as a quality historian of ideas, Anderson’s assessment of his work is not so flattering and it is Ruth who he thinks is ‘the only one fitted to help me’ in forming an alliance between philosophy and history. 18 The Andersonians

Passmore, J.A. (John) (1914-2004)

Passmore was educated at Sydney University from 1931 to 1933 where he met his future wife, Doris Sumner. He gained first class honours in philosophy in 1934 and was appointed to the philosophy department in 1935 where he taught before going to the chair of philosophy at the in 1950. In 1955, he moved to the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, where he was reader and then professor of philosophy and head of department. He held a number of distinguished visiting appointments at universities outside Australia including Gauss Lecturer, Princeton University, and was Tanner Lecturer on Human Values at Cambridge University in 1980. He gave the ABC Boyer Lectures in 1981. He was a director and later governor of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust and was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1992. Published extensively in a wide range of areas and is best known for his A Hundred Years of Philosophy, Cudsworth and Hume’s Intentions. (Memoirs of a Semi-Attached Australian, National Library of Australia, Barcan Rad. Stud. p 47)

McCallum, D.C. (Doug) (1922 – 1998)

Educated at Sydney Boys High and in 1940 joined the ABC as a news cadet and enrolled in Arts at SU as an evening student. He joined the army in the same year and was active in the intelligence unit. After the war he completed his studies in philosophy under Anderson and was appointed as a teaching fellow in philosophy. He was part of the ‘Holy Trinity’ during the late 40’s (Baker, Stove and McCallum), and popularised the use of the term ‘The Push’. He was in England in early 50’s and returned to Sydney in the mid-50’s when he became an active member of the Libertarian Society. In the 60’s he became Professor of Political Science at UNSW and became closely associated with Quadrant, the Association of Cultural Freedom and ‘Andersonian’ magazine Conflict. He drank at the Newcastle Hotel with left wing intellectuals, but with the division caused by the , by 1971 ‘pluralist mingling between the intellectual right and intellectual radicals’ came to an end. (Heraclitus 68; see also SMH 1/9/98; Aust 7/9/98)

Baker, A.J. (Jim)

Studied under Anderson in the mid forties, before travelling to Oxford to gain a B.Phil. He returned to Sydney in 1950 when he gained a position in Anderson’s department. He sided with the Libertarians in the conflict within the Freethought Society in 1951 and during 1952 was often criticised by John in his letters to Ruth for his involvement in the Libertarian Society. He became one of the intellectual leaders of the Libertarian Society and the Sydney Push. He taught in for a short period before being appointed as a lecturer at Macquarie University. He has published widely on the thought and life of John Anderson and on a variety of subjects in philosophy. His best known works are Anderson’s Social Philosophy and . Editor of Heraclitus for many years.

Armstrong, D.M. (David) (1926- )

Educated at Dragon School, Oxford, and Geelong Grammar School Armstrong served in the Royal Australian Navy in 1945-46 and then enrolled at the , where he graduated with an Honours degree in Philosophy in 1950. He continued his philosophical studies at Exeter College, Oxford, where his supervisor was H.H. Price. Graduating as a B.Phil., he lectured at London University before returning to Australia in 1955. Armstrong took up a post as a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne in 1956, becoming Senior Lecturer in 1961. In 1964 he returned to the University of Sydney as the Challis Professor of Philosophy and held this position until his retirement in 1991. Following a split in the Department of Philosophy in 1973, he was the first Head of the Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy. Since 1991 he has been Emeritus Professor of Philosophy. Armstrong's particular interests have been in the areas of the theory of knowledge and perception, the philosophy of mind and metaphysics and his writings brought him an international reputation. His principal publications are Berkeley's theory of vision (1960), Perception and the physical world (1961), A materialist theory of the mind (1968), Belief, truth and knowledge (1973), Universals and scientific realism (1978), Universals (1989), A world of states of affairs (1997) and The mind-body problem (1999). Armstrong married Madeleine Haydon in 1950 and Jennifer Clark in 1982. (National Library of Australia)