The Northern Line
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The Northern Line No 4 July 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 226 Blaxland Rd, Wentworth Falls 2782 Email: [email protected] In this issue: Anderson on Alexander: A synopsis .............................................................................................................................................2 Space, Time and the Categories Reviewed ...................................................................................................................................3 Space-Time and Consciousness / or / The Non-Empirical (1917)................................................................................................5 Letter to Alexander (1917) ..........................................................................................................................................................14 Anderson/Walker Correspondence (April 1952).........................................................................................................................15 3/4/52 JA..................................................................................................................................................................................15 Reversion and Libertarians..........................................................................................................................................15 David Craig..................................................................................................................................................................15 Popper and Ayer ..........................................................................................................................................................15 Arnauld ........................................................................................................................................................................15 3/4/52 RW................................................................................................................................................................................15 Ritchie, Stove, Kelly, Mackie......................................................................................................................................15 Kant..............................................................................................................................................................................16 Sandy ...........................................................................................................................................................................16 10/4/52 JA................................................................................................................................................................................16 Stove’s farewell ...........................................................................................................................................................16 The Freud Lecture........................................................................................................................................................16 The Philosophical Blues ..............................................................................................................................................16 The Andersonians ........................................................................................................................................................................17 Mackie, J.L. (John) (1917-1981).................................................................................................................................17 Bourke, J.O.A. (Joe) (1908-1965) ...............................................................................................................................17 Doniela, W.V. (Bill) (1930 - ) .....................................................................................................................................18 Conlon, A. A. (Alf) (1908-1963).................................................................................................................................18 Donations gratefully received: AB $40; FH $30 In this issue of The Northern Line, three distinct subjects are presented. Firstly, the recent edition of Space, Time and the Categories is reviewed and Anderson’s 1917 essay ‘Space-Time and Consciousness’ and a letter Anderson wrote to Alexander at this time are published for the first time. Secondly there is the continued publication of the Anderson/Walker correspondence for 1952 which, apart from discussing a wide range of personalities and issues, also includes John’s ‘The Philosophical Blues’, written on the occasion of David Stove’s departure for the newly created ‘University of Technology’. (The actual party for Stove’s farewell must have been quite an affair for John didn’t get back to Turramurra until 6.30 am, not a bad effort for a man in his 59th year.) Finally there is a continuation of the biographical contributions on ‘the Andersonians’. Details on Mackie, Bourke and Conlon were derived from various public sources and I am grateful to Bill Doniela for providing details of his personal and professional life. I am currently seeking details on Margot Hentze, Peter Gibbons, Oliver Somerville, Ruth Atkins, Perce Partridge and Brian Beddie. If anyone can provide any information on any of these figures, it would be much appreciated. Finally, for some time I have been wanting to draw attention to the work of Jim Packer in advancing Andersonian studies. Jim typed the essay by Anderson reproduced below and has recently completed a full item listing of the entire contents of the Anderson Archives. This was an enormous task on which Jim has been regularly working for the last three years 2 and this work is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in John Anderson’s life and work. As one example of this work, I have reproduced below Jim’s description of a single item dealing with Nietzsche. The value of this work will be immediately obvious and is an excellent example of the ‘care for exactitude’ which Anderson listed as one of the characteristics of the ethic of the producer. (Studies p 325) Series 4 Item 30/10 “25/6/47 1st Meeting of Ethics Group. ARW on Birth of Tragedy” [var. pages, pen & pencil; 1st p. pencil with this title; then: “Nietzsche on ‘moralists’ who make weakness into a fantastic strength” [1947, pen; 5 pp. w. other notes e.g. “Ethics and Education” p. 2 ref. to “dominance and submission”] [on p. 5: “Nietzsche vs time (cf. Hist. is a nightmare)—man can only find solution of his riddle in ‘being’ something definite and unchangeable (as against becoming)”; 2 half-pp. pencil notes with reference “[Ethics and Education]”, also: Epicurus; “Nature of ethics”, 1 p. different pen; politics, education, 1 p. different pen; 1 p. pencil “Marxism as egalitarianism”; “Re Nietzsche” 3 half-pp. pen/pencil (Nietzsche & Marx); pencil notes on Birth of Tragedy [2 p.; nd.]; 1 p. pencil notes “philosophy . no subject but a doctrine of procedures . (Nietzsche tends to this view)”. [nd.; pencil] Anderson on Alexander: A synopsis With the recent publication of Space, Time and the Categories, students of the philosophy of John Anderson now have a reasonably comprehensive record of Anderson’s views of Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity. However this record is not complete and there is other material, some of which could be reasonably regarded as significant, which is yet to be made publicly available. The purpose of this synopsis is to draw attention to the entire collection of Anderson’s writings on Alexander in the hope that they might one day see the light of day. It is well known that Anderson attended Alexander’s Gifford lectures during 1917 and 1918, although I was surprised to learn from the publication of Alexander’s syllabus of the lectures that the lecture series in each year only ran for a period of six weeks. I had previously assumed that the lecture series were year long and had been based on a ‘work-in- progress’ manuscript of Space, Time and Deity. It is clear from the syllabus that while Alexander had worked out the main themes of this work for the Gifford lectures, he had not developed the detail which appears in Space, Time and Deity. The Gifford lectures must have been part of the assessment of Anderson’s M.A. degree for at the end of the first round of lectures in 1917, Anderson submitted a long essay on Alexander (see below). The essay is a solid piece of work although it is a little surprising that such a strong Hegelian influence is evident here. Following the submission of this essay, there is the first letter from Anderson to Alexander (see esp. para 2) which form a series that continues until 1930.1 During his residence in Scotland, Anderson made extensive notes on Alexander’s philosophy and in 1924 gave lectures on him as part of a course on Modern Realism.2 After his arrival in Sydney, Anderson published several articles dealing with Alexander although he does not appear to have lectured to students on him. (In the archives, there are several unfinished pieces written on the occasion of the second impression of S,T&D in 1927. These pieces are titled ‘Realism as Philosophy’ (9pp), ‘Alexander’s Philosophy of Space-Time’ (2pp), and ‘The Emancipation of Philosophy: The alternative to Idealism’ (1p).) However in 1939, Anderson gave his first