From a 2000 review of a biography of A. J. Ayer, describing the response to the young hotshot’s 1936 Language, Truth and Logic:
“It was one of those books that galvanize a whole generation. Ambitious undergraduates commonly read it at a sitting. Their elders were appalled. When students tried to discuss the book at an Oxford seminar, the Master of Balliol flung it through the window. Ayer was denounced by a housemaster at Winchester School as the wickedest man in Oxford. Asked what came next, the young iconoclast said cheerfully: ‘There’s no next. Philosophy has come to an end. Finished’.”
We remember Ayer but not the Master of Balliol or the Winchester housemaster. Deservedly so for those who play dismissal games rather than engaging the arguments. See also: Original thinkers’ contemporaries: Nietzsche edition.
Related: On Ayer and the (temporary) end of philosophy: In Chapter 3 of Explaining Postmodernism, I discuss Ayer’s place in the rise and fall of Logical Positivism.
I remember the book well from my undergraduate philosophy studies.
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Re “We remember Ayer but not the Master of Balliol or the Winchester housemaster. Deservedly so for those who play dismissal games rather than engaging the arguments.” Well put.
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In fairness to Ayer’s critics, the logical positivism which he expounded killed a generation or two of philosophers, sure they had great careers but what is the residue of the movement?
On top of that he celebrated the welfare state and the EU and he thought it was clever to be disruptive at a meeting of anti-communist intellectuals – at the height of the cold war, claiming in defence, at least they (the Soviets) are trying to DO something.
He dismissed the philosophy of Karl Popper in a few sentences in his book on 20th century philosophy. He will not be well remembered when the bills for the disasters of 20 century philosophy are settled.
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