"The barrage of Vienese bombshells", remembered by Grice

"In the later 1930s Oxford was rudely
aroused from its semi-peaceful
semi-slumbers by the barrage of
Viennese bombshells hurled at it
by A. J. Ayer, at the time the
enfant terrible of
Oxford philosophy".

Gr86:48

He adds, interestingly -- and see above how RHETORIC he can wax!

"Many people,
including MYSELF,
were greatly interested by the
methods, theses and problems
which were on display."

"And some [not hisself -- sic -- now]
were, at least momentarily,
inspired by what they saw and heard"

-- can't say I can name a bunch other than Ayer.

He ends his passage of Oxford in the 1930s with a reference to a Dogmatism:

"For _my_ part, my reservations
were never laid to rest: the crudities
and dogmatisms seemed to pervasive. And
then everything was more or less
brought to a halt by the war"

--- Speranza has researched quite a bit of what we may call "the beginnings of ordinary language philosophy in Oxford".

Grice self-appointed as having been brought "up on the wrong side of the tracks" so he never really socialised with Ayer much (who was meeting with Austin, Hampshire, Hart, and 6 more -- on Tuesday evenings at All Souls).

Grice as a much more standard Lit. Hum. student with associations with the classics programme at Corpus, and he was just as much involved in cricket and football. His early papers from this years are a manuscript on Plato's theory of negation, and on Locke and the 'rational, intelligent parots', which transpired as _Mind_ 1942.

A counterfactual (I hate them) springs: what if the war had not been declared? It seems OBVIOUS that _after the war_ Grice sided with Austin, and against Ayer. Grice was now part of the playgroup with Austin. Ayer kept his club at All Souls (Some but very few belonged to both: if you can run with the hare and hunt with the hounds sort of thing: D. F. Pears one of them).

Etc.