A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy and War at Oxford, 1900–1960

Krishnan, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Cambridge, debuts with an ambitious but underwhelming study of “Oxford philosophy,” an intellectual tradition defined by such virtues as humility, self awareness, and directness. Aiming to convey “not just what people thought but they were like,” Krishnan profiles a large cast of characters who studied and taught at Oxford between the world wars, including novelist and moral philosopher Iris Murdoch, whose forays into French existentialism led her to publish the “first comprehensive work in English” on Sartre, and J.L. Austin, a proponent of “ordinary language philosophy,” who sought “to ‘dissolve’ philosophical problems by showing them to emerge out of misunderstandings of language.” Though the premise fascinates, Krishnan struggles to weave the philosophers’ narratives together, resulting in a history that sometimes feels like a hodgepodge of amusing anecdotes rather than a unified whole. Links between the philosophers’ personal lives and the development of Oxford philosophy are also occasionally unclear—for instance, Krishnan notes that there were “sectarians of at least three different [philosophical] stripes” at Oxford when Gilbert Ryle arrived but doesn’t fully explain how they might have affected Ryle’s development as a philosopher, or the evolution of Oxford philosophy as a whole. Despite some bright moments, this never quite comes together. (July)