This is a guest-post by Richard Symonds:
Philosopher Cyril Joad (1891-1953) is not someone we should forget as thinking Christians.
He wrote most of his 100+ books from his 'retreat' at South Stoke Farm West Sussex, until the end of the war (eg Teach Yourself Philosophy 1944).
Then, in 1946 until his death of cancer aged 61, lived at Stedham West Sussex - from where he wrote his last major work "The Recovery of Belief - A Restatement of Christian Philosophy" (Faber & Faber 1952)
As Cyril Joad's 60th Anniversary approaches, I grow in the conviction that if he had not died when he did - 1953 - a critically-important 'Moral Realist' movement would have developed, to rival that of the prevailing 'Moral Relativists'.
The Times Obituary for CEM Joad (April 10 1953) states: "CEM Joad made no original contribution to philosophy". That is simply incorrect. Joad made a very original - albeit late - contribution to Christian philosophy - "The Recovery of Belief".
Professor Geoffrey Thomas, of Birkbeck College London, wrote this in a booklet "Cyril Joad" (Birkbeck - 1992): "Cyril Joad also worshipped at Stedham church: and the image of Joad and T.S. Eliot, often the only communicants, is not the least curious of church history's vignettes."
This is what the Professor Thomas says on the first page: "This book commemorates Cyril Joad, a philosopher who believed that philosophy should not be a mere academic speciality, but a power in everyday life."
CEM Joad set up London's Birkbeck's Philosophy Department in 1930, and ran it for or 23 years - but he was never made a Professor; which is not the least curious in Birkbeck's history - especially as it is now considered one of the best Philosophy Departments in the world.
Joad is best remembered as The Professor' in the BBC's Brains Trust - one of the most popular wartime radio programmes in this country (there was no television) - now called Any Questions? and Question Time.
These days, if Cyril Joad is remembered at all, he is remembered more for a media-hyped train ticket 'scandal' in 1948, which all but destroyed his reputation as a well-known academic and broadcasting celebrity. His fall from grace was extremely rapid - sacked by the BBC, the title "Sir Cyril" lost, and then diagnosed with cancer.
But CEMJ's best work was produced late in life: "Recovery of Belief - A Restatement of Christ".
So what?
I believe a greater understanding of the work of Cyril Joad - and Moral Realism - may well be a critical pre-condition for humanity's survival in the 21st century.
Cranmer's Curate was on the Toby Foster breakfast show on BBC Radio Sheffield at around 8.20am this morning debating same-sex marriage.
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When a philosophy undergrad in Oxford I much enjoyed Joad's easy-reading, fluent style, and agree that he is overlooked. Even if there was nothing original - if - he should be read as a good apologist - thankfully free of the impenetrable writing of much, particularly North-American, philosophy.
ReplyDeleteFr Marcus Stewart
Thank you for your insightful comment Fr Marcus.
ReplyDeleteYour last sentence reminds me of this (Source : Philosophy Pathways 47) :
Classic Joad on the difficulty of philosophy
"Philosophy is an exceedingly difficult subject, and most books on philosophy
are unintelligible to most intelligent people. This is partly, but not wholly,
due to the difficulty of the subject matter, which, being the universe, is not
surprisingly complex and obscure. There is no reason, at least I know of none,
why the universe should necessarily be intelligible to the mind of a
twentieth-century human being, and I...remind him how late a comer he is upon
the cosmic scene, and how recently he has begun to think...
"If we put the past of life at one hundred years, then the past human life
works out at about a month, and of human civilisation (giving the most generous
interpretation to the term "civilisation") at about one-and-three-quarter hours.
On the same time-scale, the future of "civilisation" - that is to say, the
future during which it may be supposed that man will continue to think - is
about one hundred thousand years.
"By any reckoning, then, the human mind is very young, and it is not to be
expected that it should, as yet, understand very much of the world in which it
finds itself. Indeed, there is a sense in which the more we know, the more we
become aware of the extent of our ignorance. Suppose, for example, that we
think of knowledge as a little lighted patch, the area of the known, set in a
sea of environing darkness, the limitless area of the unknown. Then, the more
we enlarge the area of the lighted patch, the area of the known, the more also
we enlarge the area of contact with the environing darkness of the unknown. In
philosophy, then, as in daily life, cocksureness is a function of ignorance,
and dunces step in where sages fear to tread. The wise man is he who realises
his limitations."