English philosophers thought they had sloughed off the dead weight of history, but history suggests otherwise
- Written by: Andrew Milne, Lecturer in Philosophy, The University of Western Australia
Entrance to the Bodleian Library school of philosophy, Oxford.Walid Nohra/ShutterstockNikhil Krishnan’s intriguing and charming history, A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-60, is organised around anecdotes rather than arguments. Krishnan is interested not only in “what people thought but what they were like”....