He needs to be remembered as a thinker who shaped public discussion of critical issues, and opened up philosophy to a wider audience. In this article, I hope to make the case for this once-famous, but now almost-forgotten philosopher, to be given his due place in English philosophy and culture. An entertainer! To underline the point, The Times continued: ‘A star performer as a popular educator.’ but a man who ‘had no original contribution to make as a philosopher’. Yet, in its obituary for Joad, on April 10 1953, The Times described him as a ‘civil servant, university teacher, controversialist and entertainer’ - but not a philosopher.
As a later UK populariser of philosophy, Bryan Magee later acknowledged, this was likely ‘the first time most of the population had heard such routine clarification carried out in a businesslike and unpedantic way’.Ĭlarifying concepts is what philosophy has always been about, and certainly what 20th century British philosophy was preoccupied with. His Socratic habit of prefacing responses with the words: ‘It all depends what you mean by. Yet in his time, Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was the best-known philosopher in Britain, renowned for his habit of carefully deconstructing questions on the BBC’s wartime radio program, the Brains Trust. However, one name that is unlikely to be on many people’s lists is that of C.
It is not difficult to make a list - from Ayer to Popper to Russell and Moore - of academic philosophers who have shaped 20th century British philosophy. JOAD: PHILOSOPHICAL TREASURE – OR THIRD-CLASS SOCRATES? 1, 2015Ĭaricature of Joad, by Griff ( Courier Magazine in 1945)Ĭ.
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