Broad on (his own) sexuality

From p.36 of his  (1959) "Autobiography", in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, (New York: Tudor Publishing Company) pp. 3-68.

"I am deeply indebted to the undergraduate friend who in my first year at Cambridge lent me Havelock Ellis's Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Young men are apt to think themselves uniquely abnormal, and either to worry or to give themselves airs about this. After reading that admirable work, I realised that, however queer I might be, I was not nearly so queer as a number of persons who had escaped the lunatic asylum and the jail, had lived respected if not wholly respectable lives, and had died in the odor of comparative sanctity. Henceforth I had no trouble in principle with that side of my nature, though, like most of us, I have had plenty of worries and upsets on particular occasions in regard to particular individuals. I suppose that the Kinsey reports have the same salutary effect on contemporary youth as Ellis's book had on me. If so, more power to their elbow. The difference is that Havelock Ellis was very nearly a genius, whilst the compilers of those reports are American sociologists."

Broad on Politics

From p.47 his  (1959) "Autobiography", in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, (New York: Tudor Publishing Company) pp. 3-68.

"I cannot imagine myself in that collection of bone-heads unequally yoked with egg-heads and decorated with a broad lunatic fringe, which is the British Labour Party. As for the Communist Party, if nonsense imposed by violence attracted me, I would prefer the old vatted nonsense of the Roman Church to the thin pseudo-scientific vinegar provided by the Jesuits-without-Jesus of Moscow ... Naturally one tends to become more conservative as one grows older and has more to lose. Not to be radical when one is young argues hardness of heart; to remain so when one is old suggests softness of head."

Broad on the afterlife

From p.57 of "Autobiography" (1959) in The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, ed. Paul A. Schilpp (New York: Tudor Publishing Company):

"So far as I can tell, I have no desire to survive the death of my present body, and I should be considerably relieved if I could feel much surer than I do that no kind of survival is possible. The only empirical basis on which I can appraise life after death, if such there be, is what I know of life here and what mediums tell us of life hereafter. On neither basis of valuation does the prospect of survival hold any charms for me. Having had the luck, it seems to me, to draw an eel from a sack full of adders, I do not wish to risk putting my hand into the sack again. And the prospect of an unending 'pleasant Sunday afternoon' in a nonconformist chapel on the astral plane would not attract me, even if I could find it credible"

Broad's "System"

From p.77 of "Critical and Speculative Philosophy" in J. H. Muirhead (ed.) (1924) Contemporary British Philosophy: Personal Statements (London: G. Allen and Unwin) pp.77-100. (Available here)

"I have nothing worth calling a system of philosophy of my own, and there is no other philosopher of whom I should be willing to reckon myself a faithful follower. If this be a defect I see no likelihood of its ever being cured. Secondly, if I had a system of my own, I should doubt the propriety of "pushing" my crude philosophical wares in competition with the excellent products of older firms with well-earned reputations."

Broad on Wittgenstein

Two quotes today.

First, from his (1959) "Review of Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir" Universities Quarterly, vol. 13 (May 13) pp. 304-306.

"My impression is that there was for Wittgenstein little or no region intermediate between a state of high and concentrated seriousness and rather simple and sometimes almost crudely "low-brow" interludes. I suspect that this, rather than the alleged "artificiality" of the conversation at the High Table of Trinity, made the latter so distasteful to Wittgenstein. That conversation is the talk of men, all fairly eminent in their respective subjects, relaxing after a fairly tiring day's work. It presupposes common traditions, going back to undergraduate days, and habitual "family" jokes and allusions, and it moves in a sphere equally remote from high seriousness and from horseplay. A major prophet may be an excellent fellow, but he will hardly make an excellent Fellow. And, to pass from the general to the particular, one for whom philosophy is a way of life will find it difficult to associate on easy terms with those (like myself) for whom it is primarily a means of livelihood."

Second, from p.61 his  (1959) "Autobiography", in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, (New York: Tudor Publishing Company) pp. 3-68.

"The one duty which I wittingly neglected was to attend the weekly meetings of the Moral Science Club. I am not quick-witted nor quick-tongued enough to take a useful part in philosophical discussion by word of mouth; and I was not prepared to spend hours every week in a thick atmosphere of cigarette-smoke, while Wittgenstein punctually went through his hoops, and the faithful as punctually 'wondered with a foolish face of praise.'"

An explanation of this blog's name.

At the end of his 1959 essay "A Reply to My Critics", in in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of C. D. Broad (New York: Tudor Publishing Company) pp. 711-830, C.D. Broad writes:

"... though philosophies are never refuted, they rapidly go out of fashion, and the kind of philosophy which I have practised has become antiquated without having yet acquired the interest of a collector's piece."

I don't know if that was true when Broad wrote it in 1956, but it's not true now. At least, I find these pieces interesting enough to collect; as the placement of the apostrophe suggests, I hope that others will too.