Gilbert Ryle, archetypical Oxford tutor - Personal Pages Index

Iris Murdoch. The Concept of Mind gave a reasoned refutation
of the extreme Cartesian dualism that had held
sway, and was an important contribution to philosophy.
Ryle was elected to the Waynflete chair. It was a good
choice on the part of the electors, but an unwise move for
him. He wanted to teach, and needed pupils. Realising
the unsuitability of the thesis-oriented D.Phil., he instituted
a B.Phil., taught and examined like a Tripos Part III
in Cambridge, and recruited many, particularly Australians,
to read it. But they were not undergraduates, and
did not have involvements in College life that undergraduates
had. So he gave weekly “informal instruction’’ to
undergraduates, and in our final year Bernard Williams
and I attended. The informal instruction was good, but
before it could begin, we had to report on JCR affairs.
Ryle was agog to hear the latest instalment of the
saga of the JCR cat. Marcus, as he was then called, had
begun to wander, and each morning there would be a
call from some other College, and the JCR boy had to go
round and retrieve him. It was thought that Marcus’ bad
behaviour was caused by a superfluity of hormones, and
the JCR committee had discussed surgical intervention,
which was favoured by the President, who was reading
medicine, but was aware of resistance by some members
of the JCR. But time was running short, and soon an
anaesthetic would be required. One member of the JCR
was outraged when, on fondling Marcus, he discovered
that the operation had been carried out, and his outage
was shared by many others who had a strong sense of the
Human Rights of cats, and an emergency meeting was
called to pass a motion of censure on the President.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he had a tutorial
at the time, and I had to chair the meeting. Bernard
was Treasurer. Things were hotting up. And then Bernard
went to the wall and took down the copy of the
rules, and in a confident tone read out a completely
imaginary rule giving the Committee sweeping powers
to act in an emergency. It worked. I managed to hide
my surprise and soon was able to move from the chair a
pacificatory motion that the cat should be renamed Abelard,
which was duly done after Hall by the ex-President,
an intending ordinand with a good voice.
Ryle was refreshed by his weekly contact with the
real world. And Bernard and I benefited greatly from his
informal instruction.