The Queen's College Record 2020

KEITH MASLIN
Dr Keith Thomas Maslin (1946-2020) benefitted from
the nurturing love and devotion of his parents, and he
and his friends were lucky to have as their headmaster
the late Joseph Cross, who fought the Inner London
Education Authority to set up a science sixth form at
Canterbury Road Secondary Modern in South London,
allowing pupils to cultivate their individual interests, from
music to physics to poetry.
Obituaries
‘A gentle, patient, illuminating teacher – I always looked
forward to his tutorials,’ a former Lampeter student said of Maslin. He was able to
present complex ideas in accessible forms, using, for example, episodes of Star Trek,
and with a liberal sense of humour. This came across whether he was teaching A-level
philosophy students at Esher Sixth Form College or mature students at adult education
colleges, philosophy summer schools run by the University of Oxford’s Department of
Continuing Education, or The Open University. Another of his lasting contributions is
his Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (2007), written when he was Head of the
Philosophy Department at Esher Sixth Form College. A Farmington Fellowship (1996)
at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford, and a fellowship at Selwyn College
(2007), University of Cambridge, were instrumental in its completion, and it has been
praised for its clarity, breadth and depth. Whilst primarily aimed at A-level students, it is
used by various universities and has been translated into Brazilian.
His friends found him lively and inspirational, for he possessed wide interests and an
intense appetite for learning – literature, poetry, music, art, cinema, politics, butterflies,
foreign cultures and languages. His undergraduate study at Keele University was
where he discovered philosophy, and he developed his passion for arguing logically
at The Queen’s College where he obtained his BPhil (1971). His postgraduate studies
culminated in a DPhil (1986) from Birkbeck College, University of London – his thesis
exploring whether self-deception is possible. He embarked upon this after four years
of teaching philosophy at De La Salle, a Roman Catholic University in Manila, where
he was appointed Associate Professor and paid a local salary as he went to the
Philippines under his own steam.
Whilst in the Philippines, he was a keen learner of Philippine culture and Tagalog, one
of the major languages in the Philippines. In retirement, he took up Mandarin Chinese
and German – the latter, one suspects, driven by his passion for Schubert’s Lieder.
Indeed, he loved listening to and sharing his enthusiasm for music – from Bach,
Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner, to Sidney Bechet, Cole Porter, Nina Simone and
Kurt Weill – and he enjoyed playing the piano. He was a member of the West London
Gastronomico-Philosophical Society, where he continued to explore his philosophical
interest in self-deception. Apart from his enthusiastic philosophical contributions, the
group remembers him for his fantastic Indonesian satay barbecues, on the banks of
College Record 2020 | The Queen’s College 129