As I read Nikhil Krishnan’s “A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy and War at Oxford, 1900-1960,” I wondered how he would pull it off.
Here was a scholar, determined to bring to life a school of thought (hard to do) that revolved around finicky distinctions in language (extremely hard to do).
The “linguistic” or “analytical” turn in philosophy resisted grand speculations about reality and truth.
Krishnan admits that even he had a hard time warming up to his subject when he first encountered it as a philosophy student at Oxford.
That discrepancy is also a preoccupation of one of my favorite books this year, “The Rigor of Angels,” by William Egginton.
Persons:
Nikhil Krishnan’s “, ”, Krishnan, William Egginton, Egginton, Jorge Luis Borges, Werner Heisenberg, Immanuel Kant
Organizations:
Oxford, Johns Hopkins University
Locations:
Oxford, Argentine