Meet Professor Morgenbesser

 One of the pleasures of M.W. Rowe’s new biography of the philosopher J.L. Austin is meeting some eccentric philosophers who are now almost forgotten.

Rowe says that when Austin was lecturing in America, he once made a logical point that every student of logic knows: a double negative makes a positive, but a double positive never makes a negative.

A young professor named Sidney Morgenbesser was in the crowded lecture hall and could be heard muttering, “Yeah, yeah.”

Morgenbesser taught at Columbia and had a reputation for always having the quick reply. When someone asked him about Pragmatism, Morgenbesser said: “It’s all very well in theory but it doesn’t work in practice.”

• Source: M.W. Rowe, J.L. Austin: Philosopher & D-Day Intelligence Officer; Oxford University Press, 2023, p. 517.