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“THE THINKING MAN’S FILTER”

J. L. AUSTIN’S ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY
AS CULTURAL CRITICISM

Michael J. Golec

In his hands, philosophy seemed at once more serious, and more fun.

—G. J. Warnock, John Langshaw Austin

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

G. J. Warnock’s assessment of the British philosopher J. L. Austin’s con-

tribution to philosophy—both fun and serious—directly precedes his
too brief account of Austin’s appreciation of America. The proximity
of these two accounts in Warnock’s biographical “sketch” suggests
that Austin’s special brand of philosophy and the welcoming ambi-
ence of the United States are related. Warnock’s account is “too brief”
because Austin’s relationship to the United States and its culture has
been too little studied, if at all. Certainly, there are the recollections of
his American students who recall Austin’s impact on their studies
and future careers.
To date, the American philosopher Stanley Cavell has been the
most vocal in his indebtedness to Austin’s contribution to his own
“voice” in philosophy. His Wrst published essay, “Must We Mean
What We Say?” divulges Cavell’s debt to Austin as an “inheritance”
of ordinary language philosophy (1969, 1–43).1 He lists, among many
instances, Austin’s manner of attending to the voice that articulates
astonishment at our “ability to say what we say . . . ” (1994, 59). As
Cavell admits, “In the ordinary language challenge I felt released,
cleared to do the work that seemed mine to do . . . ” (1994, 59). In his
introduction of ordinary language philosophy to an American audi-
ence, Austin gave license to the kind of intellectual freedom that Cavell

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describes as the result of having been in attendance when the British

philosopher delivered his lectures. This was when Austin delivered
the William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1955. The lec-
tures were posthumously collected and, in 1962, published as How To
Do Things with Words. Like Warnock, Cavell recalls Austin’s use of
“jokes, puns, literary allusions, and the general repeated invitation to
have fun in philosophizing . . . ” (2002, xi). Perhaps Cavell witnessed
instances where, as Austin put it in his lectures, certain conditions
were satisWed “if the utterance is to be happy” (Austin 1962a, 45).
That Cavell has taken this aspect of Austin’s voice seriously should
count as an instance of what American philosophy has inherited from
Austin.
In addition to the reception of Austin’s philosophy in the United
States, there was, as Warnock tells us, the case of his fondness for Amer-
ica. This suggests that inXuences were reciprocal. Warnock claims
that Austin “was fascinated, I believe, by the whole phenomenon of
America—by its size, by its populousness and resources, by the sense
there of endless possibilities and a wide-open future” (1962, 21). But
more than this, as Warnock explains, Austin found the American
“atmosphere of uncomplicated, undersigned friendliness” (21) to his
liking. Such was the case that Austin appropriated American culture
into his philosophy, much as British pop artists had in the 1950s when
they appropriated images from American magazines and advertising.
By now, the story of artists such as Richard Hamilton and Edourado
Paolozzi and critics such as Reynar Banham and Lawrence Alloway
looking to the United States for what Alloway once called “an aes-
thetics of plenty” is well known (and perhaps a bit worn).2 The story
and signiWcance of Austin’s appropriation of American culture, how-
ever, has yet to be told.
If Austin’s cultural criticism seems far-fetched, it may be because
instances of appropriation have all but been excised from his work. In
January 1959, while concluding his Swarthmore College lecture on
sense data, Austin quoted the American actor Steve McQueen from a
commercial for Viceroy cigarettes. As George Pitcher, who had escorted
Austin to the college, reports, Austin “turned to the blackboard and
clamped his two hands around the words ‘It seems to me now exactly
as if,’ saying ‘This is the thinking man’s Wlter . . . ’” (29). The combined
force of a verbal perlocutionary act intended to produce an effect and