I hope to capture something of Joad’s vitality, fallibility, wit and crystal-clear thinking. Joad, ‘the Professor’ of the BBC’s Brains Trust, popularised philosophy for millions, encouraged people think more clearly, and contributed to public morale during the darkest years of the Second World War. The account conjures up an image of an ill-remembered man – if remembered at all – who nonetheless ‘quickened the sluggish mind of the nation’ as the Evening Standard put it more generously the same year. I have no doubt that the author of that Times obituary was mistaken.

As Geoffrey Thomas said in his short biography of Joad, this was a man ‘who believed that philosophy should not be a mere academic speciality, but a power in everyday life’. He needs to be remembered as a thinker who shaped public discussion of critical issues, and opened up philosophy to a wider audience. In this article, I hope to make the case for this once-famous, but now almost-forgotten philosopher, to be given his due place in English philosophy and culture. To hope that our civilization will be preserved.Īn entertainer! To underline the point, The Times continued: ‘A star performer as a popular educator’ but a man who ‘had no original contribution to make as a philosopher’. In the effort to do our duty for its own sake and in the. Read story The Story of Civilization by CEM Joad by rational with 8,706 reads. We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our own God. Get the full title to continue reading from where you left off, or restart the preview. There was never an age in which useless knowledge was more important than in our own.

Yet, in its obituary for Joad, on April 10 1953, The Times described him as a ‘civil servant, university teacher, controversialist and entertainer’ – but not a philosopher. Clarifying concepts is what philosophy has always been about, and certainly what 20th century British philosophy was preoccupied with. His Socratic habit of prefacing responses with the words: ‘It all depends what you mean by.’ became a catch-phrase.Īs a later UK populariser of philosophy, Bryan Magee later acknowledged, this was likely ‘the first time most of the population had heard such routine clarification carried out in a businesslike and unpedantic way’.

Yet in his time, Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was the best-known philosopher in Britain, renowned for his habit of carefully deconstructing questions on the BBC’s wartime radio program, the Brains Trust.

However, one name that is unlikely to be on many people’s lists is that of C. It is not difficult to make a list – from Ayer to Popper to Russell and Moore – of academic philosophers who have shaped 20th century British philosophy.

Our own civilization by c.e.m.joad pdf