John Albert Chadwick, WWI vet who left Cambridge logic for an Ashram

My list of UK philosophers who served in WWI must be expanded to include John Albert Chadwick. I learned of this philosopher from C. D. Broad's obituary for him in Mind. ^{(vol. 49 [1940]: 129-131)}

Chadwick's main contribution to analytic philosophy is his paper in Mind called 'Logical Constants'.  ^{(vol. 36 [1927]: 1-11)} His other publications included articles, reviews, and discussion notes in Mind. They are chiefly devoted to philosophical logic.

Chadwick was born in Lewes, England (May 23, 1899), to the Rev. Albert Chadwick and Madeleine Ann Chadwick (née Comper). She was born in 1866 in Aberdeen; the father was born in 1863 in Yorkshire.

Broad reports that John Chadwick entered the Special Brigade of the Royal Engineers 'towards the end' of WWI. ^{(Broad, 'John Albert Chadwick: 1899-1939', Mind 49: 129)} According to a 'Supplement' to the London Gazette, ^{(June 21, 1918, p. 7291)} Chadwick was made (temporarily) a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on May 29, 1918. He seems to have finished the War with that rank. The Special Brigade of the Royal Engineers was formed to handle and release chemical weapons.

After the War, Chadwick began his studies at Cambridge University in 1920. In 1925, he won a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Broad writes that the War left 'scars on [Chadwick's] spirit'. ^{(Broad, 129)} He adds that Chadwick's early promise in philosophical logic was compromised by a physical illness, the loss of a close friend, and 'another emotional upset' (not further specified). ^{(Broad, 130)} According to Broad, the psychological toll exacted by these experiences led Chadwick to become 'aloof from and unreasonably suspicious of many of his colleagues'. ^{(Broad, 130)}

Broad says that Chadwick befriended an older couple in Cambridge, John Stuart Mackenzie and Millicent Mackenzie. They were retired academics who devoted much of their time to traveling. J. S. Mackenzie was a respected Hegelian; Millicent Mackenzie, too, was interested in Hegel and had published a book on his philosophy of education. In their retirement, the Mackenzies cultivated an interest in theosophy (which took an interesting form in England) and, in particular, the writings of Rudolf Steiner. They shared with Chadwick an interest in Indian spiritual philosophy.

Via Ancestry.com, I learned that the Mackenzies brought Chadwick along on at least one of their trips. According to the UK Outward Passenger Lists (1890-1960), the three of them departed from Liverpool on July 29, 1926 and traveled 1st-class to Marseilles aboard the Leicestershire. The UK Incoming Passenger Lists (1878-1960) indicate that they returned to England (London) on the Lancashire on Aug. 30, 1926. These two ships originated or terminated their voyages in Rangoon (with stops in Colombo), but the records show that Chadwick and the Mackenzies traveled only as far as Marseilles. All three of the travelers gave their address as being at 2 Hertford St., Cambridge, so Chadwick might have been renting a room in the Mackenzies' house. Strangely, he's identified in the records for the outgoing leg of the trip as a 26-year-old professor but in the records for the return trip (in August) he is a 27-year-old student. (Perhaps he unlearned something in Marseilles.)

In 1927, the Mackenzies helped to secure a teaching position for Chadwick at Lucknow University. ^{(Broad, 130)} In 1930, Chadwick resigned his position there and entered the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India. He there took the name Arjava and wrote much poetry.

Chadwick's decision to leave the university might have been influenced by a similar choice that had been made by an English professor at Lucknow, Ronald Nixon. Nixon, too, was a WWI vet who studied at Cambridge after the War. He resigned from Lucknow in 1928 and took the name Krishna Prem. (Nixon is among those who is thought to have influenced Somerset Maugham's writing of The Razor's Edge, although the novel's main character might also have been inspired by Major Alan W. Chadwick, yet another English WWI vet seeking enlightenment in India.)

John Albert Chadwick died on May 5, 1939 near Bangalore. He left his money (a little more than £939) to his mother. ^{(England & Wales, National Probate Calendar [Index of Wills and Administrations] 1858-1966)}

Update (Oct. 15, 2016): For a small fee, I obtained a copy of J. A. Chadwick's military records from the British National Archives.

According to those records, Chadwick was a student at Marlborough College when he joined the British army. He gave his address as 'Field House, Marlborough College'. He had been in the Officers Training Corps at Marlborough (from May, 1913 until his enlistment in the army). His attestation papers are dated Feb. 19, 1917. On May 11, 1917, he applied for admission to an officer cadet unit, with a preference indicated for the Siege Artillery. His application includes the signature of his housemaster at Marlborough, C. C. Carter (later a geography professor at Oxford University), who attested to Chadwick's moral character. In his application, Chadwick said that he had never suffered from a 'serious illness or injury', had 'never suffered from "fits" of any description', and could see well without needing eyeglasses. His height was 5 ft 9 3/4 inches and he weighed 113 pounds. His application was approved on June 1, 1917.

He was mobilised and posted to the Devonshire Regiment on Dec. 31, 1917. On Jan. 3, 1918, he was attached to 'no. 5' (5th Battalion?) as an officer cadet. He was discharged from the Devonshire Regiment on May 29, 1918 in order to be transferred to the Special Brigade of the Royal Engineers. The last unit in which he served was the '350th'. His 'theatre of war' is listed as 'France'. He ceased being paid by the army on Oct. 21, 1919.

Cheer up, Arty! It's your birthday

I recently read some of Arthur Schopenhauer's work. He was a first-rate aphorist who, unfortunately, diluted his pithy wisdom with mediocre metaphysics (a sentiment shared by Isaiah Berlin).

Here's some of George Carlin's wisdom: 'Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.' No one more clearly epitomizes this truth than Schopenhauer. He was 'cynical' in the everyday sense of that term (as opposed to the technical, philosophical sense). Schopenhauer's cynicism was an aspect of his pessimism. He held out no great hope for humankind, which is one reason why he recommended resignation and renunciation -- resign yourself to our collective failure to advance morally beyond our predecessors, resign yourself to the fact that romantic love is generally a cruel joke, etc. etc. and, accordingly, renounce your worldly hopes. Such world-denying pessimism must be grounded in idealism (Carlin's point), for only against the backdrop of very high, ideal standards can such a sweeping condemnation of worldly endeavour make sense. And Schopenhauer was an idealist with a vengeance. He damned the chilly shadow-land of history as forever farcical and, shunning it, sought the perfect luminescence of Plato's ideal forms. Since he eschewed any divine agent of vengeance, Schopenhauer took its expression upon himself. From his disillusion flew the cutting aphorisms.

Schopenhauer set his idealism in a metaphysical nightmare. He tried to bring together Kant's noumenon, the Platonic forms, and the will ... oops (cue the Beethoven) ... the WILL. A volatile mixture, to be sure -- I just hope he had good insurance. Somehow, the really real is supposed to be noumenal (hence beyond time and plurality) and ideal in Plato's sense (also beyond time but apparently plural despite the Form of the Good's best efforts) and volitional (and thus essentially temporal). Moreover, for Schopenhauer, each person's deeds arise from her character. But character, for Schopenhauer, is noumenal, which puts it beyond the reach of causation and, indeed, beyond any application of the principle of sufficient reason. So how can anything 'arise' from it? Also, being noumenal, it admits of no plurality. But then how can there be several characters, each accounting for our diverse acts? Perhaps the really real was also beyond arithmetic. Ah well, whereof one cannot speak ....

[Update (added Feb. 23): The status of Platonic Ideas in Schopenhauer's system is tricky, to say the least. They're the focus of pp. 232-4 of v. 1 of the World as Will and Idea. Schopenhauer there says that the Platonic Ideas are beyond any application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which, in his system, suggests that they're noumenal. Nevertheless, he also says that that the Ideas are essential to an objectification of the will, which suggests that they're phenomenal. The most thorough investigation of this matter that I know of is in a paper by James and Dale Snow: 'Was Schopenhauer an Idealist?' (Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (4) 1991). They conclude that Schopenhauer's 'Platonic' Ideas are meant to be in time; the Ideas are sempiternal rather than eternal.]

Still, the metaphysical train wreck should not detract so much from Schopenhauer's accomplishment. He advanced good criticisms of Kant's ethics (and anticipated some of G. E. M. Anscombe's points) and developed our notion of the unconscious (along with Fichte and Schelling). No other second-rate philosopher (but first-rate aphorist) has had such a profound influence. Among those whom Schopenhauer influenced the most are Wagner, Wittgenstein, Borges, Burckhardt, Turgenev, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Beckett, Richard Taylor, and Thomas Mann. (Mann wrote an adulatory piece about Schopenhauer in 1938.) And on and on. Nietzsche, Tolstoy, and Huysmans had intense Schopenhauer phases but eventually opted for more life-affirming views. And though he denied it, there has long been a suspicion that Freud must have read Schopenhauer earlier in his life. Finally, here's Albert Einstein in 1933 with one of my favourite Shopenhauer quotations:

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense…. Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,’ has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in part, gives humour its due.

Schopenhauer was one of the earlier western philosophers to take seriously an eastern philosophical tradition and he was among the first prominent intellectuals to take seriously the ethical status of animals. These advances, together with the list of luminaries who admired Schopenhauer, lead me to suspect that the above metaphysical objections may well derive from misunderstandings on my part. 

Noir killers, family men, Methodist clergy, and debauched authors

Here's an old CBC interview with Somerset Maugham, possibly 'the most debauched man of the 20th century',whom Ward Cleaver held up as a model for his youngest son.

One of Maugham's novels was the basis for a 1944 noir film called Christmas Holiday.

Speaking of noir, Ward -- er, Hugh Beaumont -- was in several noir films, joining the ranks of actors who were known for their TV roles as loving parents but who had earlier played murderers. He was a 'confident sociopath' in Money Madness and starred in Apology for Murder, a cheap knockoff of Double Indemnity (which featured another of TV's loving parents). Outside the movies, Beaumont was an ordained Methodist minister.

That last movie, Double Indemnity, was based on a novel by James M. Cain. Here's a quotation from Steve Erickson's article on James M. Cain:

Noir was to cinema as punk was to rock and roll. European refugees like Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, and Billy Wilder brought with them a worldview forged of equal parts German Expressionism and Nazi barbarity.

Siodmak directed the aforementioned Christmas Holiday, which was about a prostitute who married a murderer, the latter role being played by Gene Kelly. So, Gene Kelly, Hugh Beaumont, and Fred MacMurray all had roles as noir killers.

Like another noir movie that was adapted from Maugham's work, Christmas Holiday was altered to accommodate the Hays Code. Rain (1932) was not.