Arthur Aston Luce, Berkeley scholar and WWI vet

One of the philosophers who fought in WWI was A. A. Luce (1882-1977). He lived for most of his life in Ireland, where he taught at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD). Luce was born and raised in Gloucester, England, and served in the British forces in the War. He made his name in philosophy as a leading scholar of Bishop Berkeley's works. He not only interpreted but, also, endorsed Berkeley's idealism.

Here are some of the other main points of Luce's biography. He was ordained into the Anglican (Church of Ireland) clergy in 1908. In WWI, Luce could have served as a chaplain but elected, instead, to enlist as a soldier in the Royal Irish Rifles (1915-18). In a nine-page biography, Luce's son, J. V. Luce, wrote that his father 'saw nearly three years active service in France, rose to the rank of Captain, and won the MC [Military Cross] for his conduct during the battle of Passchendaele in August 1917'. ^{(J. V. Luce, 'Introduction: A Memoir of A. A. Luce', in Fishing and Thinking, A. A. Luce [Shrewsbury, England: Swan Hill Press, 1990])} Passchendaele (aka the 3rd Battle of Ypres) was among the most wretched engagements in the War. So, it is no surprise that Luce suffered from 'shell-shock' ^{(according to  R. B. McDowell and D. A. Webb in their Trinity College Dublin 1592-1952: An Academic History [Cambridge University Press, 1982], p. 490)}. It appears that Luce was murdered in 1977. At least, he is said to have died 'a few days after being assaulted ... by a man who had an antipathy towards clergymen'. ^{(Diarmaid Ferriter, 'Luce, Arthur Aston' Dictionary of Irish Biography [Cambridge University Press and Royal Irish Academy, 2016])}

In the 1920s, Luce was Samuel Beckett's tutor. At TCD, a tutor's role in relation to an assigned student was advisory and not directed towards teaching. Other professors at TCD had much more influence on Beckett than Luce did (esp. Thomas Rudmose-Brown). Still, Beckett seems to have been an admirer of Berkeley, and when Beckett applied for a teaching post at the University of Cape Town in 1937, he named 'Captain the Reverend Arthur Aston Luce' as one of his three referees. ^{(Letters of Samuel Beckett, v. I: 1929-1940, ed. Fehsenfeld and Overbeck [Cambridge University Press 2009], p. 523, letter dated July 29, 1937)} Also, interpreters of Beckett's work have focused on its philosophical relevance, particularly in connection with the philosophy of Henri Bergson. Luce published a book on Bergson in 1922.

A revealing source with respect to Luce's character is the anonymously authored obituary in the Times (of London). ^{('Obituary: The Rev. A. A. Luce, Churchman and Philosopher' The Times, June 29, 1977, p. 18)} According to this obituary, Luce had a 'striking and perplexing personality'. ^(Ibid.) He was regarded by his peers at TCD as 'independent, sometimes to the point of perversity' and as a holder of 'unusual' opinions. ^(Ibid.) The obituarist conjectures that 'the strain of these years [1915-18] in the trenches left a deep mark on his opinions and his modes of thought.' ^(Ibid.) Luce 'was seldom on the side of the majority, and, with a courage that never failed him, fought stoutly for many unpopular and indeed outrageous opinions.' ^(Ibid.) He became TCD's Vice-Provost in 1949 but was 'forced' to retire from that position in 1952 (due allegedly to his inflexible resistance to change). Finally, the author attributes to Luce a complex personality, in which 'the Puritan, the man of the world, and the sequestered don, the cold disciplinarian and the courtly and thoughtful host, the reactionary authoritarian and the passionate lover of justice -- all these jostled one another in an unpredictable kaleidoscope.' ^(Ibid.)

I think that the anonymous obituarist might have been R. B. McDowell. McDowell co-authored a history of TCD that contains the following remark, which resembles the just-quoted passage:

Most men contain some qualities which seem inconsistent with each other, but in Luce the opposites were to be seen in conflict almost every day. The courteous host and the frosty disciplinarian; the conscientious and devoted servant of the College and the tenacious fighter for his rights and emoluments; the single-minded seeker after the truth and the master of a repartee based on unfair pseudo-logic; the stern moralist and the very unorthodox churchman; the man of the world and the ill-informed provincial; the stylist in words and the ignoramus in the sphere of fine arts -- what was one to make of such a mixture? ^{(R. B. McDowell and D. A. Webb, Trinity College Dublin 1592-1952: An Academic History [Cambridge University Press, 1982], p. 490-491)}

McDowell, a historian, contributed the parts of the book that concerned the humanities.

Luce resembled another British philosopher and WWI vet, Mure, in having a reactionary streak (though Luce wasn't nearly as pure a reactionary as Mure seems to have been). Luce resembled Weldon in being a courageous man who had a volatile, unpredictable character and who seemed to enjoy shocking people with his statements.

Here's a clip in which McDowell and J. V. Luce are interviewed about TCD:

Analytic philosophy and World War I

I'm struck by the dearth of references to World War I in standard histories of analytic philosophy. I don't pretend to have done a comprehensive search, but the War doesn't figure prominently in many of the more well-known histories (e.g., those by Passmore, G. J. Warnock, and Soames). There have, of late, been publications that situate Carnap and other members of the Vienna Circle within the broader cultural trends that followed the War, but I'm not aware of any work that performs a similar function in connection with the analytic philosophers of the UK.

The War is known to have had a tremendous cultural impact in the UK. Historians sometimes speak of the 'long 19th century' as ending only after 1918. In The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell traces a host of cultural trends to the War (esp. the increased use of irony). But in many histories of analytic philosophy, you get the impression that the British branch of this tradition was nurtured in an order of reasons well insulated from messy (or muddy) causes. It's mostly context of justification with little context of discovery (little, at least, that reaches beyond university campuses).

There must have been some interesting Great War impact (immediate or delayed) on the growth of analytic philosophy. Wittgenstein composed his Tractatus while he was a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian forces and a prisoner of war. Russell lost his position at Cambridge due to his opposition to the War and jeopardized his own well-being via his run-ins with the law over the War's continuation. So, the War loomed large in the lives of two of the most influential, early analytic philosophers. There must be some publications about the War's impact on Wittgenstein's thinking. With regard to Russell, there's this bit by Father Copleston:

One effect of the First World War on Russell's mind was to turn it away from the idea of an eternal realm of abstract truth, where one can take refuge in the contemplation of timeless and non-human beauty, to concentration on the actual concrete world. And this meant, in part at least, a turning away from purely logical studies to the parts of psychology and linguistics which seemed to be relevant to epistemology. (History of Philosophy: Bentham to Russell, p. 438)

I have yet to chase down Copleston's references in this part of his book, so I don't know if the author is here paraphrasing Russell or giving his own interpretation of the war's effect.

In a retrospective paper, Gilbert Ryle wrote:

For the First World War had, between 1914 and 1918, virtually extinguished a whole generation. To the academic world as outside it, to the departments of philosophy as to those of other disciplines, there returned a bare handful of mediators between us, who in 1918 were too young for active military service, and the members of 'the old gang' who, in 1914, had been too old for it. ('Fifty Years of Philosophy and Philosophers', Philosophy 51 [1976]: 383)

Ryle characterizes the War's influence in negative terms as an absence, a missing generation.

Several British philosophers saw active duty in the British forces in WWI. Here are the ones whom I've so far found:

John David Mabbott (officer in the Royal Garrison Artillery; Oxford, President of St. John's College);
Henry Habberley Price (Royal Flying Corps; Oxford, Wykeham Professor at New College);
Geoffrey Reginald Gilchrist Mure (Warwicks Royal Horse Artillery; Oxford, Warden of Merton College, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Oxford);
Thomas Dewar Weldon (Royal Field Artillery; Oxford, Magdalen College);
Charles Arthur Campbell (10th Borders Regiment; Glasgow, Dean of Faculties);
John Macmurray (Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders; University College, London (Dept. Head), Edinburgh);
Sir Walter Hamilton Moberly (Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry; Birmingham, Vice-Chancellor of the Manchester University);
John Leofric Stocks (King's Royal Rifle Corps; Oxford, Manchester, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool); and
Arthur Aston Luce (12th Royal Irish Rifles; Trinity College, Dublin, Vice-Provost).
(Added, Aug. 29, 2016: John Albert Chadwick)
(Added, Jan. 7, 2018: Leon Roth)
(Added, Feb. 3, 2018: Alexander Dunlop Lindsay)

Some reflections:

1. Only three of these philosophers were within the tradition of analytic philosophy (Price, Mabbott, and Weldon). Re. Price: while I think he was an analytic philosopher, he was out of sympathy with some of the main trends in that tradition. E.g., he addressed traditionally metaphysical topics.

2. Many on this list were very much engaged in metaphysics. Price wrote about God and the survival of death (and was President of the Society for Psychical Research [1939-41]). Campbell and Macmurray wrote about free will. Luce was a Berkleyan idealist, Mure an idealist of the Hegelian variety. Moberly was a devout Anglican who criticized retributivist models of punishment. Mabbott and Weldon, though not focused on metaphysics, wrote about topics that were seldom addressed by other analytic philosophers in their time; both published books on political philosophy, and Mabbott published on punishment (defending retributivism).

3. It's interesting that so many of these WWI veterans went on to hold high administrative positions in universities.

4. I'm looking through Mabbott's autobiography Oxford Memories, but his remarks there about the War seem largely confined to his own experience of it. However, in Chapter 10 of his book The State and the Citizen: An Introduction to Political Philosophy ('The State as a Centre of Sympathy and Co-operation'), Mabbott examines the extent to which the state can promote 'sympathy and willing co-operation'. ^{(The State and the Citizen [London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1948], p. 95)} He says that the 'ideals of service and fellowship ... seldom survive the early moments or the crisis of a war, before the inevitable disillusion sets in'. ^{(Ibid., p. 96)} He adds that in WWI, one sees how 'war brought out the worst everywhere, in the Church, the Press, the Government, the Army, how even where decency lurked, in the trenches for instance, it was a soured and acid decency, the dogged acceptance of necessary evil rather than the high heroism of the early days'. ^{(Ibid., pp. 96-7, footnotes omitted)} (In the omitted footnotes, Mabbott gives examples to illustrate his points about the Church and the Press.) It's interesting that Mabbott leaves academia out of his list of corrupted institutions. Also of note is that he quotes approvingly from C. E. Montague's Disenchantment in this part of his book.

5. There was at least one promising, young French philosopher who was killed in WWI (Pierre Rousselot), and at least two German philosophers were (Emil Lask and Adolf Reinach). (Indeed, it appears that whole discussion circles in Germany never recovered.) However, I'm not aware of any UK philosophers who were killed in the War. Were there any?

6. Perhaps a major, long-term consequence of the War was a turning away from comprehensive systems in favour of more piecemeal intellectual exercises -- more Cook Wilson and less Bradley. There was also more attention to concrete phenomena and a suspicion of abstraction.

Thomas Dewar ('Harry') Weldon

In WWII, philosopher T. D. Weldon was Sir Arthur ('Bomber') Harris' assistant in Bomber Command. He helped Harris formulate the arguments and draft the documents that would promote the program of area bombing. Weldon was also a philosophy tutor in Magdalen College at Oxford University.

My interest in Weldon was piqued by C. S. Lewis' description of him. Lewis and Weldon were colleagues at Magdalen. They seem not to have been fond of each other. Here's some of what Lewis has to say about Weldon:

...determined to be a villain. ... a frequent and loud laugher .... carries a great deal of liquor without being drunk. ... He is insolent by custom to servants and to old men .... He has great abilities, but would despise himself if he wasted them on disinterested undertakings. He gives no quarter and would ask none. He believes that he has seen through everything and lives at rock bottom. ... Contempt is his ruling passion: courage his chief virtue. (Lewis, All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922-1927, ed. Walter Hooper [Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1991], pp. 482-3)

Lewis modeled a fictional character partly on Weldon in two scifi novels, Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength. The character in question is Dick Devine (aka Lord Feverstone), who is supposed to reflect Weldon's atheism and rationalism (in the loose and popular sense).

Before teaching at Oxford, Weldon served on the western front in WWI. He joined the Royal Field Artillery in France in 1915. From humble beginnings, Weldon was promoted to the rank of 'acting captain' ^{('Weldon, Thomas Dewar (1896–1958),' Mark J. Schofield in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Lawrence Goldman [Oxford: OUP, 2004[)}. He was wounded and awarded 'the Military Cross and bar' ^(Ibid.). According to R. W. Johnson, 'Those familiar with the mores of the British Army will recognize that this meant that he was quite insanely brave and clearly on the verge of a Victoria Cross' ^{(Johnson, 'Exploring the Secret Garden', chap. 4 in Look Back in Laughter: Oxford's Postwar Golden Age [Newbury, UK: Threshold Press, 2015])}

Weldon was a philosophy tutor at Magdalen College from 1922 until his death in 1958. He was known to have a good rapport with his students. According to the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, he was 'not only accessible but also hospitable to his students, rewarding their efforts with a glass of sherry or a tankard of beer.' ^{('Weldon', Schofield, ODNB)} (Weldon was a drinker. Another student, Robert Paul Wolff, recounts a discussion with a 'clearly inebriated' Weldon.) One of Weldon's more well known students was John ('Jack') Frederick Wolfenden, Baron Wolfenden of the Wolfenden Report. Weldon was the godfather of Baron Wolfenden's son, the brilliant, tragic journalist and spy Jeremy Wolfenden. (Incidentally, in his biography of Wolfenden (the younger), Sebastian Faulks says that Weldon took the nickname 'Harry' from a 'music-hall comedian' ^{(Faulks, The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives, [NY: Vintage, 2002], p. 212)}.)

In WWII,  Weldon worked in the civil service from 1939 until 1942, at which time he became Sir Arthur Harris' Personal Staff Officer at Bomber Command. ^{('Weldon', Schofield, ODNB)} Wing Commander Weldon was tasked with defending Bomber Harris' program of bombing German cities. The program had been challenged by a Cabinet Minister and Christian socialist, Sir Stafford Cripps. On Dec. 8, 1944, Cripps gave a lecture at Bomber Command Headquarters, in which he condemned area bombing as a decidedly un-Christian thing to do. Harris wasn't there, but the officers who attended the lecture were quite put out. In response, Harris had Weldon give a lecture the following night in defense of area bombing. ^{(Jonathan Glover, Humanity: a Moral History of the Twentieth Century [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001], p. 86)} In his lecture, 'The Ethics of Bombing', Weldon denied that area bombing was terrorism, arguing that its purpose was to save lives by shortening the war. (My information about Weldon's lecture is drawn from Glover's above-cited book and from David I. Hall, '“Black, White and Grey”: Wartime Arguments for and against the Strategic Bomber Offensive', Canadian Military History 7 [1998]: 7-19). Among Weldon's critics at the time was the Rev. John Collins, the Anglican chaplain at Bomber Command who referred to Weldon's talk as the 'bombing of ethics' (and who would later be instrumental in forming the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). (C. S. Lewis also was opposed to Harris' policy.)

It's odd that Weldon should have resorted to such a rationale, for he appears to have been a Kantian. A. J. Ayer characterized him as such. Actually, what Ayer says (in the course of explaining why neither he nor J. L. Austin won the John Locke Prize in 1933) is that Weldon was 'a Fellow of Magdalen, who was later to become an inflexible linguistic philosopher but was then an orthodox Kantian'. ^{(Ayer, Part of My Life [London: Collins, 1977], p. 152)} So, Weldon was an orthodox Kantian in 1933 but might not have been by the time WWII rolled around. Also, while Weldon was in some sense a Kantian, I don't know if he ever endorsed Kantian ethics.

There's a consensus among those who have written about him that Weldon was psychologically maimed by his battle-field experience in WWI. This comes through in C. S. Lewis' characterization of Weldon (as one who had the air of having 'seen through everything and [who] lived at rock bottom') as well as in a note about Weldon by a former student (Canadian-born Anthony King). R. W. Johnson says that Weldon 'was a man of steel who, in both wars, had had to face appalling situations and ultimate questions'. ^{(Johnson, Ibid)} Perhaps, then, Weldon's willingness to advocate area bombing was a case of brutalized (in WWI) and brutalizing (in WWII). Kantian and other alternatives to utilitarianism were fine for discussions at Magdalen College, but in the horrifying world of 20th-century warfare, it's massacre or be massacred.The anger, the drinking, talk of a suicide (though that's disputed)* -- today, Weldon would be in treatment for PTSD. In his day, he was wheeled out as a mouthpiece for the designers of terror bombing.

A few more notes about Weldon:

His Introduction to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason ^{(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1945)} was enlarged and republished 1958 under a shortened title (Kant's Critique of Pure Reason). R. G. Collingwood (for whom Weldon had been a teaching assistant) appears to have refereed the 1945 version of Weldon's Kant book -- at least, he expressed approval for the text in a letter that he wrote to Clarendon Press in 1939 (Nov. 17), where Collingwood wrote that the book 'tackles the subject in the one and only right way, i.e. as an historical subject'. ^{(R. G. Collingwood: A Research Companion, James Connelly, Peter Johnson, and Stephen Leach [London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015], p. 90)}

Weldon was active in the administration of Magdalen. Margaret Simons reports that he 'was, according to his biographers, responsible not only for forming the Modern Greats curriculum, but also for transforming Magdalen from an easygoing place, in which wealth and family position were key selection criteria, to an academic meritocracy'.

On Weldon's death, Ayer says that Gilbert Ryle had intended to drive to Venice with 'his friend Harry Weldon' to attend the 12th International Congress of Philosophy in 1958, but Weldon died, and Ryle invited Ayer 'to take his [Weldon's] place'. ^{(Ayer, More of My Life [London: Collins, 1984], p. 157)}

*The official cause of death was a brain hemorrhage.