Available to think

Press, 14 September 1988, Page 20

Available to think

From the “Economist,” London

PICTURE the scene. On one side of a large municipal-style table in a prefab government office sit three middle-aged, middle-class home counties worthies. On the other is an unshaven, overwrought, gesticulating and heavily accented man trying to argue, like Aristotle, that philosophy is the key to the best life; and, like Socrates, that a life without philosophy is not worth living. The philosopher is Mr Julius Tomin, an unemployed Czech dissident who has swapped a secure living with little freedom of expression in Prague for more freedom but less security in Oxford. The social-security department now wants to withdraw Mr Tomin’s dole on the grounds that, by refusing to accept work other than that for which he is qualified (i.e. teaching philosophy), he has made himself unavailable for work. In true philosophical tradition, the argument at .the tribunal revolved mainly around definitions. What, for instance, did applying for a job mean?

According to Mr Tomin, it meant sitting in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library researching Plato. On his logic, if he writes scholarly papers and has them published, he is more likely to be offered a teaching job. The worthies, it seemed, were more used to thinking in terms of scanning the noticeboard at the local Job Centre. Mr Tomin’s chances of teaching philosophy at Oxford are “zero,” according to an Oxford philosopher: “It’s all a very sad story, but it’s at least half his fault.” Mr Tomin was first invited to give a short series of lectures at Oxford in 1980 after a group of Balliol philosophers had visited his seminars in Prague. They enjoyed a brief moment of glory when they were arrested midseminar and sent packing back to Britain. They came back deeply impressed by Mr Tomin’s bravery. Bravery does not guarantee brilliance. Even the best philosophers find it hard to get work in Britain these days. In the past

four years, seven university philosophy departments have closed and since 1980 the number of lecturers in the subject has fallen by a third to 378. Mr Tomin has not helped his cause by alienating the Oxford philosophy establishment. He is obsessed with trying to show that Plato’s “Phaedrus” was his first dialogue, a theory which has been robustly rebuffed by Mr Anthony Kenny, master of Balliol and the man who invited him to Oxford in the first place. “From the point of view of style, content and everything else, it’s clearly a late dialogue, and that’s all there is to it,” says a classical philosopher firmly. If the tribunal finds against Mr Tomin, the Job Centre will beckon. If he has to work at all, he is determined to do a manual job, to leave his mind free for philosophy. In that, he will be following a noble tradition. Wittgenstein, no less, did the same. Copyright — The Economist.