Abstract

In this far-ranging series of essays on selected philosophers and a variety of social and philosophical issues, Quinton, the president of Trinity College, Oxford, shows that at least some college presidents can be intelligent, urbane, witty, and wise. Written between the late sixties and the mid-seventies, these perceptive essays reflect some of the preoccupations of that time, but also manage to embrace a wide spectrum of issues that are philosophical in the broad sense that Quinton espouses. Both in his “Preface” and throughout his essays, Quinton shows himself to have been immune to the enclosed, autonomous, and blatantly unhistorical style of philosophy in the two decades leading up to the mid-seventies when the social and political turmoil in Europe and the United States woke many from their analytical reverie.