“The Thinking Man’s Filter”: J. L. Austin’s Ordinary Language Philosophy as Cultural Criticism

In his hands, philosophy seemed at once more serious, and more fun.

—G. J. Warnock, John Langshaw Austin

Cultural Appropriation

G. J. Warnock’s assessment of the British philosopher J. L. Austin’s contribution to philosophy—both fun and serious—directly precedes his too brief account of Austin’s appreciation of America. The proximity of these two accounts in Warnock’s biographical “sketch” suggests that Austin’s special brand of philosophy and the welcoming ambience of the United States are related. Warnock’s account is “too brief” because Austin’s relationship to the United States and its culture has been too little studied, if at all. Certainly, there are the recollections of his American students who recall Austin’s impact on their studies and future careers.

To date, the American philosopher Stanley Cavell has been the most vocal in his indebtedness to Austin’s contribution to his own “voice” in philosophy. His first published essay, “Must We Mean What We Say?” divulges Cavell’s debt to Austin as an “inheritance” of ordinary language philosophy (1969, 1–43).¹ He lists, among many instances, Austin’s manner of attending to the voice that articulates astonishment at our “ability to say what we say . . . ” (1994, 59). As Cavell admits, “In the ordinary language challenge I felt released, cleared to do the work that seemed mine to do . . . ” (1994, 59). In his introduction of ordinary language philosophy to an American audience, Austin gave license to the kind of intellectual freedom that Cavell describes as the result of having been in attendance when the British philosopher delivered his lectures. This was when Austin delivered the William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1955. The lectures were posthumously collected and, in 1962, published as How To Do Things with Words. Like Warnock, Cavell recalls Austin’s use of “jokes, puns, literary allusions, and the general repeated invitation to have fun in philosophizing . . . ” (2002, xi). Perhaps Cavell witnessed instances where, as Austin put it in his lectures, certain conditions were satisfied “if the utterance is to be happy” (Austin 1962a, 45). That Cavell has taken this aspect of Austin’s voice seriously should count as an instance of what American philosophy has inherited from Austin.

In addition to the reception of Austin’s philosophy in the United States, there was, as Warnock tells us, the case of his fondness for America. This suggests that influences were reciprocal. Warnock claims that Austin “was fascinated, I believe, by the whole phenomenon of America—by its size, by its populousness and resources, by the sense there of endless possibilities and a wide-open future” (1962, 21). But more than this, as Warnock explains, Austin found the American “atmosphere of uncomplicated, undersigned friendliness” (21) to his liking. Such was the case that Austin appropriated American culture into his philosophy, much as British pop artists had in the 1950s when they appropriated images from American magazines and advertising. By now, the story of artists such as Richard Hamilton and Edourado Paolozzi and critics such as Reynar Banham and Lawrence Alloway looking to the United States for what Alloway once called “an aesthetics of plenty” is well known (and perhaps a bit worn).² The story and significance of Austin’s appropriation of American culture, however, has yet to be told.

If Austin’s cultural criticism seems far-fetched, it may be because instances of appropriation have all but been excised from his work. In January 1959, while concluding his Swarthmore College lecture on sense data, Austin quoted the American actor Steve McQueen from a commercial for Viceroy cigarettes. As George Pitcher, who had escorted Austin to the college, reports, Austin “turned to the blackboard and clamped his two hands around the words ‘It seems to me now exactly as if,’ saying ‘This is the thinking man’s filter . . . ’” (29). The combined force of a verbal perlocutionary act intended to produce an effect and of a physical, “non-locutionary” act was akin to examples of “waving a stick or pointing a gun” so as to further secure...