American Formalism

Abstract

Grice returned to Oxford after the William James lectures, but only for one term. In the autumn of 1967 he took up an appointment at the University of California, Berkeley. The move was permanent; during the rest of his life he was to make only a handful of brief return visits to England. It was also in many ways incongruous. A thoroughgoing product of the British elite educational system, Grice delighted in the rituals and formalities of college life. And even Kathleen was amazed that he was ready to turn his back on cricket, concluding that it was only because at 54 he was too old to play for county or college that he was prepared to move at all. But there was no reluctance in Grice’s acceptance of his new appointment. In fact, he engineered the move himself. While at Harvard, he had made his interest known generally in the American academic community. When the offer came from Berkeley he had accepted it enthusiastically and, somewhat naively, without negotiation.