Sir Alfred Ayer

Sir Alfred Ayer0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty four, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

Now, this week, our castaway is the distinguished philosopher, writer, and academic, Professor Sir Alfred Eyre, A.J. Eyre.

Presenter0:39

Freddie, how well could you endure isolation?

Presenter0:43

Not very well, I don't think. I

Presenter0:47

I concentrate very well when I'm writing, and then I like to be alone, but I'm not aware of what goes on around me. But I think I'm a social person, and I think if left to my own resources, I should pretty soon become unhappy. Now you have eight discs to console you. How important is music in your life?

Presenter1:04

It's not played a vital part in my life. I mean, I care less for music than I care for painting, and less for painting than I care for literature. But I have very much enjoyed popular music. I was taken a great deal to musical comedies when I was a boy by my parents, and in adult life I liked musical very much. I very much regret his disappearance and also seen musical comedy and I like opera.

Sir Alfred Ayer1:23

But

Presenter1:25

But I'm not a concerter. How much musical skill do you have yourself? Do you play any instrument at all? No, I don't have any musical skill. I I did fancy myself in my teens as a tap dancer. That's the first you can. Did you take lessons? No, I taught myself. And I had a vague ambition of going on the stage, sort of I think I was much impressed by Lady Cantor at that time or someone of that sort. I had an idea of coming someone like Danny Kaye. On the whole, I think I've done better as things are.

Sir Alfred Ayer1:30

No, I

Sir Alfred Ayer1:35

Did you

Sir Alfred Ayer1:38

And I have

Presenter1:51

Did you have any plan in choosing these eight records? Is it nostalgic or?

Presenter1:55

Do you choose something inspiriting or the voices of great artists? How did you set about it? Uh certainly mainly nostalgic, and uh also inspiriting, not the voices of great artists. Do you have a big collection of records? No, I don't.

Presenter2:10

And I don't often play the the gramophone. I do listen to the radio quite a lot. In fact, I come to prefer it to television. What's the first record you've chosen? What's the first one on that little pile? It's a record by an almost forgotten composer called Colri Taylor. He composed something called Hiawatha, which is now, I think, seldom played, but this doesn't come from that. This is the second movement of the Petit Suite de Concerre, and I chose it purely for sentimental reasons, because it's a tune that my mother used to play. She hoped that I would learn the piano, and she failed to teach me, but she used to play this very often, and I remembered it for that reason.

Sir Alfred Ayer2:18

Violin

Presenter3:39

Question and answer from the Pitit Suite de Concier by Coleridge Taylor, the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by George Weldon.

Presenter3:47

Your family background incorporated several European countries. Yes, indeed. My my father was a French Swiss and there's some French blood too. One of my grandmothers was was French. And on my mother's side it was Dutch Jewish. Mm my mother was actually born in Antwerp, but she she was uh of Dutch extraction. But both sides of the family had settled in England, so I was actually born English. Your father a timber merchant, and as most traders do, he had varying fortunes. Well, yes, he was he was put into the timber business by his father-in-law. He was, in fact, himself secretary to one of the Rothschilds, Alfred Rothschild, which is where I get my name from. He was my godfather. And then my father was a very clever man who speculated, and like many clever men who speculate, he ruined himself. And then, in fact, we had the bailiffs in the house when I was only eighteen months old. His father-in-law rescued him and put him into the timber business, which he hated. But in the First World War, timber merchants couldn't fail to make some money, and so he prospered a bit and had a house in St John's Wood. You were an only child. I was an only child. Do you look back on childhood as a happy child?

Sir Alfred Ayer3:51

Yes, sir.

Presenter4:59

Not very, no. I was sent away to preparatory school in Eastbourne at the age of seven and at that time those preparatory schools are pretty barbarous places. The boarding school. Yes. At seven. At seven, yes. Very early. It was early. It was uh double reason. First, that my mother she was very high strung and couldn't control me. And secondly, it was the end of the war and there were air raids and these two motives caused my family to send me away. And the only advantage was that they did beat learning into you and from there I got a scholarship to Eton.

Sir Alfred Ayer5:08

The mod

Sir Alfred Ayer5:10

Yes

Speaker 35:23

Huh.

Presenter5:28

Eaton very large, very old, full of strange new customs. Did you find that frightening?

Presenter5:34

Not frightening. No, I wasn't very happy there because I was a very cocky little boy and that's the one thing you mustn't be at Eton. At Eton you can get away with almost anything so long as you keep quiet and I didn't learn that lesson. And so I wasn't altogether happy, although I enjoyed many things. I I was well taught classics and history and I enjoyed playing games there. But I didn't get on socially. It wasn't till Oxford I really became at all happy. You played in the wall game? Yes, I was I was I was in fact rather good at the wall game. I had my college wall two years. And you were beaten by the present Lord Haltram? Frequently. You spoke good French and quite a bit of German. I didn't speak German then. I learned German later. I spoke French because I had a family that spoke French to me, my father's sisters and his mother, who who died just before I went to Eton, in fact.

Presenter6:22

You were brought up in the Church of England, but at Eton you decided you were agnostic, if not an atheist. What decided you on that rejection? I don't know how it came about. I was already reluctant to be confirmed, but did it because my parents and the Master in College put pressure on me. And then after I'd been to a couple of early services, I suddenly started wondering whether I believed it, and then I decided I didn't. And then I became rather a bore about it and tried to show my schoolfellows what contradictions there were and the various gospels and so on, which they weren't in the least interested. And you've never gone back on that. I've never gone back. There's no life after death. There are no s supernatural experiences. I believe there is no li life after death and there are no supernatural experiences.

Sir Alfred Ayer6:55

I know.

Presenter7:05

Your second record? My second record is, I suppose, sentimental, and it's from a show I might have seen. In fact, the earliest show I did see was Chu-Chin Chow, and this is from The Bing Boys, which was composed by a namesake of mine, Nat De Air, and it's a sentimental song if you were the only girl in the world. Ah, George Roby. And Violet Lorraine.

Speaker 47:28

Pardon our feeder to make for two.

Speaker 47:34

With nothing to all adjourn

Speaker 47:41

I could say such wonderful things to you.

Speaker 47:49

Only not to win the world.

Speaker 47:58

Only

Speaker 48:00

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 48:03

I knew what

Presenter8:12

If You Were the Only Girl in the World from The Bing Boys Are Here by George Roby and Violet Lorain.

Presenter8:20

In due course you went up to Oxford. What did you read? I read grades. I went up as a classical scholar from Eaton, in which case I should have read both mods and grades, but by that time I got rather bored with the classics. I never was any profound classical scholar. And so I got leave from my college, Christchurch, to do past mods in one year and then spent the next two years doing grades. In fact, pass mods in one term, and so two years and two terms in grades.

Sir Alfred Ayer8:41

Which is

Presenter8:44

Mainly philosophy in ancient history. Because my philosophy was thought so unorthodox that the examiners marked me down and uh Wade Geary, who was an ancient historian, I think he was professor already, or else he was ancient historian at Wadham, thought I was being unjustly treated and marked up my ancient history papers. So I got first as an ancient historian, which I wasn't.

Sir Alfred Ayer8:45

Uh

Speaker 48:45

Uh

Sir Alfred Ayer8:45

Yeah.

Presenter9:10

Had you any idea what you wanted to be? Not really, no. My family wanted me to be a lawyer, and I was quite content with that, but I took to philosophy very much, and my college thought there was an opening for a philosopher. They mistakenly thought that one of the existing philosophers was going to leave, and they invited me, while still an undergraduate, to take his place. In fact, he didn't leave, but they kept me on as a researcher. In a way, this is a cophart, Freddie. For an undergraduate, you know you're never going to leave the womb. You're going to stay on where you are. How did you feel about that? I didn't see it as that, because I never saw my interests as being bounded by the university, and in fact, they never were. Several reasons made it turn out otherwise. One of them was that my first wife didn't like Oxford very much, and so insisted on living in London, which I could do because I was a research fellow, or student as they call them, at Christchurch, and therefore didn't need to do very much teaching. And then, of course, there was the war which took me away. Let's have your third record. What's that to be? My third record is the overture to the Italian in Algiers, Italian in Algeria, by Rossini, and this ties up with my Oxford life because my friend Isa Berlin said it reminded him of my character.

Presenter10:25

How? Well, not so much my character as my lecturing, a kind of sudden burst into exuberance with a quiet beginning.

Presenter11:31

The overture to Rossini is The Italian Girl in Algiers, The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner.

Presenter11:39

Now you got married just after you graduated.

Presenter11:41

You spent some time abroad? Yes, I went abroad the day after I I got married in November 1932 and the reason was that my college, when it appointed me, thought that I needed to teach straight away, but because the other man stayed on, I was a luxury, I I was only a researcher, and so they gave me two terms' leave of absence. And I wanted to go to Cambridge to work with Wittgenstein, but Gilbert Ryl, who was my tutor, said, No, we know to some extent what Wittgenstein is up to, but I believe something exciting is happening in Vienna. Why don't you go there? Now, I didn't speak German, or hardly any German, but I I had taken some extra studies in German at school, but very rudimentary German, but I thought Vienna was a romantic place and a good place to spend a honeymoon. And in fact, I did go there, and I called on the leader of the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers at Vienna at that time called Moritz Schlich, who had an American wife and spoke good English. And he he not only allowed me to attend to go to university, but also invited me to join the circle, which in retrospect seems very surprising. At the time I took it naturally. I was rather a brash young man. And I learnt German in a very odd way. I very quickly learnt enough German to be able to follow what the philosophers were saying, but was still not able to to read a newspaper very well. I learnt a kind of special sort of German. And this made an enormous impression on me. Practically the whole of my philosophical career derives from this. And on my return, I wrote the book by which I suppose I'm still best known, Language, Truth and Logic.

Sir Alfred Ayer12:56

And then

Presenter13:09

You published that book, I believe, when you were only twenty-four. I wrote it when I was twenty-four. I was just twenty-five when it came out. It was about that time that you dabbled in politics. Yes, I did. I just belonged to the last generation at Oxford that stopped being interested in politics. At the end of the twenties, beginning of the thirties, we still took no interest in politics. And then various things happened, the rise of Hitler, the hunger marching and so on. And what most, I think, influenced me was the Spanish Civil War. I had been in Spain. I went to Spain after I left Empea in Oxford and I had visited afterwards as a tourist and had a certain feeling for the country and I felt very passionately about the Civil War. And so I joined the Labour Party and actually stood as a candidate for local government in a section of Westminster where I was living at the time. With what result? I was beaten by twenty-four votes, partly because I invited the electors to vote for the opposition. It was a hopeless constituency. There were seventy Conservative councillors and nobody else. And I was one of three Labour councillors for the ward. And I canvassed the people in Carnaby Street, which was already a place for tailors, but not for fashionable tailors. These are people who did the sewing for the people in Saville Row. And they first of all rather suspected me what on earth was I doing trying to get their vote. Then they thought I was honest and they said, well, we'd like to vote for you. We think you're a respectable person. But Mr X, who is a Conservative candidate and a coal merchant, has promised us so much coal if we vote for him. And so I said, vote for him. I said, if I go into the Council, it may do me some good, but I certainly can't do you any good, one against six or nine Conservatives. Whereas coal is coal in these hard times. But if he doesn't supply you with the coal, let me know and I'll have him unseated for malpractice. And they let me know and he had supplied the coal. So very realist attitude. You've never gone back to politics.

Sir Alfred Ayer14:36

Until I said

Presenter14:56

Never, no, no. I thought at the end of the war in'forty-five, shall I well, I was partly masquerading as a soldier, partly as a cloak and dagger man. And then I thought at the end when I was demobilized, shall I go into politics or not? and hesitated and probably would have been elected in'forty five as a Labour candidate and might have risen to be Postmaster General. But I decided that in the end I was better as a Don and so went back to Oxford and I never regretted that. Let's have your fourth record.

Presenter15:23

My fourth record comes in fact from a slightly earlier time, uh from time I was at Eton, when we used to get up to London at uh well, long leave we called it, in the middle of the half, and I was a great admirer of Noel Card. And this comes from a review of his in nineteen twenty eight called This Year of Grace, and here's a room with a view.

Speaker 415:43

A room with a view And no one to worry us, no one to hurry us through

Presenter15:51

What

Sir Alfred Ayer15:51

We have no one to harm.

Speaker 415:56

There's three we found.

Speaker 416:01

We're gay that of Car and Wal.

Speaker 416:07

Guess what it's all about, then we will figure out why.

Presenter16:17

Nero Card singing A Room with a View from This Year of Grace.

Presenter16:22

Freddie, you've always had an aptitude for friendship. You have many friends. Yes, I think that's true. And you've liked to travel. And I've liked to travel, yes. The war gave you some travels, in fact, quite a lot of travels. Which regiment did you join at the beginning? I joined the Welsh Guards in a strange way, because at the beginning I was in a reserved occupation. Dons over the age of twenty-five were reserved, and I was, in fact, twenty-eight, very nearly twenty-nine, when the war started. But my tutor, Gilbert Ryle, had joined up, and I felt a feeling of conscience. I'd been standing at street corners saying we ought to resist Hitler during my political career, and I thought if I'd said we, I must mean we. If I'd meant that they should, and I shouldn't, I should have said you. I had said we, therefore I should do something about resisting. And it happened that normally you went to the war office and they wouldn't have taken me, but the guards picked their own officers. So I put on my Old Etonian tie, bought a bowler hat, went up to see Chito Latham, the colonel of the Welsh Guards, and say that I was a man of independent means, quite falsely. And he looked at me and I seemed to have the right background and said, All right, I'll take you on. And I'd thought I'd go straight away to a training battalion, but alas the rule came in, brought in by Horbelaschen, a very good rule, that you had to become a recruit first, and so the next thing I found was that I had to go to Caterham as a guardsman recruit with all my hair shaved off. And I didn't mind it. In fact, I even took some pleasure in being part of our efficient squad.

Sir Alfred Ayer17:21

She tried later.

Presenter17:56

You later worked in intelligence? Yes. It was found that I spoke languages. I spoke French naturally because of my background. And also I'd retained some Spanish in the time I'd spent between Eton and Oxford and I was sent to a Spanish family. And I was recruited to go and subvert the Nazis in South America. And I w was supposed to drop poison into their coffee, or I don't know what. But while I was making my way out there, so at the end of 1941, America came into the war and said that South America was its province and they weren't going to have any Limes making trouble down there. And so I stayed in New York and for about a year I just collated intelligence from South America. Then I got guilt and asked to be sent back and eventually worked with the French.

Sir Alfred Ayer18:37

You were killed.

Presenter18:42

You were in Accra for a while, North Africa? Yes, that's an episode I prefer to forget. That was between coming back from America and going out and working with the French section. They didn't know what to do with me, and so they sent me to a station we had in Accra, which was doing nothing whatsoever. And as soon as I got there, I asked to be sent back, and I was. I had a kind of quarrel with my colonel and he marooned me in a uh gold miners' camp and they tried to teach me poker, but I happened to be lecturing on the laws of probability and so they took me for a card shop. Fortunately most of them went back with me on the boat to England and they ma I managed to lose the money back to them. Otherwise I don't know what would have happened to me.

Sir Alfred Ayer19:24

Oh.

Presenter19:26

Let's have your next record. Number five we got to. Uh number five goes back a bit, goes back to the time when I was in Vienna and went very often to the opera. It's the first time I really took a serious liking for classical music. And among the pieces put on was the Rosen Cavalier and what I particularly liked was the Wolf song sung by Baron Ox.

Speaker 320:17

Get your man.

Speaker 320:20

It's a rain.

Presenter20:49

An excerpt from Der Rosen Cavalier by Richard Strauss, Baron Ox played by Manfred Jungwert, singing his waltz song

Presenter20:57

and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by George Schelty.

Presenter21:03

So the war was over, Freddie. Back to Oxford. Philosophy, teaching, writing books. Does philosophy progress? Does it go on, or does it go round in circles?

Presenter21:16

Spirals perhaps. Uh it certainly doesn't progress in the way that uh a natural science might progress, that someone puts forward a theory, it then explains certain phenomena, it's then perhaps refuted and another theory replaces it and is verified. There's nothing in philosophy like a crucial experiment, which is one reason why it's a very trying subject to pursue, because you'll never be quite sure you've got things right. On the other hand, I think it does make a kind of spiral progress because certain ways of thinking get discredited and the same problems come up, but seen in a new light, and I think perhaps in a slightly clearer light. And I do see philosophy as

Presenter21:59

having a future, perhaps as coalescing again with science. They only came apart really in the nineteenth century for two reasons. First, because of the general trend towards Romanticism which followed the Perlik Wars and philosophy followed Kant, and also because science itself got too specialised and too difficult. It's very hard to find even a physicist who covers the whole of physics, let alone anyone who covers the whole of learning as the philosophers did beforehand. The earlier philosophers, people like Descartes and Leibniz and of course the Greeks, Aristotle, were scientists too. And I think what you are finding now, and have found some extent in this century with the greatest philosophers, with Russell, with Whitehead, to a smaller extent with Wittgenstein, that they were people who were scientific too. And that's the way I think it will go. And it's been a handicap to me that I'm not very good at mathematics, for example, and I think I'd be a better philosopher had I been more of a mathematician.

Presenter22:57

Your sixth record, we've got to. Well, now we go back again to Vienna, because I used to go lot to the cinema there, and there were lots and lots of little cinemas where you sat in on hard chairs and went in very cheaply. And you probably remember in those days the English girl Lillian Harvey was a great star in the German cinema. And there's one song I remember very vividly, Somewhere in the World There's Little Happiness, the Jägen Voer, der Weltgimstein, Trainis Bischendluch, which I always attributed to a film called The Dry from the Tangstelle, three from the petrol station. But in fact, I've just discovered comes from a different film called Der Blonde Traume, The Fair Dream, and it's sung by Lillian Harvey.

Speaker 423:38

I have zoozins, Ich Troin Zoft, I serve as great mirze.

Speaker 423:50

Ich Haf Zozein Zoft, Ichab Gehaft, ein zurt dichond.

Presenter24:02

Lillian Harvey in a song from a German film of the early thirties, a film called The Fair Dream.

Presenter24:09

Six years ago, Freddie, you announced that you were going to retire. But you're still a visiting professor in Surrey University. You published Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, which brings up to date Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.

Presenter24:25

There's a second volume of autobiography out in a minute, I believe.

Presenter24:30

You're halfway through a biography of Wittgenstein. You just married a third wife. This is retirement? Well, it's retirement in the sense that Oxford superannuated me. They they stick very strictly to the rule that you mustn't uh go on after you're sixty-seven. In fact, the philosophers petitioned for me to stay on for an extra year because Michael Dummit, my very world successor, couldn't come for a year and they said why not let me fill in the gap. But the administration always goes by the thin end of the wedge. No, if we have in one flex a year, who knows they'll be asking for it next, and so I had to go. And then Surrey very generously invited me to come visiting professor. But the absurd thing is that they've abolished the philosophy department at Surrey under the new restrictions and forgotten to abolish me. Oh, that's so that I'm now I get you to draw a salary and make an appearance but without much of an audience. But it's a nice department and very nice people and what they've done is throughout the workers that they have been by the abolition of the department, they formed a new Society for Applied Philosophy and invited me to become its president so that uh although I'm nothing of applied philosopher, nevertheless I I do still have some sort of title and this is prospering and they're bringing out a new journal.

Sir Alfred Ayer24:40

Pit

Sir Alfred Ayer25:25

Mm-hmm.

Presenter25:47

which I hope will do well. But I am not much doing much more than any my name. Otherwise I am just going on writing as I have been. I've written fairly consistently throughout the years. I think I've written fifteen or sixteen books in all. And I'm doing what I've always done, except that I miss the teaching at Oxford. Yes. Otherwise there's been no change. I believe that apart from the books that I listed there are others to come out and in fact three this year.

Presenter26:13

Yes, uh well one is not a new book, one that has just come out is a paperback edition of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, which I published a couple of years ago. The second is a book of essays, half of which are new, mainly based on a series of lectures that I gave in Canada last year, called Freedom and Morality and other essays. And the third is the second volume of my autobiography you've already referred to, called More of My Life. The first volume was called Part of My Life, and I couldn't think of a better title than More of My Life, second volume. And that I expect will be coming out in September. And I wish I were halfway through my study of Wittgenstein. I'm afraid I've just done the first chapter and struggling away with the second. Record number seven.

Presenter27:00

Record number seven is there because of my continuing pleasure in musical comedies. This is something that began when I was a small boy and something I never lost, and what I've chosen is the concluding, almost the concluding song, from Pell J.

Speaker 427:17

Take him, I won't put a price on him. Take him, he's yours. Take him, the pajamas look nice on him, but how he snores. Though he is well adjusted, certain things make him a wreck. Last year his arm was busted, reaching from a check.

Presenter27:42

Reach

Presenter27:45

A number from the Broadway musical Pal Joey by Rogers and Hart, Take Him by Vivian Siegel, and Beverly Fite.

Presenter27:53

Back to the desert island, Freddy. Could you look after yourself?

Presenter27:57

It would depend very much how much fruit there was on the trees or or um

Presenter28:03

I suppose I could probably train myself to catch some fish, if there were any. What I'd be bad at would be the Robinson Crusoe things, building a house, sewing my clothes together. I think I might very well um perish of cold or starve. Would you try to escape? Could you construct some kind of raft?

Presenter28:22

Well, I'd try. I'd put my chances pretty low, I think. I would try to escape. Yes, I think so. Do you know anything about navigation? Do you know which star is.

Sir Alfred Ayer28:28

Do you know?

Presenter28:32

I can recognize the Great Bear and the North Star, yes, I can get the North Star, so th but whether I could go on from there I don't know whether the emergency might produce the man, but taking me as I now am, I think I'd make a pretty poor showing. Yes, it might be a situation in which religion would come in handy. I can't even be the slightest use. Record number eight. My last record is chosen because it comes from my favourite composer and favourite opera, Mozart Don Giovanni. Which is the and the actual area is La Gita M Lamano.

Sir Alfred Ayer28:48

Uh

Speaker 329:04

The actual

Speaker 329:07

Touch your end of our own love.

Speaker 329:12

The idea

Speaker 329:22

Hold up.

Speaker 329:24

Uh

Speaker 429:52

If not really

Presenter29:56

The duet Give Me Your Hand, My Fairest, from Mozart's Don Giovanni, sung by Inglar Vixel and Mirella Freyne.

Presenter30:04

If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played us, which would it be? I find that very, very hard to answer indeed. And I I think the only way I can answer it is by eliminating all the ones that I could more or less accurately sing if I didn't have them. And that knocks out the musical comedy ones, all which I can sing more or less well, and leaves me with the Rossini and the Rosen Cavalier and the Mozart. And of those

Presenter30:39

Three, I think I'd take the Rossini. The Rossini Overture, The Italian Girl in Algiers. And one luxury. One object of no practical use whatever. Oh, that would have to be a picture. And the only question would be which picture? And and there my taste is extremely Catholic. I'm attracted towards the Cranach uh Adam and Eve in in the courteau, but I think my favourite artist is Renoir. And I think that of all Renoir's pictures the one I like best is the Moulin La Galette, which is in the National Gallery. Right. I think I'd take that. The Moulin La Galette of Renoir. And one book. You already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Sir Alfred Ayer30:48

Well it's

Sir Alfred Ayer31:13

And what?

Presenter31:17

I am going to take Boswell's Life of Johnson, provided I can have with it also his Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides. I think that can be done quite easily with a clear conscience. Well, certainly a lot of reading there, if nothing else.

Sir Alfred Ayer31:28

No.

Presenter31:30

And thank you, Professor Sir Alfred Eyre, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you.

Presenter31:36

Goodbye everyone.

Sir Alfred Ayer31:43

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio four.