The Selected Writings of Maurice O’Connor Drury: On Wittgenstein, Philosophy, Religion and Psychiatry

473 Pages·2017·2.785 MB·English

by  Drury, Maurice O’Connor;Hayes, John(Editor);Drury, Paul(Editor)

The SelecTed WriTingS of
Maurice o’connor drury
Maurice O’Connor Drury, photographed by Wittgenstein in 1936 when he visited Drury in
Dublin together with Francis Skinner.
The next day we were in Woolworth’s for some purchases. Wittgenstein noticed some
cheap little cameras: ‘What fun it would be to take some snaps of each other’. So he
insisted on buying three cameras one for each of us. (Cons., p. 110)
Wittgenstein kept this photo of Drury together with a great number of other photos he had
taken which were given to Ben Richards after Wittgenstein’s death by Elizabeth Anscombe.
This image is now part and copyright of the Wittgenstein Archive Cambridge, reprinted
here with their kind permission. Source: Michael Nedo
also available from Bloomsbury:
Applying Wittgenstein
Rupert Read (edited by Laura Cook)
Beauty and the End of Art: Wittgenstein, Plurality and Perception
Sonia Sedivy
Contemplating Religious Forms of Life: Wittgenstein and D. Z. Phillips
Mikel Burley
Portraits of Wittgenstein
edited by F. A. Flowers III and Ian Ground
The SelecTed WriTingS of
Maurice o’connor drury
ON WiTTgENSTEiN,
PhiLOSOPhy,
RELigiON AND
PSy ChiATRy
Maurice O’Connor Drury
Edited and introduced by John Hayes
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First published 2017
© Estate of Maurice O’Connor Drury, 2017
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Editorial content and Introduction © John Hayes, 2017
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This volume is dedicated to the memory of
Paul Drury (1957-2015)
for deepening understanding and enabling action.
Ar dheis lámh Dé go raibh a anam dílis
in poverty…and in the other misfortunes men think friends are the only refuge.
Moreover, the young need it to keep them from error. The old need it to care
for them and support the actions that fail because of weakness. And those in
their prime need it, to do fine action; for “when two go together”, they are
more capable of understanding and acting.
(Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1155a, 11-16. Terence irwin, trans.
(indianapolis, indiana: hackett, 1985))
vi
CONTENTS
Foreword, by ray Monk ix
PreFace xiii
acknowledgeMents xix
abbreviations xxiii
Part i drury and Wittgenstein: Kindred Souls by John Hayes 1
Part ii drury’s recollections of Wittgenstein 87
Contribution to a BBC Symposium 89
Conversations with Wittgenstein 93
Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein 149
Part iii drury’s Philosophical Writings 165
The Method of Philosophy 171
Letters to a Student of Philosophy 178
Six Reflections shared with Rush Rhees 208
02 March 1959 208
28 March 1959 209
Spring 1966 212
21 June 1966 220
17 October 1967 221
08 November 1967 222
University College Dublin Lecture: 1967 224
Letter to Rush Rhees 232
16 October 1966 232
Part iV drury on religion 235
Letters to Rhees 238
22 May 1958 238
09 June 1958 238
09 March 1964 239
22 April 1967 240
15 May 1967 241
12 June 1968 242
02 October 1968 242
viii CONTENTS
11 September 1969 243
06 October 1970 245
31 May 1971 246
15 June 1971 247
23 April 1974 248
Undated Letter Extract 250
Letter to D.Z. Phillips: 23 July 1964 251
Part V drury on Medicine, Psychiatry and Psychology 253
The Danger of Words 255
Review of Danger of Words by Ilham Dilman 330
Correspondence and Comment 351
Letters to Rhees 354
22 September 1959 354
10 May 1969 354
24 January 1970 355
18 June 1970 356
30 July 1970 357
introductory Lectures on hypnosis 358
Counsel to Townsend 404
Part Vi Biographical and historical notes 407
index 435
FOREWORD
By ray MonK
Maurice Drury’s two articles, ‘Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein’ and
‘Conversations with Wittgenstein’ (both included in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal
Recollections, edited by Rush Rhees) made such a strong impression on me that i
remember exactly where and when i first read them. it was in the autumn of 1982
and i was on a bus from London to Oxford, returning from a weekend of seeing
friends and book shopping.
i was then a postgraduate student of philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford,
and had started work on a dissertation on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics.
i had been fascinated with Wittgenstein since i was a teenager, when i first read
Norman Malcolm’s memoir of him, and during my undergraduate days my interests
had become focussed on logic and the philosophy of mathematics, and in particular
Wittgenstein’s work on those subjects. Curiously, my work on Wittgenstein’s
philosophy of mathematics had taken me in the direction of biography, because i
had become more and more conscious of the fact that the Wittgenstein that emerges
from the enormous secondary literature on him, especially the commentary on
his philosophy of mathematics, was not the man whose intense and charismatic
personality leaps off the pages of Malcolm’s book. The tempestuous, tortured genius
Malcolm describes had somehow been transformed into an Oxford don, the biting
wit, startling metaphors and burning passion of his prose somehow translated into
the discrete, moderate muted tone of a typical academic article. This, i thought, was
not the man who had originally aroused my interest.
i was therefore captivated to be told in the preface to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Personal Recollections that Drury had begun an earlier draft of his longer article
with this statement:
The number of introductions to and commentaries on Wittgenstein’s philosophy
is steadily increasing. yet to one of his former pupils something that was central
in his thinking is not being said.
Kierkegaard told a bitter parable about the effects of his writings. he said he
felt like the theatre manager who runs on the stage to warn the audience of a fire.
But they take his appearance as all part of the farce they are enjoying, and the
louder he shouts the more they applaud.
Forty years ago Wittgenstein’s teaching came to me as a warning against
certain intellectual and spiritual dangers by which i was strongly tempted. These
dangers still surround us. it would be a tragedy if well meaning commentators