Abstract
The irreverend and not always to be reverenced Frank Harris, in his book on Shaw, has sarcastically quoted Shaw's remark when the playwright was once told that he enjoyed a great reputation in America: “Which? I am a philosopher, novelist, sociologist, critic, statesman, dramatist, and theologian. I have therefore seven reputations.” Conceding his willingness to make Shaw a present of the last six, Harris nevertheless maintained that for the life of him he couldn't see how Shaw got in as a philosopher—even a laughing philosopher. A court jester, perhaps, or a “wit of the first water.” But being a philosopher entails, first, the formulation of a system of thought, and, second, the founding of a school of disciples to carry that thought on. Since, in spite of the “heaps of notes” Harris claimed to have gathered in a vain investigation of this subject, he could discover neither any system of thought nor any body of followers, he announced magisterially that, as a philosopher, Shaw “simply doesn't exist.”
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