Frank Knight, Philosopher at Large

Abstract

I wish to say a little about Frank Knight as a philosopher and citizen-atlarge of University. In doing so my first obligation is to take what precautions I can to prevent my being misunderstood. To be sure, he was, from 1945 onward, by title a professor of philosophy as well as of social science; but I am not speaking, except incidentally, of philosophy in its professional or academic form-as what students and professors of philosophy normally busy themselves with. I am speaking of philosophy in its ancient character as an activity has no end, and produces no authoritative doctrines, just because it reflects critically on aims, interrelations, limitations, and inevitable distortions of all doctrines. As Immanuel Kant put it, this cosmicall concept of philosophy, which has always formed real basis of term, and especially when it has been personified in ideal of philosopher, is the science of relation of all knowledge to essential ends of human reason. . . . In this sense of term it would be vainglorious to entitle oneself a philosopher and pretend to have equalled pattern exists in idea alone. Frank, being least vainglorious of men, would be first to disclaim such a title; yet philosophy in that spirit was, I believe, his first intellectual love. I believe, too, that his practice made it clear that he thought that same spirit should be ultimate concern of a university, without all its other proper and characteristic activities become confused and degraded. Moreover, a university so occupied with philosophy would be one of best available approximations to what he called the ideal type of human association; is to say, of all true society: . . . [cooperative] pursuit of truth or of value in any form. Our colleague, Bill O'Meara, who saw much of him in his last years, has made happy suggestion that I describe Frank's intellectual activity in terms of an observation Aristotle made about his teacher, Plato, who used to remind his associates of difference between moving from and moving toward first principles. Most of time, we proceed from prin-