THE SIGNIFICANCE OF J. L. AUSTIN’S SATURDAY MORNING MEETINGS FOR «CONTINUITY» OF OXFORD PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

I will try to focus in my talk on the history and significance of the so-calledSaturday Morning Meetings—a scien-tific seminar that John Langshaw Austin (President of the Aristotelian society 1956-1957) organized in 1947 at the University of Oxford—forthe development of Oxford philosophy. The ideas that were discussed at these informal meetings were subsequently seriously developed within the philosophy literature, and many participants of the seminar became world-famous philosophers. The success of the Saturday Morning Meetings can be explained by the fact that it was not a formalized University institution, but a community of like-minded people who believed that only through joint discussion philosophical problems could be clarified.