Inquiry

ISSN: 0020-174X (Print) 1502-3923 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/sinq20

Philosophical Autobiography

Julian Baggini

To cite this article: Julian Baggini (2002) Philosophical Autobiography, Inquiry, 45:3, 295-312,
DOI: 10.1080/002017402760258141

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/002017402760258141

Published online: 06 Nov 2010.

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 Inquiry, 45, 295–312

Philosophical Autobiography
Julian Baggini
The Philosophers’ Magazine

An examination of the genre of philosophica l autobiograph y sheds light on the role

of personal judgment alongsid e objective rationalit y in philosophy . Building on
Monk’s conception of philosophica l biography, philosophica l autobiograph y can be
seen as any autobiograph y that reveals some interplay between life and thought. It is
argued that almost all autobiographie s by philosopher s are philosophica l because the
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recountin g of one’s own life is almost invariabl y a form of extended speech act of
self-revelation . When a philosophe r is the autobiographer , this self-revelatio n
illuminates the interplay between thought, life, and personality . Understandin g how
this works allows us to address three problem s of biograph y raised by Honderich:
how to give an account of something as large and complex as a human life; how a
life-story is also a judgment; and how we can justify identifyin g one part of a causal
circumstance as ‘the cause’. There is also a new ethical problem raised about the
autobiographer ’s right to make public details of a shared private life.

I. Introduction
In his recently published autobiography, Ted Honderich writes:

In my stubbornness, though, I am one with most philosophers, who for the most part
are impervious to argument. There is a truth about philosophy in this. At the bottom of
philosophy are things underdescribed as commitments. They are better described as
grips that the world gets on us early. 1

In this article, I argue that what Honderich says here is broadly, if not
exactly, correct. I argue this case and fully explain how it cashes out by
examining some of the main characteristics of philosophical autobiography. It
is my contention that philosophical autobiographies of philosophers give us
valuable insights into what philosophy is and enable us to understand better
how personal judgment and prejudice work alongside rational argument. If I
am right, then philosophical autobiography has an important role to play in
the study of metaphilosophy. But even if I am wrong, the mere existence of
the issues and problems that I discuss and raise suggests that philosophical
autobiography deserves more attention than it has received.
Since philosophical autobiography is a somewhat neglected genre, I map
some of the territory as well as put forward speciŽ c arguments. This means

# 2002 Taylor & Francis

 296 Julian Baggini

that parts of my discussion are relatively broad-brushed. I begin by saying a

little about what philosophica l autobiography is.

II. The Nature of Philosophical Autobiography

It is natural to see autobiography as a subset of biography, and although, as I
argue in sections III and VII, there are some philosophically important
differences between the two, an investigation of the nature of philosophical
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autobiography can fruitfully begin with a broader consideration of the nature

of philosophical biography. Philosophical biography has recently come to be
taken more seriously, mostly as a result of Ray Monk’s biographies of
Wittgenstein and Russell.2 Monk characterizes philosophical biography in
this way:

What makes something a philosophical biography needn’t be that it’s the biography of
a philosopher, just somebody where there is some dynamic, an interaction to reveal
and describe, between somebody’s preoccupation with ideas and their life.3

Monk is not here attempting to give a complete speciŽ cation of

philosophical biography, but his characterization can serve as a useful
preliminary deŽ nition of the genre. On this deŽ nition, not all biographies of
philosophers are philosophical and some biographies of non-philosopher s are.
Indeed, the deŽ nition allows for philosophical biographies that would not
typically be described as biographies at all. G. A. Cohen’s If You’re an
Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? 4 is a good example of such a work.
It weaves elements of autobiography into a discussion of political philosophy
and certainly does reveal a ‘dynamic’ between life and thought. Yet
‘autobiography’ does not feature in its Library of Congress catalog data.
Monk is right to insist that a biography’s being about a philosophe r is not
the same as it being philosophical, and his characterization of the genre is
sufŽ ciently broad to allow books like Cohen’s to fall under its scope. But, as it
stands, the deŽ nition excludes some works we might legitimately consider to
be philosophical biographies. Most obviously, it excludes biographies where
the philosophical interest is not in any supposed interplay between the life and
thought of the subject, but in what light the life in question casts on a
philosophical issue or problem. For example, a book on the notorious Adolf
Eichmann, who viewed the ‘Ž nal solution’ of the eradication of Germany’s
Jews with an extraordinary lack of emotion, might be considered a
philosophical biography if it sheds light on issues in ethics, such as those
concerning moral agency and responsibility or the nature of evil.5 It would
surely be legitimate to call such a book a philosophica l biography even if we
 Philosophical Autobiography 297

found Eichmann had no real preoccupation with ideas at all that could create a
dynamic with his life.
What Monk describes may best be seen as a particular species of
philosophical biography, one where the interaction between the life and ideas
is that between one person’s life and their own ideas. This is just one example
of a broader category of philosophical biography where some kind of relation
between a person’s life and any philosophical ideas can be drawn out and
examined, even if those ideas are not part of the mental furniture of the
biography’s subject.
It is not my concern here to formulate a full deŽ nition of philosophical
biography. The point of this brief discussion is merely to draw attention to the
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fact that, to a less or greater degree, a philosophical biography can be

considered one that makes some kind of link between life and thought. This
should be taken as an incomplete deŽ nition of the genre, one that might be
completed by the addition of one or more disjunctive clauses or by its
replacement with a broader deŽ nition that subsumes it. My point is simply
that a biography which sheds some light on ideas and arguments can be
considered philosophical, whatever its subject, and that a case needs to be
made if other kinds of biography are to be claimed as philosophical. For
present purposes, I will continue to talk about philosophical autobiography
only in the sense outlined and assume that any biography which does not
match the characterization given is not a philosophica l one, while leaving the
door open for other kinds of biography to be added to the genre.
Whether or not a biography is philosophica l in the sense outlined thus very
much depends upon the approach taken by its author. Although it is possible
that a biographer may unwittingly reveal some interesting information about
the interplay of life and ideas, on the whole such connections do not just
emerge by accident. Thus a non-philosophica l biography of a philosopher can
be expected to be relatively common. When we turn to philosophical
autobiography, however, we Ž nd that things are subtly different. Here, I
believe, an autobiography by a philosopher almost always reveals something
interesting about the interplay of life and thought, whether or not the author
consciously attempts to draw out these connections, and whether or not the
interplay is evident wholly within the autobiography or by a reading of the
autobiography alongside the author’s philosophical works.

III. Self-revelation as a Speech Act

The reason for this is that there is something language does which makes the
difference between a biography and an autobiography crucial. Philosophers
of language have long recognized that there is more to language than a
correspondence between individual words or sentences and their meanings. In
 298 Julian Baggini

particular, Austin’s introduction of the idea of speech acts into philosophy

made thinking about what we do by what we say as important a philosophical
issue as what we mean by what we say.6 When I say, for example, ‘I promise’,
I am not just uttering two words that have a meaning, I am actually doing
something – making a promise.
Austin’s key insight is surely correct – we do things with words as well as
mean things by them. However, Austin and his successors have largely
concentrated on what we do with relatively small ‘linguistic units’, typically a
sentence. Hence a typical example of an Austinian speech act is a sentence
such as ‘I see it’s going to rain’, which can be seen as an act of prediction,
warning, reminding (e.g. if its purpose is to prompt someone to take an
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umbrella) or dissuasion (e.g. if its purpose is to make someone reconsider the

decision to go for a walk).
Although single sentences serve as the paradigms of speech acts, if we look
at larger ‘linguistic units’ we can see other kinds of speech acts. For example, a
political speech may be a means of stirring xenophobia . What is important to
note here is that we know very well that the racism of such a speech may not
always be located in particular sentences or phrases. Indeed, racist politicians
are very adept at avoiding the use of racist phrases whilst actually stirring
xenophobia , as this enables them to de ect the charge of racism: if no racist
sentences can be found in the speech, how can the speech be criticized as racist?
Yet we know that there can be such racist speeches, where an accumulation of
individually innocuous sentences stir feelings of hatred and prejudice.
This example shows how certain types of individual speech acts can be
performed by the utterance of longer texts. Just as in the standard examples of
a speech act one can incite racism in a sentence, so a politician can incite
racism by a one-thousand-word speech. A sentence can be a speech act, but so
can a lecture or a talk. What is more, the way in which a person incites racism
by a single sentence is very different from the way in which they might do so
in a longer speech, so there are differences in the way longer and shorter
speech acts work.
Another such kind of extended speech act is, I believe, the revealing of a
personality. Although philosophers have not greatly attended to this kind of
speech act, we can see from experience that such speech acts do exist – one of
the things we do with words is reveal something about who we are. Consider,
for example, meeting someone for the Ž rst time and how one comes to
understand their character the more one hears them speak. This is not usually
because new information is given to us piecemeal which allows us to build up
a character sketch of the speaker bit-by-bit. Rather, it is because as we
observe certain patterns and manners of speech, we come to know more about
the speaker. For instance, if one person interrupts another, that individual
interruption does not tell us much about the former. But if they repeatedly
interrupt others, we do come to Ž nd out something about their personality. We
 Philosophical Autobiography 299

also attend to such factors as the manner of their interruption, who they
choose to interrupt and who they leave unmolested, what kind of interruptions
they make and so on. Similarly, when a person offers an opinion, we know a
little more about them. When we hear a range of their opinions we get a much
fuller understanding of their character.
There is certainly an issue here about how much of what we reveal of
ourselves depends upon how honest and open we are. However, this can be
overstated. In a sense we do Ž nd out more about a person who reveals every
detail of their private life than we do about someone who is less forthcoming.
But in another sense, both people reveal their characters equally: one as a
person drawn to confession and the other as a more private individual. Not
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saying much about our private thoughts tells others a great deal about what
kinds of people we are.
In this way, language functions as a revealer of character. For this reason,
we can talk about the revealing of character as a form of extended speech act.
The label may seem incongruous, as acts are usually thought of as short and
discrete, whereas this kind of speech act is extended and open-ended. But by
‘acts’ all we mean are things we do, and there are many such extended, open
acts: building a career, searching for happiness, looking for the perfect
cappuccino. If acts can be temporally extended and open-ended, and if by
‘speech act’ we mean something in particular we do with words, then
revealing personality can accurately be described as a speech act.
If we accept that such speech acts exist, that is that we do reveal our
personalities through the words we utter, we can see how there is an important
distinction between biography and autobiography. In a biography, the writer
can succeed or fail to reveal truths about the subject. Although biographies
rarely contain many factual errors, many do fail to paint an accurate portrait
of their subjects. In autobiographies, however, the writers almost inevitably
reveal something of themselves. That is because the mere act of talking or
writing reveals personality. One can adopt a formal tone when writing about a
subject which can very much mask personality (more than one can when one
is speaking about the same thing). However, when the subject of one’s writing
is oneself, such masking is more difŽ cult. It seems to be a matter of fact rather
than any logical necessity that the coincidence of writer with subject means
that the way in which the subject’s life is related is almost bound to tell you
something about that subject.
Consider, for example, two very contrasting autobiographies by philoso-
phers which were published around the same time. Ted Honderich’s
Philosopher: A Kind of Life is extremely confessional.7 Honderich sets out
to hide nothing and present himself warts and all. Mary Warnock’s A Memoir,
however, is very different.8 There is nothing confessional about this book at
all and its polite reminiscences include nothing one wouldn’t ordinarily relate
to someone one was meeting for the Ž rst time. Yet it is not the case that one
 300 Julian Baggini

Ž nishes both books to Ž nd Honderich’s personality laid bare and Warnock’s

an enigma. One reason for this is that in both cases the reader – unless they
happen to know information about either philosopher’s life – has no idea
whether or not what they are being told is true. But she does know what the
author has chosen to say, and also, to a certain extent, what they have chosen
not to talk about, and this, perhaps more than the truth or falsity of what is
related, reveals something about the authors. And as I have already said, there
is a way in which a personality emerges when a person speaks or writes about
themselves at any length which is not reducible to a collection of individual,
piecemeal revelations. The author’s personality emerges through an
autobiography more holistically.
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Even in an extreme case, where the author seems to reveal nothing about
their inner lives, a personality emerges. Take, for example, W. V. O. Quine’s
autobiography. 9 The book is a relentless catalogue of travels and events
which is remarkably unengaging. Quine just does not present any kind of
inner life. But that doesn’t mean we learn nothing about Quine from reading
the book. The fact that Quine attends so little to feelings and emotions cannot
but say something about the man. This is reinforced by certain patterns of
behaviour that are consistent with people who are often – perhaps too
judgmentally – described as being towards the autistic end of the personality
scale. For instance, Quine liked to keep count of how many states he had
visited and would make diversions merely to tick another off his list, wanting
to complete the set. This concern for mental order and tidiness combined with
an apparent disinterest in the emotional side of life does surely re ect
something real and important about Quine’s personality, even though it is a
portrait of the philosophe r that emerges seemingly without the author ever
consciously trying to paint it.
It seems then that in the case of autobiography, part at least of the writer’s
personality will out. In contrast, a biography can fail completely to reveal
personality. The main reason for this, as I have suggested, is that revealing
ourselves through the use of our own words is a particular kind of extended
speech act, one that it seems we cannot fail to perform if the subject of our
words is ourselves.
This is in itself an interesting philosophical point about language use in
autobiography. However, if it is true, it is true of all autobiography. Is there
anything special about philosophica l autobiography?
I suggest there is, once again on empirical rather than logical grounds.
Reading through various philosophers’ autobiographies, one is struck by how
often what is revealed of their personalities sheds light on how they thought
as philosophers. Again, there is no logical necessity here. It is more than
possible that a philosophe r could write an autobiography which left you
none the wiser about how they philosophized. But as a matter of fact,
such autobiographies seem to be rare. An autobiography of a philosopher is
 Philosophical Autobiography 301

almost invariably a philosophica l autobiography in the sense deŽ ned in

section II.
Sometimes the connections between life and thought are made explicitly.
For instance, in the most famous chapter of his autobiography, Mill discusses
in some detail the effect of his mental breakdown on his thinking, in particular
in connection with politics.10 Rousseau, in his Confessions, frequently
identiŽ es events in his life as causes, including causes of his intellectual
development. For example, recounting an incident when he was a child and
was punished for something he did not do, he asks us to imagine the effect this
had on his younger self: ‘What an upset of ideas! What a disturbance of
feelings! What revolution in his heart, in his brain, in the whole of his
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intellectual and moral being.’11

But it is not just events in life and their in uence on thought which are of
interest in a philosophical autobiography. It is also the connection between
character and thought, especially those aspects of character which are formed
at a young age. Quine, for instance, recalls how as a toddler he sought the
unfamiliar way home, which he interprets as re ecting ‘the thrill of discovery
in theoretical science: the reduction of the unfamiliar to the familiar’.12
Feyerabend recalls how, not yet 10, he was enchanted by magic and mystery
and even treated a moment of apparent disenchantment as just ‘one of the
many strange events that seemed to make up our world’.13 Quine and
Feyerabend, of course, went on to write very different kinds of philosophy:
Quine’s in a formal, logical, systematizing tradition (though typically on the
limits of such formalizations); Feyerabend’s anti-reductive and anti-system-
atizing. When we read these mature works, it is natural to ask which is right,
the anti-method of Feyerabend or the drier logic of Quine. But as soon as one
is confronted in their autobiographies by the seemingly obvious fact that these
different philosophica l theories re ect deep-seated differences in personality,
it becomes hard to accept that reason and truth alone are the adjudicators here.
It would take a great deal of faith in the objectivity of philosophy and
philosophers to think that Feyerabend and Quine arrived at their respective
philosophical positions simply by following the arguments where they led,
when their inclinations so obviously seem to be in tune with their settled
conclusions. What Honderich calls ‘grips that the world gets on us early’ have
a vital role to play.
An autobiography of a philosopher is, I would suggest, almost invariably a
form of philosophical autobiography, because in writing at length about
themselves the writer almost inevitably reveals themself and in doing this a
philosopher reveals those aspects of their personality that shape and in uence
their thought. This may not be evident unless one has also read the author’s
philosophical works, but the relations are still there to be seen.
One result of this is that philosophica l autobiography provides strong
evidence that philosophy is not a purely objective discipline, the products of
 302 Julian Baggini

which have nothing to do with the people who produce them. Philosophy is in
an important sense a personal pursuit and we do not undertake it with an
impersonal faculty called ‘reason’. Rather, how we reason is coloured by who
we are and the commitments we already have. One might want to go even
further and endorse Wittgenstein’s belief that: ‘Work in philosophy . . . is
really more work on oneself. On one’s own conception. On how one sees
things.’ 14
I have said that philosophica l autobiography provides evidence in support
of the stronger and the weaker of the above claims. It does not force us to
accept either or both. The evidence is strong and demands a response none the
less. Anyone who wished to maintain, in the face of this evidence, that
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philosophical arguments and principles should always be considered entirely

impersonally needs to explain how this separation of life and thought can be
achieved. Philosophical autobiography, I suggest, shifts the onus of proof on
to those who deny the personal nature of philosophizing .
It is important to remember that accepting this conclusion does not entail a
deep scepticism, relativism, or rejection of the idea of objectivity. As
philosophers such as Nagel have argued, philosophy can aim to be as
objective as possible even if it cannot escape subjectivity altogether.15 We
can strive to be more objective even if we admit that total objectivity – the
‘view from nowhere’– is unattainable.
These limits on objectivity are certainly not limits we can only come to
understand through philosophical autobiography. However, I argue that
philosophical autobiography helps us to understand the nature of these limits
on objectivity and their implications better or more fully. I do this by looking
at three philosophica l problems of biography discussed by Honderich. Their
solution, I suggest, relies upon us taking seriously Honderich’s claim that ‘at
the bottom of philosophy are things underdescribed as commitments’

IV. Honderich’s Problems

In the coda to his autobiography, Honderich discusses a set of related
philosophical problems about biography in particular, or giving any account
of a life in general. Honderich gives the Ž rst two of these much less attention
than the third, but I argue that all three are importantly related.
Honderich’s Ž rst problem is:

A human life, any human life that has lasted a while, has a fullness that can seem
greater than that of any other single subject-matter. It is possible to think there is no
thing or problem in philosophy and no subject in science that challenges perception
and judgment, so challenges summary. Nothing else is, so to speak, life-size. 16
 Philosophical Autobiography 303

Here, Honderich’s point is simply that a life is such a complex and large
thing that it deŽ es explanation and summary. This does seem to be justiŽ ed by
more than just an exceptionalism which reserves human nature as the one part
of the universe which science cannot explain. It just does seem true that
human lives are too large and messy to be completely explained. When one
considers that even in the physical sciences a subject such as meteorology is
so complex that weather and climate cannot be accurately predicted or
retrospectively understood, the claim that human lives resist complete
explanation is not too fanciful.
Honderich’s second problem is that accounts or summaries of a life ‘are not
summaries called up by the facts, but also and inevitably attitudes to a life,
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passing or settled attitudes’.17 Honderich continues a little later: ‘Such things

are not a matter only of truth.’ The point being made here is that when one
recounts a life one cannot but make judgments as well as parade the facts.
Even if one avoids judgmental language, the selection of some incidents as
signiŽ cant and the omission of others is in a real sense a judgment about what
is important in a life. Honderich’s argument is that such judgments can never
be fully determined by the facts, as becomes clear in his third problem, which
is discussed at more length.
This third problem concerns causation. This is, in fact, a general
philosophical problem about causation and not just a problem for biography,
as is made clear by Honderich’s earlier use of the example of striking a match
to illustrate it.18 When we strike a match and ask what caused it to ignite, it is
natural to identify the cause as the striking. In counterfactual terms, we say if
we hadn’t struck the match, it wouldn’t have ignited, and so the striking is the
cause. However, it is also true that other things also had to be true for the
igniting to occur: if there hadn’t been any oxygen, or if the match had been
wet, the ignition would not have occurred. In order for any effect to occur, we
need not just one cause but what Honderich calls a ‘causal circumstance’: the
set of circumstances required for the effect to occur.
The problem is that the causal circumstance for any event can be extensive
and include a number of things. But we wish, in Honderich’s words, to
‘praise’ or ‘dignify’ one aspect of this circumstance as the cause. When we
ask what caused the match to ignite, we do not want to be told the full causal
circumstance, we usually want to be told that it was struck or that it came into
contact with a naked  ame. But what justiŽ es the isolation of this part of the
causal circumstance as the cause? Honderich argues at length that nothing
does and that, therefore, when we explain why anything happens, the only
intellectually respectable kind of explanation is explanation-by-causal-
circumstance. Explanation-by-cause is no more than an unjustiŽ ed isolation
of one part of the causal circumstance.
In the case of biography the problem is simply magniŽ ed. In explaining
why a person acts in a certain way, the causal circumstance is vast: as well as
 304 Julian Baggini

the situation and thought processes just before the action we have their entire
life to date and their inherited characteristics. Yet in understanding a life we
feel the same urge to praise causes. Indeed, many philosophers have done so
without apparently considering it to be a problem. For example, Russell
recounts Ž ve minutes that, in his mind, completely changed his life, when he
saw the sick Mrs Whitehead in extreme pain. ‘At the end of those Ž ve
minutes, I had become a completely different person’, he recalled.19 The
impact was political as well as personal: Russell claims that in those Ž ve
minutes he went from being an imperialist to a pro-Boer paciŽ st. It seems
certain that this change cannot be fully explained without reference to a
causal circumstance that extends far beyond those Ž ve minutes. Yet Russell
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Ž nds no problem in singling out that short time as the cause of his change of
heart.

V. Solutions to the Problems

Obviously, the problem of causation is a vast topic in and of itself and we can
only touch its surface here. One point which is of interest in this case is that
Honderich himself seems to reject a plausible solution to his problem. Over
several pages, Honderich identiŽ es a number of interest-relative components
of explanation-by-cause. He says, ‘what we name as a cause is just the
particular bit of a causal circumstance that interests us’20 and ‘[a chosen
cause] gives us no more knowledge at all of why something happened, but is
indeed only a matter of our interest and our practical interests’.21 It is clear
that Honderich views these observations as criticisms of the idea of
explanation-by-cause. But we can turn this on its head and ask why, rather
than being criticisms, they can’t be viewed as holding the key to the solution
of his problem about causation. If we do this, I argue, we can also solve the
Ž rst two of Honderich’s problems as well.
We can start by questioning why there is a problem of explanation-by-
cause at all. The reason there is a problem is because Honderich cannot
identify any strictly objective reason to ‘dignify’ or ‘praise’ one part of a
causal circumstance over another. Without such a reason, objectively all we
have is the causal circumstance. The problem, however, disappears if we no
longer believe that we need a fully objective reason to provide an
explanation-by-cause. Can’t we just accept sanguinely that in ‘praising’
one member of the causal circumstance we are re ecting our own interests or
even desires? Isn’t it enough to recognize what these interests and desires are?
Such a response seems to be demanded by two factors. First, as Honderich
sets up the problem it seems that explanation-by-causal-circumstance can be
the only fully objective explanation. Once we accept that an effect is only
fully explained by the full causal circumstance, it follows logically that any
 Philosophical Autobiography 305

explanation that appeals to fewer factors will not be complete. So the choice
is between saying we should never provide an explanation-by-cause or
accepting that an explanation-by-cause will never be a full causal
explanation.
The Ž rst possibility must be rejected, since we cannot do without
explanations-by-cause . We are often required to give such an explanation
where an explanation-by-causal-circumstance would not do in its place. If, for
example, I want to know the cause of a car crash, there is a sense in which the
right answer would be ‘faulty brakes’. Although, qua philosophers, we may
not be able to give a satisfactory account of why this component of the causal
circumstance should be identiŽ ed as ‘the cause’, we cannot deny that to thus
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identify it is both reasonable and necessary. There may be a philosophical

problem as to why this cause should be thus praised yet no doubt that it is and
should be thus praised. The problem is not that explanations-by-cause are
bogus, it is explaining what legitimizes them.
Given that explanations-by-cause are indispensable, the only sensible route
to take would seem to accept their limitations. The important point to
remember is simply that such explanations are not complete, so we need to
attend to what interests are guiding the praising of causes and not to be
deluded into thinking that any explanation-by-cause is the ‘real’ explanation.
The second factor which points to the need to accommodate ourselves to
the limitations of explanation-by-cause is that, as I argued in section III,
philosophical autobiography shows us how philosophy is a personal pursuit
coloured by character and what Honderich calls ‘commitments’ as well as by
impersonal, objective rationality. It should be no surprise that explanations-
by-cause are coloured by the interests and values we bring to the explanation,
since any philosophica l account is coloured by such things. The sensible
response seems to be to recognize and be open about this limitation rather
than reject any philosophical account that does not fully overcome it.
This issue re ects the wider problem of scepticism. Sceptical doubts can
never be entirely eradicated. The key to their resolution is to understand why
it is that they arise, learn from this the limitations of philosophy and then work
within these limitations. In the same way that philosophers have learned to
live without absolute certainty in epistemology, I would suggest that
philosophers need to be able to accept the lack of absolute impartiality. Of
course, that does not mean that we should not try to be as impartial as possible
and to strive for knowledge which is as objective as possible. It is simply that
we need to accept that the standard we are reaching for, Nagel’s ‘view from
nowhere’, represents a direction for our inquiries, not a destination.
There is an interesting contrast between Honderich’s and Warnock’s
attitudes to the problem of impartiality. We have already seen how Honderich
struggles with the problems of the possibility of giving an open, honest
account of his life. Warnock, in contrast, begins her autobiography by stating
 306 Julian Baggini

that, ‘[t]he accounts I have given of [people I have known] are partial in every
sense of the word. I have not attempted to describe them completely; and I
have written about them as they appeared to me, from my particular point of
view.’22 Both responses to the problem of partiality hit upon truths re ected
in Nagel’s account of objectivity: Warnock’s that partiality is unavoidable
and has to be accepted, Honderich’s that we should, at least on some
occasions, struggle to remove as much partiality from our accounts as
possible.
In a sense I am suggesting no more than that we accept what Honderich
himself said in the quote at the start of this article: that at bottom philosophy is
about ‘commitments’ or ‘grips the world gets on us early’. It is slightly
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puzzling that Honderich accepts this and yet thinks it a philosophical disgrace
that we talk about explanation-by-cause when such explanations inevitably
re ect our commitments, purposes, or values. For Honderich, it seems,
philosophy is not what it ought to be. But perhaps philosophy is how it is and
we would be misguided to think it ought to be otherwise. We need to learn to
live with what we have, not hope for something more objective which we
cannot have.

VI. The Role of Personal Judgment

However, this does leave under-described what we have vaguely been
referring to as ‘commitments’ or ‘grips the world gets on us early’. It certainly
would be a philosophical disgrace if these were no more than prejudices or
received opinions. What we have been talking about here is the role of
personal judgment in philosophy. By judgment I mean any cognitive faculty
required to reach conclusions or form theories the truth or falsity of which
cannot be determined by the appeal to facts and/or logic alone. The addition
of the adjective ‘personal’ re ects the conclusion of section III, in which I
argued that philosophical autobiography provides strong evidence that the
ways in which different philosophers reason are inextricably tied up with their
personalities and their lives. Styles of thinking are too deep-rooted in our
individuality. So we have to recognize that, whatever judgment is and its role
in philosophy, it is personal in the sense that it will differ from person to
person, and it is unrealistic to expect that any argument that involves
judgment will persuade every rational agent.
It is possible to accept that there is a role for judgment yet deny that
judgment is personal in the sense described. In other words there could be a
cognitive faculty required to reach conclusions or form theories the truth or
falsity of which cannot be determined by the appeal to facts and/or logic
alone which is governed by as yet undiscovered, universally applicable
rules. I think this is implausible, but as it is a possibility I will bracket off the
 Philosophical Autobiography 307

personal component in my remaining comments on judgment. I shall not

attempt to provide a full account of what (personal) judgment is here, but
there are two further important features of this faculty which need to be
highlighted.
First, judgment is unavoidable. For many philosophers, most obviously
existentialists, this is just obvious. Any philosopher who believes there is any
underdetermination of theories by evidence or a scope for forms of reasoning
other than strict deduction in philosophy has to accept that philosophy relies
on judgment, as described above. Here, I have argued that judgment is
required in order to provide explanations-by-cause , since without judgment
the only kind of rationally defensible explanation is explanation-by-causal-
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circumstance, yet we cannot dispense with explanations-by-cause .

Why is judgment required? Because, as Honderich explains, from an
objective point of view there is no one part of the causal circumstance which is
causally more important than any other. In praising one cause we are simply
selecting what cause interests us in some way. But this is not a random process:
for instance, when an accident investigator asks someone what caused the Ž re,
some answers (e.g. ‘someone dropped a cigarette’) are better than others (e.g.
‘there was oxygen in the room’). The process is not random, but at the same
time the combination of the facts plus logic does not yield an answer to the
question, ‘What caused the Ž re?’ or even ‘Tell me what I need to know about
how the Ž re started’. In the case of the Ž rst question, we have already seen that
a full answer requires a speciŽ cation of the full causal circumstance.
In the case of the second question, it is highly implausible that one could
specify the conditions for something being ‘a piece of information an accident
investigator needs’ in any way which would enable such information to be
extracted from the evidence without the use of judgment. This is the so-called
frame problem in the philosophy of mind and artiŽ cial intelligence in another
guise. The frame problem is how a computational mind could narrow down
the bewildering range of possibilities open to it in order to have a chance of
thinking inductively or abductively. The problem is precisely how a formal
reasoning mechanism can make judgments about what is relevant or
irrelevant when presented with a massive range of facts from which to
select. An example would be identifying the part of a causal circumstance
relevant to a certain kind of causal explanation. This is the something the
human mind seems to Ž nd very easy to do. But it is not something that can be
modelled in formal logic. Even if it could be modelled in formal logic, it
would not follow that the way we actually think about such things follows this
formal pattern. It does then seem that judgment – the ability to reach
conclusions or form theories the truth or falsity of which cannot be
determined by the appeal to facts and/or logic alone – is an indispensable
feature of our thinking.
The second feature of (personal) judgment I wish to draw attention to is
 308 Julian Baggini

that it should be minimal. The fact that philosophy cannot dispense with
judgments does not mean that it is reduced to a clash of opinions. Philosophy
may not be fully determined by objective facts and logic, but it is very much
constrained by them. In Nagel’s schema, philosophy may not be able to be
purely objective but objectivity is where it strives. The point is that whenever
we make a judgment we should be appealing as far as is possible to facts,
arguments, and reasons that are as objective as possible and which rely on
individual opinions as little as possible. We accept the need for judgment, but
we always strive to rely as little as possible on it. Judgment Ž lls the gaps left
by facts and logic, it does not replace either.
What is interesting is that accepting this place for the role of judgment in
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philosophy – as unavoidable, minimal, and possibly also personal – addresses

all three of Honderich’s problems. The problem of causation, as we have
seen, is resolved, if not solved, by it. But so are the Ž rst two. The problem of
the size of life cannot be solved, in the sense that it is just true that a human
life is too large and complex a thing to be completely explained. But once we
accept that (a) it cannot be completely explained but that (b) there is still value
in partial explanations, as long as their partiality is recognized, that leaves us
with no reason to refrain from attempting to explain lives. So, for instance,
there is sense in Russell’s identifying of a key Ž ve minutes in his life as of
paramount importance. We should simply recognize that in identifying this
event Russell is saying as much about how his life seems to him and the
phenomenological impact of those moments as he is its causal importance. (It
should also be noted that Russell does not, of course, make the claim that
those Ž ve minutes were the sole cause of this life-change.) The art of telling a
life does not require the impossibility of offering explanations-by-causes
which are, from a purely objective standpoint, superior to others. Rather, the
art lies in giving explanations-by-causes and Ž lling out the causal
circumstance in such a way as to draw out what is of most signiŽ cance, for
the readers and/or the subject. By ‘signiŽ cance’ we could mean a number of
things, including what we can best learn from, what casts most light on the
way the subject thought, or what mattered most to the subject. The fact is that
this is an art and not a science, and so it is not surprising that there can be no
one true biography in the same way that there can be one true account of what
happens when water boils.
Honderich’s second problem is that an account of a life is a judgment and
not just a presentation of the facts. In the light of the current discussion, this is
not so much a problem of biography but a fact about it. What it is important to
note here, however, is that this observation identiŽ es the fact that there is a
normative element to judging. When we bring our judgment to a life it is not
value-neutral, like judging which of two shades is closer to a third. Rather, our
judgments are value-laden. Once more, however, there seems no reason to see
this as a problem for biography when it could just as easily be seen as a
 Philosophical Autobiography 309

characteristic, and indeed when seeing it as a characteristic Ž ts in better with

how we understand the role of judgment in biography.
What unites all three of these problems and their resolution, apart from the
role of judgment, is the distinction between an account which is ‘the truth’
and one which is ‘truthful’.23 If by ‘the truth’ of a life we mean the one, true,
complete account of it, then no such truths can be told. But we can tell more or
less truthful stories about our lives and those of others: ones which do not
gloss over embarrassing facts, ones which reveal many sides of a personality
and not just those we wish to promote. Relating such a truthful story is not
about cataloguing the largest possible number of true facts about a person. It
requires judgment and skill and is more like an art than science, or analytic
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philosophy.

VII. A Further Problem

So far, I have sketched out some of the characteristic features of philosophical
autobiography and used what it suggests about the nature of philosophy as an
essentially personal pursuit to resolve three problems of biography raised and
discussed by Honderich. Finally, I want brie y to raise a further problem of
autobiography.
None of Honderich’s three problems are peculiar to autobiography. The
problem of the size of a life is shared with biography, as is the problem that a
summary is also a judgment. The problem of causation is not only shared by
biography but is part of a much wider philosophica l debate. However, there is
one moral problem that is speciŽ c to autobiography which concerns the ethics
of discussing the lives of others in public.
There is, of course, a general problem here shared by biography and
autobiography. That is to say, any life involves other people and any account
of a life must therefore discuss other people’s lives, and this raises ethical
problems surrounding privacy. One dimension of this problem is that the
person writing a biography or autobiography is usually in a more powerful
position than the people they are writing about. The mere fact that their book
is published and read means that their voice is heard, whereas if a person
written about dissents, they often cannot get their point of view over to
readers.
However, there is a dimension to this problem that is speciŽ c to auto-
biography. In the typical case of biography, a third party is writing about a
number of individuals using publicly available information.24 The material
the biographer uses is not something he shares with the subjects: it is
something the subjects offer or do not.25 In the case of an autobiography,
however, the writer is by necessity making use of parts of a private life he
shares with other people. What I do with someone else forms not just a part of
 310 Julian Baggini

my life or his life, but also part of our life. When the other person writes about
this, they are thus making use of something which in a sense they do not
wholly own. This raises a moral issue: what right does the autobiographer
have to make use of something essentially shared without the permission of
the co-owner?26 The biographer has the moral problem of what they are
entitled to Ž nd out and then what they are entitled to reveal. But in both cases
the question is about what the biographer may use of other people’s lives
when the biographer is not a participant in those lives. The autobiographer
does not have the problem of what they are entitled to Ž nd out, but their
problem of what to reveal differs from that of the biographer since they are
participants and thus are on the same footing as others who have an equal,
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greater, or lesser stake in the events being described. So whereas all the
people discussed in a biography are in the same boat – all are subjects for the
somewhat detached biographer – there is an asymmetry, and imbalance,
between the author of an autobiography and the other people such a work
describes.
There are at least two responses to this problem. One is to reject it and
argue that there is no shared ownership of personal histories and that therefore
the moral problems for the autobiographer are the same as those for the
biographer. To me this does not appear a plausible option. Even in journalism,
for example, there are moral codes governing when one uses information
from a certain source and when consent is or is not needed. It seems to me that
in almost all cases the people an autobiographer shares a life with did not do
so on any kind of understanding that what they did together could be told to a
wider public. So there is at the very least a potential problem of breach of
trust, if nothing else.
It therefore seems more fruitful to accept that the problem is real and to
examine further what the special responsibilities of the autobiographer are.
This would be beyond the scope of this article but is a question which I hope
some at least will consider worth attention.

VIII. Conclusion
Quine began his autobiography with the sentence, ‘My birth in a modest
frame house on Nash Street in a south-east-central quarter of Akron on Anti-
Christmas, June 25, 1908, brought the population of that industrial city to a
Ž gure in the neighbourhood of sixty thousand.’27 Quine is more concerned to
give us facts about his life, perhaps more than we need, than many of his
fellow autobiographers. But in launching straight into an account of his life
without pausing to consider if the very attempt to do so raises any
philosophical issues, his memoir is typical of those of other philosophers.
Ayer, for instance, features in Honderich’s autobiography, but whereas that
 Philosophical Autobiography 311

volume does examine the purpose, scope, and limitation of the genre, Ayer
managed to write two volumes of autobiography without even scratching
these issues.28 The neglect is to be regretted, since, as I have argued,
philosophical autobiography provides a particularly well-focused medium for
the examination of the interplay between life and thought and the need to
accept and understand the role of personal judgment in philosophizing. It also
presents a particular ethical problem. This article has identiŽ ed some issues
involved in these and hopefully made some progress in thinking about others.
The topic deserves more and if that case at least has been made here then my
discussion will have been worthwhile.
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NOTES

1 Honderich (2001, p. 141).

2 See Monk (1990, 1996, 2000).
3 Baggini and Stangroom (2002, p. 24).
4 See Cohen (2001).
5 Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on The Banality of Evil
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994) may qualify as such a philosophica l biography but, not
having read it, I am not in a position to judge.
6 See Austin (1961).
7 See Honderich (2001).
8 See Warnock (2001).
9 See Quine (1985).
10 Mill (1873, pp. 111–44).
11 Rousseau (1996, p. 17).
12 Quine (1985, p. 9).
13 Feyerabend (1995, pp. 19–20).
14 Wittgenstei n (1980, p. 24).
15 See Nagel (1986, pp. 13–27).
16 Honderich (2001, p. 389).
17 Ibid., p. 390.
18 Ibid., p. 87.
19 Russell (2000, p. 149).
20 Honderich (2001, p. 403).
21 Ibid., p. 405.
22 Warnock (2001, p. 1).
23 I am unable to recall the source of this distinction , though I do not believe it is one I have
invented myself.
24 By ‘publicly available’ I do not just mean information that is already in the public domain. I
mean also information that can be gained from interviews which is publicly available in the
sense that the information will be given on request.
25 I have chosen to use ‘he’, since almost all examples of philosophica l autobiograph y are by
men. For a rare example of one by a woman, see De Beauvoir (1993).
26 Honderich (2001) does seem to be aware of this issue, although he does not explicitly
identify it. Several people in the book are referred to by ‘code names’, such as ‘First Love’,
not usually, it appears, for legal reasons but in order to protect the privacy of people who
would not wish to be identiŽ ed through the book.
27 Quine (1985, p. 1).
28 See Ayer (1977, 1984).
 312 Julian Baggini

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Received 11 June 2002

Julian Baggini, The Philosophers ’ Magazine, 18 Hyde Grove, Sale, M33 7TE, UK. E-mail:
editor@philosophers.co.uk