Overview

O. K. Bouwsma was, with J. L. Austin and J. O. Wisdom, the best known of the «Ordinary Language» philosophers of the mid-twentieth century. In 1950, he initiated the prestigious John Locke Lectures at Oxford as a representative of that school of philosophers, who developed the implications of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Bouwsma, a friend of Wittgenstein and oriented by the latter’s work, grasped its implications for his own work. Already possessing a keen sensitivity to ordinary usages, Bouwsma developed a unique and humorous style aimed at philosophy’s seemingly intractable problems. While Wittgenstein provided a method for attacking philosophical tangles, Bouwsma actually applied the method of assembling reminders of everyday language for contrast to the generalized abstractions of philosophers. Passing beyond an attraction to G. E. Moore’s common sense refutations of philosophical skepticism, Bouwsma developed analytic techniques based on the realization that the test of sense in philosophical theorizing lay in the grammar of established usage of language. An avid reader of Kierkegaard, Bouwsma found in him a clue to understanding the language of religious belief. That language is to be understood in the lives of people who actually practice faith rather than in metaphysical or epistemological systems meant to explain faith’s rationality. To that end, Bouwsma wrote essays on religious themes. In addition to such essays, he also wrote on aesthetics aimed at understanding philosophical language about poetry and music. Directed to any of these areas, his essays are among the finest writings in the British-American philosophical tradition. They flow without technical language, are pointedly humorous, and make delightful reading.

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This is a beautifully written, thoroughly documented, analytically detailed philosophical biography about the singular and distinguished philosopher and teacher O. K. Bouwsma. Ronald E. Hustwit critically surveys Bouwsma's published essays and unpublished handwritten notebooks to uncover the depth of metaphor and analogies that were the core of Bouwsma's writings, illuminating the extraordinary wisdom of that work, and connecting it to the important philosophers of our time. (Lawrence Kimmel, Trinity University) O. K. Bouwsma's philosophical voice was unique: cheerful, amusing and deep. He knew the comedy of philosophy, and he wrote philosophical essays in a comic prose that could withstand comparison to James Thurber's. Unlike J. L. Austin, who made good fun of philosophy, Bouwsma made fun in good philosophy. Ronald E. Hustwit's sympathetic biography charts the slow accumulation of insight and the constant practice that culminated in Bouwsma's best essays, and reveals the compelling and many-sided nature of the man. (Kelly Dean Jolley, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University) In a tribute to his former mentor O. K. Bouwsma, Ronald E. Hustwit offers an intimate exposition of the art of philosophizing, a radical departure from traditional methodologies and argumentation. This biography takes an animated and thorough look at the kind of ordinary language interrogation of philosophical positions Bouwsma practiced, a technique that evolved over a lifetime of exhaustive rumination, uniquely spurred along by the thinking and company of Wittgenstein. Though it details Bouwsma, the man, it is far more than simple biography and illuminates a critical turning point in the practice of philosophy. (John Kooistra, Alaskan poet, philosopher)

This is a beautifully written, thoroughly documented, analytically detailed philosophical biography about the singular and distinguished philosopher and teacher O. K. Bouwsma. Ronald E. Hustwit critically surveys Bouwsma's published essays and unpublished handwritten notebooks to uncover the depth of metaphor and analogies that were the core of Bouwsma's writings, illuminating the extraordinary wisdom of that work, and connecting it to the important philosophers of our time. (Lawrence Kimmel, Trinity University) O. K. Bouwsma's philosophical voice was unique: cheerful, amusing and deep. He knew the comedy of philosophy, and he wrote philosophical essays in a comic prose that could withstand comparison to James Thurber's. Unlike J. L. Austin, who made good fun of philosophy, Bouwsma made fun in good philosophy. Ronald E. Hustwit's sympathetic biography charts the slow accumulation of insight and the constant practice that culminated in Bouwsma's best essays, and reveals the compelling and many-sided nature of the man. (Kelly Dean Jolley, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University) In a tribute to his former mentor O. K. Bouwsma, Ronald E. Hustwit offers an intimate exposition of the art of philosophizing, a radical departure from traditional methodologies and argumentation. This biography takes an animated and thorough look at the kind of ordinary language interrogation of philosophical positions Bouwsma practiced, a technique that evolved over a lifetime of exhaustive rumination, uniquely spurred along by the thinking and company of Wittgenstein. Though it details Bouwsma, the man, it is far more than simple biography and illuminates a critical turning point in the practice of philosophy. (John Kooistra, Alaskan poet, philosopher)

Author Information

Ronald E. Hustwit is the Frank Halliday Ferris Professor of Philosophy at the College of Wooster, where he has taught philosophy since 1967. After graduating from Westminster College in Pennsylvania, he studied for an M.A. at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and a PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published papers on Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, and collected and edited five books of the papers of O. K. Bouwsma. He has been a Fellow at St. John’s University’s Center for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Minnesota, a Visiting Scholar at The University of Texas, and a Visiting Lecturer at Aberdeen University in Scotland.

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