Joad

I just got hold of a book writen by C.E.M.Joad: "Guide to Philosphy" written in the fifties. It's a "philosophy made simple" type of work, for the intelligent layman not for other philosophers. Which is probably one of the reasons Joad was, in some academic circles, not much respected. Another reason for the disrespect, no doubt, had to do with his popularity; for he was at that time just after WW2 a member of BBC radio's "Brains Trust", one of four "brains" who sat around discussing topics of the day, philosophical matters .... anything really that had an intellectual content. Joad became famous for his opening remarks on a topic with the words "it depends on what you mean by...." It became a sort of catch-phrase and was known so universally that even comics in variety programmes and music halls would use it. Everybody knew it and everybody knew and loved Professor Joad.
When I was in an extra mural class doing philosophy some years back one of the class said to me: "Do you know what philosophy is? It's a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there."
On the first page of "Guide to Philosophy" Joad quotes the very same "definition" but he calls it a jibe.
I always liked Joad, to listen to and to read (he had a column in a newspaper if memory serves me right); I enjoyed his "Desert Island Discs" programme when he chose only classical music up to Beethoven and said that young people should be forced to listen to such music until they liked it. Good fighting stuff. Good old non-politically correct stuff. Daft but amusing and with a thought that "well, there may be something in what he says".
Poor Joad was caught travelling on a train without a ticket and was prosecuted. He never seemed to recover from the shock. The BBC sacked him, he sank into despair and illness and soon after he died.