Anthony Kenny, one of the great British analytic philosophers and historians of philosophy, was taught in Rome by Frederick Copleston, the Jesuit priest whose nine-volume History of Philosophy became the standard reference work for a generation of students. Kenny, by all accounts, was not easily impressed. When asked directly to assess Copleston's monumental survey, he declined to comment — which for a philosopher of his precision is itself a verdict. The story Kenny told instead is better than any critical appraisal. Copleston was required, by the rules of the Pontifical Gregorian University, to lecture in Latin — even when the subject was British analytic philosophy. The combination was, on its face, absurd: the tradition of Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein, built around the clarification of ordinary language, delivered in a dead one. Copleston's solution was characteristically Jesuit: elegant, a little devious, and entirely within the rules. He assigned British analytic philosophers as required reading — authors whose works were available only in English. The non-native English speakers in the room, unable to keep pace with the reading, gradually vacated. This was not an accident. Once the room contained only those for whom English was a mother tongue, the Gregorian's own rubrics kicked in: if the audience could not follow in Latin, the lecturer was permitted to continue in English. The language requirement had effectively been satisfied by making it unbearable to those it was designed to protect. The non-English speakers left of their own accord; no rule was broken. The story is a small masterpiece of institutional judo — using a rigid rule against itself to achieve the outcome the rule was preventing. It also tells you something about Copleston, whose History was itself a feat of patient, systematic coverage that rarely showed its hand. The man who wrote nine volumes without committing strongly to any of the positions he described was apparently quite willing to commit, obliquely, to getting the class he wanted. Kenny's refusal to comment on the History, combined with his evident relish in telling this story, may be the most pointed review Copleston ever received.
