This Week's Episode of 'DSL. in the TLS' (Letters, August 7, 2026): 'Out of the Fire and Into the Ayer Fryer with Tyson's Frozen Nuggets (feat. Boxing Rings and A Can of Campbell's), or, By the Dons' Early, Burly, Girly Twilight'
Twilight of the Dons, J. M. Coetzee on genocide, Waiting for Godot in Blackpool, etc
as having felt aggrieved not to have been recognized by the boxer Mike Tyson. But as the famous story was reported in A. J. Ayer: A Life by Ben Rogers, the cry of lèse-majesté and attendant pulling of rank originated with Tyson. Colin McGinn (TLS, June 25, 1999) explains that at a New York party thrown in 1987 by “an ultra-fashionable underwear designer”, Ayer was alerted to an “aroused” Tyson 
forcing himself on Naomi Campbell 
, then aged seventeen. With “a mixture of guts and folly in equal measure (he never threatened to call the police)”, Ayer confronted Tyson. “Tyson retorted: ‘Do you know who the fuck I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world”. Ayer replied: “And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest we talk about this like rational men”. Marquette MI
D.S. "Uncle Scott" Lahti (DSL.)
Author, Angel Food and Devil's Food: William Blake's Favorite Cakes from Heaven and Hell
Free the March 3 One! Why Your Birthday Is Your Best Night to Spend in Jail
Why Laugh with Them When It's More Fun to Laugh at Them?
Oh, When the Sinners Come Charming Out
The Men From: (and the Women To:) U.N.C.L.E. S.C.O.T.T.: Forwarded G-Man Gmails from My Thespian Espion Age
If I Don't Grow Up, I Want to Be Just Like You: A Man-Child's Letters to Uncle Scott
Have a Wife, My Cigar Just Had a Baby
Uncle Scott Talks to At-Risk Youth and the Parents and Teachers Who Put Them There
Uncle Scott's Guide to Women for Men from 2 to 6 Inches
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From: Michael Meyer
Date: Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 4:48 PM
To: Scott Lahti
DSL,We had quite the good laugh reading your (14th!!) letter to the TLS. Dude shoots, dude scores (first typed sores haha.)Keep ‘em coming!MAJ an’ CAR
From: Kristen Lahti
Date: Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 6:13 PM
To: Scott Lahti
Congratulations on your letter for TLS! How do you know all this?!? Also you are hilarious!! And I just love that you love being called Uncle Scott!XOSent from my iPhone
From: Scott Lahti
Date: Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 6:17 PM
To: Michael Meyer
DSL,We had quite the good laugh reading your (14th!!) letter to the TLS. Dude shoots, dude scores (first typed sores haha.)
Keep ‘em coming!
MAJ an’ CAR
From: Scott Lahti
Date: Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 6:43 PM
To: Kristen Lahti
Congratulations on your letter for TLS! How do you know all this?!?
 |
The hollow man's story A. J. Ayer and the philosophy of "one damn thing after another" Colin McGinn 25 June 1999 A. J. AYER. A biography. By Ben Rogers. 242pp. Chatto and Windus. £20 - 0 7011 6316 X Late in life, when he was 77, A. J. Ayer was at a party in New York, given by Fernando Sanchez, an ultra-fashionable underwear designer, when a woman rushed in to report that her friend was being assaulted in another room. Abandoning the young models, with whom he was no doubt enjoying a philosophical discussion about logical positivism and the significance of the thong, Ayer went to investigate, finding an aroused Mike Tyson forcing himself on a distraught Naomi Campbell. Ayer warned Tyson to desist. Tyson retorted: "Do you know who the **** I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world." Ayer stood fast and replied: "I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest we talk about this like rational men." They began to talk, doubtless about the knockout power of the verification principle, while Ms Campbell slipped safely away. This story captures the essence of Freddie Ayer (not that he believed in essences) - though it would have greater verisimilitude had Freddie gone on to seduce the beautiful Naomi there and then, no force required. In the first place, there is the very presence of the elderly philosopher at such a fashionable party: the models, the underwear, the high life. Then there is the breathtaking bravado and overconfidence of his challenge to the brutal fists of the world's premier pugilist, a mixture of guts and folly in equal measure (he never threatened to call the police). His quickness and wit come to his rescue as the not-famously cerebral Tyson is paid the compliment of being described as a rational man. Such is Ayer's conversational magic that Tyson forgets his quarry, caught up in the rapid fire volley of the philosopher's words. And, of course, he is already rehearsing the details of the story for his triumphant return to the ladies languishing, Ayerlessly, in the other room. Vintage Freddie Ayer - brisk, effective, newsworthy. Ayer was best known for his role as a public intellectual, successor to Bertrand Russell and, before him, John Stuart Mill. He was the Jean-Paul Sartre of the British Isles, and indeed he shared with Sartre atheism, left-wing politics and an existentialist view of the moral life. In fact, he was the last person to fulfil this role; no other philosopher has since emerged to step into Ayer's dapper shoes. This is partly because philosophy has become more technical and inaccessible since Ayer's heyday, but also because the culture in general has lost interest in the kind of rational discussion Ayer sought to personify; perhaps also because there is simply no one around in philosophy of Ayer's charm and ebullience. He appeared on television and radio dozens of times, most notably on the Brains Trust, discussing everything from football to God. It was in this latter role - as passionate atheist - that he shone most brightly, for in those distant days atheism was not the common commodity it has since become. He also served on many political committees, working as chairman of the Soho branch of the Westminster division of the Labour Party, supporting the anti-Franco forces in Spain, dallying with Communism, campaigning to change the laws on homosexuality, and so on. He was a good friend of Hugh Gaitskell and other leading Labour politicians and did his share of political hobnobbing. He relished the public life and the celebrity it brought him; the seminar room was far too cramped a stage for his expansive ego. The bigger the audience, the better. Ben Rogers has written a solid and well-turned biography of the philosopher, covering the full range of his interests, and his foibles. I found it gripping reading, more so than Ayer's own autobiography. Perhaps this is because Ayer always seems to be shimmying out of view, mercurial to the point of invisibility. He was, apparently, an accomplished dancer, especially of the samba, and one has the sense that he danced his way through life, hopping from one partner to the next, never still, restless, nimble, light, lost. He is all energy and movement, dazzling and debonair, but with an oddly vacant centre. While the intense inwardness of a Russell or Wittgenstein is evident throughout their writings, and in writings about them, Ayer seems to lack introspection or much to introspect about. But this gives him the seductive charm of elusiveness - a now-you-see-me-now-you-don't quality. He is fun to watch, always performing, entertaining enough, yet curiously hard to pin down. Rogers has no startling revelations about his subject. Ayer left little illuminating correspondence and tended to wear his skeletons on his sleeve. But he has talked to Ayer's friends, lovers and acquaintances, and filled in some details left hazy in Ayer's own memoirs. Among other things, Rogers offers us a concise portrait of intellectual life in the middle part of the twentieth century: the Vienna Circle, the Second World War, the rise and fall of Communism, the growth and decline of British philosophy. How good a philosopher was Ayer? His friend Isaiah Berlin said of him: "He was the best writer of philosophical prose since Hume, better even than Russell, but he never had an original idea in his life. He was like a mechanic, he fiddled with things and tried to fix them." In the satirical Philosopher's Lexicon, his entry reads: "Ayer (from Spanish Ayer meaning yesterday). To oversimplify elegantly in the direction of a past generation." When he applied for the Wykeham Chair in Logic, neither J. L. Austin nor Gilbert Ryle supported him, resigning when he was elected with the help of the non-philosophers on the committee. Yet Language, Truth and Logic was a hugely successful book, introducing the science-infatuated positivism of the Vienna Circle to the classically trained precincts of Oxford and its environs. I remember reading the book when nineteen on a bus ride from Manchester to Blackpool, feeling a queasy kind of excitement as if I was being inducted into a thrilling cult of pellucid evasion. It felt so liberating to declare everything that most troubled me to be nothing but nonsense. But I would now say that not only did Ayer never have an original idea in his life, he also never had a good idea, his own or anyone else's. His dogmatic empiricism, his conventionalism about logical truth, his emotivism in ethics, his sense-datum theory of perception, his rejection of causal necessity, his "bundle theory" of objects and persons - none of this seems to me (or to most others) remotely on the right track. I think he misread Hume as an undergraduate, combined this with a misreading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, and never freed himself from the errors and confusions that resulted. Moreover, he was remarkably hostile to new ideas if they did not conform to his own preconceived opinions, dismissing important developments as mere "fashion". His contemptuous, and thoroughly confused, reaction to the work of Saul Kripke was the most obvious example of this. He is now very little read within analytical philosophy - his chosen field - and his ideas play almost no role in contemporary debates. Compared to W. V. Quine and P. F. Strawson, say, let alone Russell and Wittgenstein, he is a negligible figure on the philosophical scene. Perhaps his main fault was that he was never really troubled by philosophical questions; his attitude was bluff, dismissive, irritated. Philosophy to him was like one of his beloved crossword puzzles - a game of verbal skill, a task to complete and then move on from. His philosophical world is depressingly flat. The appeal of positivism, I suspect, was that it gave Ayer an excuse not to have to think about hard philosophical questions. Positivism, after all, is the philosophy that there is no philosophy. Instead, he could simply wheel out his favourite formula and skewer the opposition, without having his lunch spoiled. When I knew him in the 1970s, he reduced philosophical argument to a series of ritual incantations, stock responses. And for all his avowed respect for science, he was not good at it and had little sense of the nature of scientific practice and theory. Rogers's biography makes no serious attempt to expound or assess Ayer's philosophical views, sensibly enough; the focus is mainly its subject's personality and actions. Although Ayer was himself clumsy and impractical, never learning how to drive or change a plug, he had a deep love of sports, especially cricket and football, which he followed religiously, turning up to worship at Lord's and White Hart Lane regularly. His description of the young philosophers he appointed at University College London as "my boys" smacks of the captain of a crack team of players defeating all-comers. He was also fond of chess and other games of the mind. And he clearly loved to win, even at relaxed games of croquet. But what stands out in this book is his appetite for eating, drinking, dancing and seducing. The Bill Wyman of philosophy, he managed to seduce a truly amazing number of apparently beautiful women, typically maintaining a small harem of girlfriends simultaneously. It is said that "he knew how to talk to women", but this can't be the half of it: something about his energy and charm, his vulnerability and vanity, seems to have worked like magic on the women he pursued, and pursue them he assuredly did. Generally, he seems to have handled these affairs with some sensitivity; at any rate, his ex-girlfriends seem not to have hated him. And his three wives were evidently devoted to him, if infuriated by his incessant philandering. But there is no denying that his sexual pursuit of women was compulsive and opportunistic, though apparently not deceptive. Here again he has a passion for winning and the game-playing that goes along with it. One can only look on in envy and wonder what his secret was. There is no record in this book of his capacities as a lover, which I find somewhat surprising in these revelatory days, but one hypothesizes a good deal of energy and persistence, economy of movement, much flattering pillow talk (mainly self-directed), and a certain clumsy effectiveness (he was not at home with physical objects). On the plus side, Ayer was energetic, witty, clever, dutiful, basically kind, unconventional, public-spirited, straight-talking. On the minus side, he was vain, self-aggrandizing, self-centred, sometimes cold and distant, dismissive, superficial, insensitive, unobservant, cocky, insecure, silly. Here is Celia Paget, a young woman with whom Ayer had an affair in the 1940s:
And many other record their impression that he had no "depth". His reaction to the death of friends and lovers tended to be matter-of-fact and terse, as if merely signalling a change in his landscape. As Rogers perceptively remarks: "The cinema offered, in especially intense form, life rather as Ayer conceived it: something both fleeting and engrossing, a Paterian succession of sensations to be savoured and then forgotten." He had a great capacity to "live in the moment", but when the moment was over an inner vacancy took its place. My own impression of him was that his vanity, which he shamelessly flaunted, and his desire to be the centre of attention at all costs, sprang from a need to find his identity in the mirror of other people's responses. Even as a schoolboy, apparently, he relied on others to tell him who he was, to make himself real, always showing off, craving attention. Like many another seeker after celebrity, he had his existence in the eyes of others. Perhaps indeed this is why he was so drawn to the theatre and its denizens. It certainly always seemed to me that he was acting a part. When he said to Anthony Grayling, late in life, that he was afraid people would finger him for a fraud, despite Eton, the Welsh Guards, the Wykeham professorship and his knighthood, secretly thinking that "underneath you are just a dirty little Jew-boy", he may have been giving expression to a lifelong feeling of inferiority and alienation, from which he tried desperately to escape by means of excessive self-praise and the trappings of worldly success. It is hard not discern parallels between Ayer's character and his philosophical ideas, though one hesitates to maintain a causal thesis (in either direction). For Ayer, the human predicament is to be a locus of momentary sensory impressions, each succeeding the other without the benefit of causal necessity or an enduring self - what Russell called "solipsism-of-the-moment". Our access to material bodies and to other subjects of consciousness is mediated by a strenuous and inherently shaky set of inferences; the world beyond one's own shifting experience is a matter of postulation and theory. As Ayer was fond of saying, rejecting the idea of natural necessity, "the world is just one damn thing after another". Experience goes the way it goes, that is all: sensations are the fundamental reality, the bedrock on which everything else precariously rests. But this fits perfectly Ayer's own attitude to life: the Ayerian self is but a fleeting succession of experiences, some nice, some not so nice, while the selves of others exist primarily as tools to make sense of his own subjectivity. What is meaningful at all must in the end describe the course of Ayer's own sensations; anything else is literally senseless. Even talk of the past and the future ultimately comes down to present experience. The only alternatives to experiential meaning, for Ayer, are empty tautology, as in mathematical propositions, or sheer nonsense, as in metaphysics - both forms of nothingness. Try to imagine living such a philosophy and you might get a sense of what it was like to be A. J. Ayer: a series of tenuously related sensations surrounded on all sides by an abyss of emptiness. What Ayer primarily lacked was an appreciation that the world of objects and people and time and space went far beyond the evidence of his limited senses. He could never grasp that meaning and reality reach out beyond the confines of his own mind. But to grasp that he would have had to let go of the assertion of ego that is at the heart of the positivism in which he was so willingly entrapped. Colin McGinn's most recent book is Knowledge and Reality: Selected essays (1999). |
From: Scott Lahti
Date: Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 7:51 PM
To: Michael Meyer
On Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 4:48 PM Michael <majmsty911@gmail.com> wrote:
DSL,
We had quite the good laugh reading your (14th!!) letter to the TLS. Dude shoots, dude scores (first typed sores haha.)Keep ‘em coming!MAJ an’ CAR
"Well, thank you, Flat Nose - that's what sustained me in my time of trouble." - Butch (@ 3:45).
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