'Tony' Quinton (as he was called by all who knew him)[2] was born at 5 Seaton Road, Gillingham, Kent. He was the only son of Surgeon Captain Richard Frith Quinton, Royal Navy (1889–1935) and his wife (Gwenllyan) Letitia (née Jones).[3]
"One picture is nearly always used when occasion arises to produce one. It shows him as pale and rather flabby, with some thin hair tumbling over his forehead, his eyes looking suspiciously to his left, giving very much the impression of a bankrupt undertaker confronted by his creditors." – Quinton, "Springtime for Hegel"NYRB (2001)
Having been the guest of the introductory discussion that opened Bryan Magee's1970-71 BBC Radio 3 series Conversations with Philosophers, and the accompanying book Modern British Philosophy (1971),[11] he went on to participate in Magee's BBC Television series Men of Ideas (1978)[12] and The Great Philosophers (1987).[13] and their companion books.
City of Benares tragedy
With the situation for civilians having worsened over the first year of World War II, Quinton's Canadian mother became persuaded by her mother's forceful urgings to return home, with her son, until the end of the war.[3] Thus, in September 1940, Letitia Quinton booked passage for them both aboard the City of Benares due shortly to sail from Liverpool to Montreal.[3] Departure was, however, delayed by two days on account of the need to clear German mines that had been dropped on the Mersey. Thus, when the ship did leave on 13 September it had to do so without naval escort.[3]
At 10:03pm on 17 September, the ship was torpedoed by German submarine U-48 and began to sink. The Quintons were in the ship's lounge when the alarm bells rang. They went to their cabin to put on their life-jackets, collected their valuables, and returned to the lounge, which was their muster station. Eventually, Colonel James Baldwin-Webb, a British parliamentarian, decided they had waited long enough and took them to the lifeboats. The Quintons boarded Lifeboat 6, which, with roughly 65 people, was already overfull. As it was lowered, the falls and cables on one end snapped, sending the boat lurching forward, and tossing the majority of the passengers into the sea. Quinton was trapped by a heavy set woman, Mrs Anne Fleetwood-Hesketh: he clung to her, hoping her weight would keep them both from falling, but both fell into the sea. Quinton resurfaced and his mother pulled him back into the lifeboat. The boat now contained 23 people, two of whom had been rescued from another lifeboat, so that only 21 passengers of an original estimated 65 survived.[14]
Through the night more passengers, including four children, died. By morning, only eight people, comprising five men, two women (including Mrs Quinton), and one child (Quinton himself) remained alive. Other lifeboats had suffered equally. HMS Hurricane rescued 105 survivors from the water, including Quinton and his mother.[14] One lifeboat was adrift at sea for eight days before being rescued by another ship, which brought the survivor toll up to 148. Of the 406 people on board, 258 died (including 81 children). Quinton was one of 19 children to survive.
Metaphysics
In the debate about philosophical universals, Quinton defended a variety of nominalism that identifies properties with a set of "natural" classes.[15]David Malet Armstrong has been strongly critical of natural class nominalism: Armstrong believes that Quinton's 'natural' classes avoid a fairly fundamental flaw with more primitive class nominalisms, namely that it has to assume that for every class you can construct, it must then have an associated property. The problem for the class nominalist according to Armstrong is that one must come up with some criteria to determine classes that back properties and those which just contain a collection of heterogeneous objects.[16][17]
Quinton's version of class nominalism asserts that determining which are the natural property classes is simply a basic fact that is not open to any further philosophical scrutiny. Armstrong argues that whatever it is which picks out the natural classes is not derived from the membership of that class, but from some fact about the particular itself.
While Quinton's theory states that no further analysis of the classes is possible, he also says that some classes may be more or less natural—that is, more or less unified than another class. Armstrong illustrates this intuitive difference Quinton is appealing to by pointing to the difference between the class of coloured objects and the class of crimson objects: the crimson object class is more unified in some intuitive sense (how is not specified) than the class of coloured objects.
The shortest definition, and it is quite a good one, is that philosophy is thinking about thinking. That brings out the generally second-order character of the subject, as reflective thought about particular kinds of thinking – formation of beliefs, claims to knowledge – about the world or large parts of it. – The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 666 (1st ed.)
His longer definition
Philosophy is rationallycritical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of the three elements in this list has a non-philosophical counterpart, from which it is distinguished by its explicitly rational and critical way of proceeding and by its systematic nature. Everyone has some general conception of the nature of the world in which they live and of their place in it. Metaphysics replaces the unargued assumptions embodied in such a conception with a rational and organised body of beliefs about the world as a whole. Everyone has occasion to doubt and question beliefs, their own or those of others, with more or less success and without any theory of what they are doing. Epistemology seeks by argument to make explicit the rules of correct belief formation. Everyone governs their conduct by directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics, or moral philosophy, in its most inclusive sense, seeks to articulate, in rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved. ibid
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Supporters
Dexter: a Fox rampant proper; Sinister: a Griffin segreant per fess Azure and Or, both gorged with a Coronet Flory Or
