Autobiography
In Paul A. Schilpp (ed.) The philosophy of C.D. Broad, New York, 1959, pp. 3–68
Abstract
A 20th-century academic career reflects the transition from Victorian middle-class origins to the pinnacle of British analytical philosophy. Early education at Dulwich College and Trinity College, Cambridge, involved a significant shift from natural sciences to moral sciences, influenced by the burgeoning logical realism of the era. Professional appointments at St Andrews, Dundee, and Bristol preceded a return to Cambridge as the Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy. Central intellectual pursuits included the philosophy of mechanics, ethics, and the critical assessment of J.M.E. McTaggart’s metaphysical system. Contributions to psychical research sought to reconcile empirical investigation with philosophical skepticism regarding the mind-body relationship and human survival of death. Administrative roles during the World Wars, particularly as Junior Bursar of Trinity College, offered practical engagement with institutional management amid geopolitical crises. A personal worldview, characterized by religious agnosticism and a preference for aristocratic over democratic political structures, was tempered by a high regard for scientific methodology and intellectual rigor. Self-assessment reveals a perceived tension between academic achievement and physical reticence, while emphasizing the formative impact of familial trusts and early-life health contingencies on professional stability. – AI-generated abstract.
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Readers who have derived their ideas of Victorian Nonconformity and the middle-class Victorian home mainly from the novels and plays of left-wing writers of some fifty years ago, will be apt to jump to the conclusion that life in my grand-parents’ house was a drab and stuffy existence, punctuated by religious exercises, to which resentful and hypocritical children were driven by fanatical and gloomy parents. They had better dismiss that romantic rubbish from their minds at once.
Everywhere I went in Sweden I was received with the greatest kindness and hospitality. I fell in love with the country and its astonishingly good-looking inhabitants, and have never since fallen out of it.