| Description | Interview with Professor Donald MacKinnon recorded on 19 December 1985 by John Hargreaves.
Transcript of Interview :
H Donald MacKinnon, in 1947 you were appointed to the chair of Moral Philosophy in Aberdeen. You'd had ten years as a fellow of Keble and before that a year as assistant at Edinburgh. Why did you come to Aberdeen and what do you recall of your thoughts at the time of your appointment?
M Great excitement, a certain sense of wonder and surprise, surprised that I had been encouraged to apply for a Scottish chair and still more that I should have been the university's choice, in so far as the choice of a regius professor in those days was in the university's hands as you probably know. A regius professor in 1947, whatever the circumstance now, was appointed on the recommendation of the Secretary of State for Scotland and the remit of the appointment was signed in my case by George VI. It was very unlikely that the Secretary of State should overturn the university's recommendation but it was of course lèse-majesté to deny that he could do so.
H You had been approached before applying for the chair?
M I had a letter in September 1946 from the Principal, that was Sir William Hamilton-Fyfe, saying that of course the matter was not in his hands but that there would be interest in an application from me and the application had to be made with testimonials to the Secretary of State. I think I replied to the Principal saying that I was greatly moved by his letter and I fully understood that he was not in any sense offering me the chair. In fact as the autumn advanced I learned of another applicant who certainly deserved very close consideration by the university. I was then a lecturer at Balliol as well as a fellow at Keble and as Lindsay required to make arrangements for the teaching there if I were not continuing in 1947-48, I recall that in December he sent a letter to Fyfe asking for a confidential report on whom the university had asked for and he received a telegram which he passed on to me to the effect that the university had asked for me. Again of course I said nothing because I knew perfectly well that it was for the Secretary of State even though it was very unlikely for the Secretary of State to turn down the appointment, after this request recommended by the university.
H And there was no interview for the chair?
M No interview of any sort, nor was there in 1953 when Professor Ferguson retired from the Logic chair and Professor Cross was appointed. In fact on that occasion Principal Taylor consulted me privately and showed me the list of applicants and asked me to comment on them and I think he paid some attention to what I said. That may be of interest because that shows something about the procedure over regius professorships at that time.
H You had no hesitation about leaving Oxford?
M None at all. I had done my stint at Oxford and I knew that we needed a move for every reason. We were extremely happy when we came here, even in the first year when we were in furnished rooms in South Anderson Drive. When we obtained the lease of Tillydrone House to us and we moved in there in September 1948, we were aware immediately that we had become part of a very real community in the old town. This is something which really ought to be recorded that at that time and indeed throughout the whole period in which we lived in the old town which was until we moved to Cambridge in 1960 there was a genuine community in the old town. Not just of university people, though of course they were the main element in the Chanonry, but in the old town as a whole. On Saturday afternoon last I went to get an evening paper at the Post Office in the High Street before it closed and I got into conversation with two women, one of them May whose shop you'll know and they recalled how we were remembered from that time. I was known as big Mac and my wife as little Mac and one of the women who spoke with me said she recalled my wife painting in the old town and indeed how Mrs Baird the wife of the then minister of St Machars had given to her brother-in-law whose now I think in the university offices at Keele, a painting of St Machars by my wife for a wedding present. It was this sense of belonging which was unique in our experience. This seems largely to have gone. Perhaps the first signs were there before we left with the going of some of the shops but it was something which impressed visitors. For instance Gabriel Marcelle the Gifford lecturer who stayed with us in 1949and 1950, the two years in which he gave Gifford lectures, he was immediately struck by this common life. It was largely arts professors, (though not entirely) and their families from a university point of view and law. Medicals tended to prefer Rubislaw, except of course Professor Fullerton who lived in the old town and then after we left Professor Miller moved in. So the old town even had a bait for members of the medical faculty. This is something which obviously has very largely gone though we are still aware of the kind of aftercare. This does seem to me important to put down.
H Yes, very much so. How would you describe the position of philosophy in the university at that time and how did it compare with the traditional position of philosophy in the Scottish university curriculum?
M Well there were of course the two chairs, logic and metaphysics and Moral Philosophy. The staff were small, I had one assistant when I arrived that was all, a very good man and Professor Ferguson had Dr Bednarowski who is still around. The pattern was traditional. There were hints of what might come in the existence of an honours course in Moral Philosophy and English. This developed into philosophy/English and was of course the first of the philosophy joint honours courses. I might say that Moral Philosophy/English provided Edinburgh with one of its present professors of philosophy in Ronald Hepburn, afterwards of course on the staff of the Moral Philosophy department here and then in Nottingham for a short time as professor and then to Edinburgh. And Philosophy /Politics which with every encouragement from James Burns speedily developed, provided Strathclyde with its professor of politics in Professor Wilkie whose son, incidentally, is apparently a very good student in honours philosophy here at the moment. I just mention this because I think the joint honours development which was something comparatively new but had been in a way pioneered by John Laird, represented something very important for the future. I'm here talking about something on which you'll hear more from those after my time, so to speak, than you will in the interview.
H Would it be an inference from what you said that some of the best students were now opting for joint degrees?
M As I look back on the time I had in Aberdeen I wouldn't want to say that, but Hepburn and Wilkie by their record were very good men. One of the ablest men, whom I dealt with both here and later in Cambridge was of course Principal Stewart Sutherland now Principal of King's College, London. Now Sutherland was at Gordon's. Now the senior English master at Gordon's, later deputy headmaster, Dr Forrest, who was a quite outstanding teacher, used to come to my evening classes in philosophy and we got to know each other. He urged Stewart to take Philosophy/English and he asked me to see him, it must have been in the summer of 1959 in the long vac before he matriculated, to discuss with him what he might read. He turned, after I left to Pure Philosophy, but his interest in Philosophy/English had been kindled by Forrest and was continual and he has been continually involved in the frontiers of philosophy/literature. He had a considerable interest in the philosophy of religion and came on to Cambridge and did the advanced graduate course in that subject with me. I supervised him for five of the six terms. You might say that he was in a sense a product of these joint courses because his bursary was in English, so you see there are three men who are in a way a product of this.
H For all those who did not go on to honours philosophy, philosophy I think in your time one of the philosophy courses was a compulsory course, if not taken by the other honours schools, could you say something about its place in education? Was it fulfilling the purposes which it had once done?
M I think it did for quite a number of students. I think it did. There were two problem classes and here I draw on discussion and talk I had with Rex Knight when the committee anent students, as it was then called dealing with the academically unsatisfactory was instituted. Two classes, the very, very weak, and oddly enough they were less of a problem than the next class which I'll come to in a moment. This was because either they could be discontinued on academic grounds or else they showed tremendous application and really got something out of the course. You see what I mean? I could even give you names of some of these characters. It so happened that Douglas Duthie who came as a lecturer in 1954 had a remarkable gift for dealing with these characters. I wouldn't let him spend too much time on them because it wasn't fair on him . He had a knack with them that no one else whom I have ever had in any department with which I've been concerned shared. Limitless patience and he really could make, and I won't say purses out of sows ears but still purses. But the real problem class were those who simply, as it were, seemed to me to go through the university as if they were travelling on a tube from Paddington to Waterloo and now and again there would be a hold-up, i.e. a resit and they'd get a bit of a jilt. But they wanted to be fed something that they could reproduce and this certainly led to difficulties which we sometimes succeeded in overcoming but I would say that that was the real problem class.
H Were these two problem categories types of students you didn't encounter at Oxford?
M Oh no. I certainly had encountered some very weak students. I never actually had a pupil who failed an honours school in Oxford though I thought in my last year I was going to. He was incidentally an American. An attractive character some ability of another sort but totally devoid of any sense of academic values. However he did manage to get a third in PPE. I never enquired his marks but I just said a prayer of thanksgiving! But you see one encountered them in so far as one dealt in the college like Keble with the handful who were referred for a past degree and also in the two years I taught there before the war with those who were doing the old past mods which was the general prelim which admitted to all honours schools in which Latin was a compulsion. The Philosophy tutor before the war was responsible for the real hurdle in the Latin compulsion and that of course was the unseen. I needn't go further into that. Except to say that there would come notes from the examiners on the unseen and I recall being informed that there would be no sentences in future or passages involving gerunds or gerundives. This was to simplify the instructors task. So you can see that the level there was pretty low. I mean the level in some parts of Pass Mods in many ways it was a good preliminary examination. The Latin books were well chosen and the Greek which of course by 1937 was only done by those who had some real knowledge of two Platonic dialogues was really great fun.
H But at the other end of the spectrum of ability is it possible to make any comparison between the good Oxford and the good Aberdeen graduate?
M No, I think the best are the best all the world over. Of course I came here having to work for four terms at Baliol 'the golden post-war Baliol generation' and there you were dealing with people of quite exceptional ability. I mean outstanding by any record. If I was to give you some of the names it would sound terribly like name dropping. But one incidentally I do mention here because he has very warm memories of Aberdeen and that is Professor Paul Streeten, the economist. I sent the day before yesterday to Morrison, the editor of the Aberdeen University Review, the current number of the Balliol Record which has an autobiographical article by Paul Streeten. Paul Streeten got out of Austria after the Anschluss in 1938 and came here for a period up to Whitson 1940 when he was interned. He has and had the warmest memories of his treatment in Aberdeen and corresponded for years with Annie MacDonald, for all the time I was here, and of course Aberdeen has recently given him an honorary degree. When the news came that I was coming here, Paul who I was teaching that term for philosophy though he was specialising in economics, immediately said how interested he was and started talking about Aberdeen and he came to tea with us and told us a lot of his experience. He was later [ie. after 1940] in the Commandos of course and as you know Aberdeen gave him an honorary degree. I hope you won't mind that, I hope I'm not rambling.
H Not at all. I think on these interviews rambling can often be most rewarding.
M Since I saw you last I've had this Balliol Record and this has reminded me of this, but there were many whom I had then who are absolutely outstanding calibre.
H What about the other end of the student career? What about the problems of the freshman here in Aberdeen as compared with that in Oxford?
M They were desperately shy and nervous, very often and that I encountered because as you may remember, whatever the position is now, in those days we encouraged students to do one non-school subject in Arts in their first year. This meant that there were always a certain number of freshmen in Moral Philosophy and freshwomen and they were sometimes desperately tongue-tied and nervous but you could get through to them and of course I might add this system had the advantage of giving people who had not flourished at school, who were much more university types, a chance to shake the dust of school off their feet. Now I'll just mention one here, a man who I think is extremely able though he is now more than a lecturer in Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, a man named David Campbell. David Campbell's father was the free church minister in Resolis in the Black Isle near Conon Bridge. He was Dingwall Academy. He was not regarded as particularly promising. There were various reasons to account for this, good reasons, like the ferociously demanding journey to Dingwall Academy from Resolis in adolescence, but the instant he came here in non-school classes he began to carrying all before him. He went into Geology for his science subject in his first year and it was a huge class you see with BSc about 120-130. I suppose about a hundred, twenty, thirty. He was in the small first class merit certificate group and the same happened in Moral Philosophy the following year. Well to cut a long story short we got an extension of his local authority award from Ross & Cromarty and he took Honours as a philosophy student. He only got a second it would have been a 2:1 in the divided section. This was because he had psychological problems. There were tensions and strains vis à vis his father who was a very interesting man but still a free church minister and you could see that there could be problems there but he had done very well really and he is a very, very good teacher in Glasgow. Also he had done yeoman service on the Children's Panel in Glasgow.
H There were obviously plenty of students who have personal background problems like that, what about the school formation, have you any comment on that?
M I find that terribly hard to answer. I sometimes thought that where Aberdeen Grammar School was concerned there was too much pigeon-holing of people and a conviction that if you did well at school you would do well at university, if you didn't do well at school you wouldn't do well at university. Now when I came here and started in I found myself greatly regretting sometimes that I'd not had a more traditional Scottish education. There was actually only one Wykehamist among the undergraduate body, though of course there was a very distinguished Wykehamist as chancellor (Wavell). But I came to realise that one of the strengths of Winchester, particularly where the scholars were concerned, were as you know as the elite culminated in the ancient buildings and wearing distinctive dress, etc, etc, there was always a readiness to allow that you might be going to do better at university than you had done in the school and I looked back on my last year, I had some very real success, but there were one or two people who said you are going to come into your own in Greats and were not at all surprised when I skipped honour Mods and went right into Greats. And this you see I'd been showed a certain awareness that, well heaven forgive me if I seem to boast, that I might do better at university than some of the people who have done much better than I have done and this I think is a perception that was sometimes lacking [in Aberdeen]. I never actually found it where … Of course the closest friend I had among teachers in Aberdeen was Dr Forrest [at Gordon's] and he was very good. I heard actually from Professor Howie, the professor of mathematics at St Andrews, who was also a Gordonian, that with Forrest he learned more almost in general than with anyone else, apart from his specialism. This, the whole of say all the sixth did essays for Forrest and the essays he gave us really made us think. But I don't want to generalise here at all. I've never forgotten how understanding Ross & Cromarty education committee were over David Campbell. They hadn't much to go far but they allowed a two year extension of his award on my recommendation. Of course his father was quite well known in the area and that may have helped, but the only condition was that I should provide for someone would provide progress reports. I could tell them actually that he could graduate at any time on the combination of subjects that he'd taken at the ordinary level.
H Would you like to say a little more about your collaboration with Professor Ferguson and perhaps Professor Cross too?
M Now Ferguson was certainly one of the most brilliant men I've ever encountered in any university. In fact his learning really tripped him up. I mean there's very little to show. It was not an easy relationship. It began really well, but I committed what for Ferguson was almost the sin against the Holy Ghost, I appointed Ronnie Hepburn to an assistantship and Ronnie you see had never been out of Aberdeen. He did one year in Divinity and then he had, this was in 1951/2, a crisis and he came to talk to me and I decided there and then to suggest to him that he might consider the assistantship in the department. I was losing an assistant and I was having to nominate. Ferguson was furious and he hardly spoke to Ronnie. You see you had in his view you had to get someone from outside. Ronnie Hepburn should certainly have been encouraged but sent on to Oxford or Cambridge or what have you. Now this was perfectly possible, I mean on his record he could have picked up a Fullerton, Moir or Gray etc. etc. but there was also the question of the man himself and he was very disturbed and he asked me if I could arrange for him to talk with Professor Miller, this must not go down of course, and Miller rang me up and said that Hepburn had greatly impressed him that he didn't want to press me but he was sure that it would be much better for him to come into teaching than to go into research or to combine research with teaching. This will liberate him in all kinds of ways and he'll be earning and so on. I said I quite agree, you needn't worry I'm going to offer him the assistantship. But there was a crisis there. Ferguson of course retired the following year [1953] and at the Scots Philosophical Club I made the speech wishing him well and he was very appreciative. [This you cannot record. ]. You could not understand Ferguson unless you were aware that in fact, from time to time, his wife was in fact insane and the strain on him was sometimes more than he could even endure because he was utterly devoted to her. You can find in the Aberdeen University Review for 1958 or maybe 59, he died in 58, the tribute that I wrote about him, it's all there. I also wrote The Times obituary and I also wrote the initial piece for the Scotsman. But you can find in the Aberdeen University Review, heaven forgive me the boast, my considered judgement on Ferguson and I do refer there to his marriage, not of course in the way I have done now, but to the great love that he bore for his wife. I can illustrate again the strain that he was under. There was one year when there were no honours candidates and the result of that was, it was 52, my assistant was going [and my lecturer getting married], the result of that was when the external examiner came I was in fact the only member of either philosophy department who was in Aberdeen to deal with it and there was a crisis over one or two of the [ordinary] logic papers and I remember in desperation saying that the only thing we can do is to ring Dr Bednarowski in Oxford and hope to goodness he would be there. It was an awful business. We had actually a first class external who handled it beautifully; but I thought to myself now this simply can't go on especially because I was not functioning terribly well myself at that time but at least I was there. If there had been less discrepancy in years between Ferguson and myself, if he had not had that problem, if I had been less over confident we could have established a good relationship. I needed myself at that time and I still see this now, a colleague who could have guided me and encouraged me in various ways and at the same time checked me in others. The right sort of father figure, because I was very young to be a professor. I was the youngest of the philosophy professors in Scotland [34 in 1947]. I could easily have been Ferguson's assistant but in the end I admired him and he was a very fine man and his sharpness, his lack of sympathy with various individuals, the way he offended people, all that had part explanation in the terrible load that he was carrying. Therefore I have a certain sense of reverence. I may say that all I wrote about him was discussed with his sister, Mrs Semple, her husband was a well known Aberdeen consultant. He had not got on very well I gather with Laird. There again some said it was the tensions between Mrs Laird and Mrs Ferguson and I could well believe that, knowing Mrs Laird a bit, not well, and they were very, very different.
H Your mention of Ronnie Hepburn reminds me of another more general point, about the training of a university philosophy teacher. You yourself went straight into university teaching on graduation without training in research. Was this a good system? Had it advantages or disadvantages compared with the …?
M Well it had both. The disadvantages are that you don't get that apprenticeship in writing which undoubtedly you get with research, that concentration on a topic or on a group of topics, even one of the modern B.Phil., M.Phil type degrees which many do. You don't get that sort of thing. You are not able to develop in quite the same way in depth in a given area. You don't actually get the stimulus that you require to develop your command on modern languages. On the other hand, psychologically you are a university teacher not a research student. In Cambridge terms, senior college, middle college, junior college. If you are in a college you are in senior college, you have the responsibility, you have the status and this is psychologically quite important. Also you are prevented from developing too narrowly and if you make a wrong choice of where you want to concentrate you've got the means of correcting it. And here one of the absolutely outstanding men in Cambridge a student with whom I had a certain amount to do got the first starred first in philosophy part II for quarter of a century; the external examiner from Oxford said he'd never read such work by an undergraduate let alone under examination conditions. Now, he went into research because he wanted to become a professional philosopher but as his research developed he found that his interests had shifted, but too late to register for another subject. This meant that although he was good PhD material he was not quite research fellowship material and this was a stage in the precipitation of his tragedy, he ended by taking his own life. And it is a stage, there's a great deal more of course, but from that you are set free. I was helped of course by the fact that I got permission in my first term with Taylor in Edinburgh to work for the John Locke Scholarship, the major graduate award in philosophy at Oxford which was really a prize more than a scholarship though it was a very substantial sum by the standards of 1936/7 paid in instalments. This was a five paper examination, one of them admittedly an essay, and I'm not alone in saying that this was a very useful continuum of the work one had been doing for one's finals. That is to say one had to read a good deal more and at the same time pursue the areas of ones interest in depth. That complemented the introduction to Moral Philosophy, to the interpretation of other peoples ideas, I'm thinking of the professors lectures which was part of the assistants job, [to interpret] marking, assessing, dealing with students. I sometimes wonder whether in the present situation the universities may not go back to something like that, especially because the assistantship was known from the beginning to be terminable. It was a kind of apprenticeship and you normally went into it very young. I often though wish in a way that I had at least one year in research, one year of concentration on a particular area and here you see again, I come back to what I mentioned over Ferguson, it does seem to me that if people go straight into teaching they do need father figures who will advise them, to whom they can turn. You are not trying to dominate them, but you would simply say, not that way, who will give advice about the areas to develop. Even introductions to others who may be able to help the young man or woman. Does that make sense?
H Yes, I think it does, thank you.
M I would like to add two things. I desperately hope that in the present crisis, and it is a crisis obviously in this university, the pattern …
M … in its way unique to Aberdeen will be lost. Professor Principal Taylor used to speak of a Scottish professorship as a munus publicum (he was exaggerating) in the traditions of the Scots law, and welcomed participation in all sorts of local activity in relationships, possibly sometimes encouraging people in these directions to excess but still helping forward the sense of belonging. Marcel who was certainly one of the most interesting Gifford lecturers of our period, and we had some very good ones, this impressed him enormously as a Frenchman. The other thing is of course I do very, very much hope that philosophy will be retained effectively. My tendency is to correct the supposedly cerebral preoccupation with generality by seeking too much in terms of individuals. I have been rebuked for this on one or two occasions but then students are after all individuals and it's what the individuals get from the general courses that seems to me something that would impoverish their whole education if it were lost. I'm referring to the general courses in philosophy. This I am reminded of continually. It's one of the things which cheers me in old age. The sudden words of someone who comes up to one in the street and recalls the classes. Sometimes I can remember quite a bit about them, sometimes I can't, but they've obviously got something and if philosophy is gradually pressed out or confined to a small number then I think something will go from the lives, the intellectual lives, of a whole number of students. Admittedly here I think I am speaking in terms of the Scottish tradition. As I said I know nothing of the circumstances which led to the abolition of philosophy compulsion, I only knew that it had happened. I know nothing of the attitude of Professor Cross or Professor Wernham at the time. I might add by the way in parenthesis that I got on very well with Professor Cross though of course in the last years that I was in Aberdeen he was very much withdrawn into the world of medical administration from which of course he passed into the UGC. I think something was lost there you see but this was his choice and it was not for me to criticise. But we got on always well and when I met him subsequently. I might add that his successor at Jesus College Oxford was my first assistant.
End of Interview
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