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English-Language Obituary for M. Frede Finally Appears in Major Newspaper

Brian Leiter

From The Telegraph.  (Thanks to Ophelia Benson for the pointer.)  I’ve added the link to my original notice as well.

UPDATE:  Several readers have pointed out that the London Times also ran a substantial obituary several weeks ago.  I’ve opened comments for readers to post any others. 

None of the obituaries address what a Princeton grad student at the time called "one of the great mysteries of contemporary scholarship on ancient philosophy":  namely, Professor Frede’s unusual speech "tick" when speaking English.  I can still recall attending the first meeting of Frede’s lecture course on Aristotle at Princeton almost 25 years ago.  (That was an excellent course, by the way.)  Since this was difficult material, I felt it important to take meticulous notes.  Again and again, though, there was some word Professor Frede said that I could not make out.  I tried writing down his sentences word for word, but the unintelligible sound–it sounded like "svine" with a long "i"–came in places where it didn’t make sense:  "Aristotle’s svine metaphysics," and so on.  A grad student subsequently explained to me that Frede inserted this sound into his sentences while speaking English, a kind of speech tick like those who use the word "uh," though "svine" appeared at strange places.  I was told he didn’t have this tick when speaking German, and that it didn’t happen when he read an English paper.  I did not hear Professor Frede speak in the last two decades, so, I wonder, did he continue to do this?

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6 responses to “English-Language Obituary for M. Frede Finally Appears in Major Newspaper”

  1. anon frede student

    Did he continue to do this? I spent some time with him this summer, and the odd thing is, I cannot tell you. I don't recall his doing it, but I suspect that may simply be the result of the fact that one stopped hearing it after a while. (And I have been listening to him off and on for several decades).

    I have heard various etymologies put forward for what one wag dubbed "the porcine particle", e.g. that it collapses "so, I mean". I don't think there's any reason to think there is a clear answer to be found. If we were referring to one of the curious hand-gestures that other philosophers make, would we expect there to be a unifactorial account of its origin?

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  2. Neil VL

    I attended Frede's Timaeus seminar at Oxford in the winter of 2001. He certainly had the tick then. It sounded to me like SVARN. He also smoked about five cigarettes per two-hour class, despite (or perhaps in defiance of) a conspicuous NO SMOKING sign in the room.

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  3. anon frede student 2

    Over the years as Michael's student in Oxford I got so accustomed to his "tick" that I think I would have noticed if it disappeared. And I didn't notice aything unusual last time I enjoyed his company, this summer in Greece. It sounded to me like compressed "as one" ('sone), which I've always interpreted in the sense of "as it were", "so to speak". But I can very well be wrong on this.

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  4. anon frede student 3

    I was told, nth-hand, that he had a stammer in his youth and had been trained to say 'ein zwei…' as necessary between words to get it under control, which eventually collapsed into 'svein'. But then it's very odd that he wouldn't have done it in German as well.

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  5. Chris E.

    I first encountered Michael when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley in 1971 and took his intro class on Ancient Philosophy that summer. I saw him weekly or even daily for the next 9 years. He certainly had this "tick" at that time. My understanding of it was as a kind of collation of "sort of" and "ein". Sort of like saying "uh" in two language and compressing them into one. I tape recorded many of his lectures from the early 70s. Unfortunately, the tapes are no longer extant. I always thought of it as an endearing mannerism, but it could be funny too. He would stretch it out when apparently thinking pretty hard about something. Usually, the "f" sound would lengthen and drop rather dramatically into the vowel when something clicked.

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  6. anon frede student 4

    I was a student at Princeton in the 80's. It's true that you could spend extended time with him and not notice the "swine"s, and even start to think they had perhaps ceased (maybe they did cease for extended periods…). But then they would pop up in places where you couldn't help but notice them. I still remember him once saying "Epi-swine-curus," and my own name as "First Name-swine-Last Name."
    Sometimes the tick came out as just "ein".

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