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MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 2: Dr. Jones's widow has kindly comented, below, both confirming and clarifying the story.
A scholar of ancient philosophy, Jones taught at Princeton in the 1970s, then at Oxford, and then according to various sources (for example), quit philosophy to become a plumber. This seems a bit like the famous story about Tolstoy, who when asked what work he was most proud of, displayed a pair of shoes he had made himself. Is the Jones story true? Does anyone know?
I think this may be the back story you seek: http://www.crazyoik.co.uk/Oiklet/crazy_oiklet_31.htm
Well, I knew him somewhat. He was a colleague of my friend Michael Frede and Michael at some point told me that he had decided to go into plumbing. Frede also gave me the ostensible reason, but I can't recall now what it was.
The Crazy Oik link contains one sentence about Barrington Jones, which says that he became a plumber. I do know that he wrote some really good stuff about Aristotle's Categories back in the early seventies. And the classic "Aristotle's Introduction of Matter" (if I remember the title correctly), which was about the Physics. Did Princeton not give him tenure? Was he a plumber in England?
A philosopher at Princeton when Jones was there confirmed the basic facts of the story. As to tenure, I don't know, but he was first listed on the faculty for 1972-73,
https://philosophy.princeton.edu/about/chairs-and-faculty-1949#72-73
and the last year he appears is 1977-78, which would be consistent with a tenure denial. He then went to Oxford. Perhaps someone else knows.
I do not know whether it is true that Barrington Jones left philosophy to become a plumber.
I can say, along with Michael Wedin, that this is the story that I heard from a former colleague at Princeton, in my case from David Furley.
Several lines of testimony seem to point in the same direction.
I can also say, with Mohan Matthen, that his writings on Aristotle are worth consulting.
Google Books reveals snippets from the magazine Private Eye that suggest that the claim appeared there (issue 503) and then elicited two letters of correction (issue 508, from a Mr. P. Hylton — Peter? — and a subsequent issue).
To clarify, the letters in Private Eye didn't necessarily contradict the claim outright; the second letter, for example, complains in part that "Barrington Jones taught at Pembroke College Oxford, not Cambridge, as averred." I lack access to the complete text.
I have a memory of reading a magazine article about Barrington Jones about 25 years ago, published soon after he had died. (I'm afraid I cannot remember where it appeared.) The article (if I recall it correctly) portrayed him as someone who had been attracted to a life which involved working with his hands as well as his brain, although it is of course unlikely that this was the full story behind the change in career. What I definitely remember the article saying (because it saddened me) was that BJ had become thoroughly disillusioned with his life as a plumber. While he still enjoyed the manual work, he found it difficult to make a living while dealing fairly with his clients.
So what, in the end, do we know about Barrington Jones? Here are some notes and conjectures. (Note to self: ask Jonathan Barnes.) Born in the early to mid 1940s. Interested in subjects and predication in Aristotle. Topics that Ackrill and Strawson pioneered, so maybe he was their student. Hired at Princeton and knew Frede there. (Frede went there around 1975, I think, several years after he was hired.) Wrote several influential articles, including the brilliant ones on matter in the Physics (Phil Rev) and the "Commentary" on the first five chapters in the Categories (Phronesis). Then (conjecture) wasn't tenured at Princeton (so Furley and Frede didn't support him?). Then (conjecture) got a grace and favour job at Oxford. Then, (fact) left Oxford to become a plumber. Happy in that for a while, but got tired of it. Object of sufficient curiosity (because of career change?) to be written about in Private Eye in 1981. Died in the late nineties in his late fifties. It all sounds very melancholy. And a bit mysterious.
I believe Frede supported him for tenure. Of course, there is some chance I am wrong, but I doubt it.
Does anyone know the particular circumstances of his death?
The composer Philip Glass also sometimes worked as a plumber
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/nov/24/arts.highereducation1
'Throughout this period, Glass supported himself as a New York cabbie and as a plumber, occupations that often led to unusual encounters. "I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo," he says. "While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. 'But you're Philip Glass! What are you doing here?' It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. 'But you are an artist,' he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish."
Mary Midgley wrote a piece on "Philosophical Plumbing" that you can find here:
A sample:
"Plumbing and philosophy are both activities that arise because elaborate
cultures like ours have, beneath their surface, a fairly complex
system which is usually unnoticed, but which sometimes goes wrong.
In both cases, this can have serious consequences. Each system supplies
vital needs for those who live above it. Each is hard to repair when
it does go wrong, because neither of them was ever consciously planned
as a whole. There have been many ambitious attempts to reshape both
of them, but existing complications are usually too widespread to allow
a completely new start.
Neither system ever had a single designer who knew exactly what
needs it would have to meet. Instead, both have grown imperceptibly
over the centuries, and are constantly being altered piecemeal to suit
changing demands, as the ways of life above them have branched out.
Both are therefore now very intricate. When trouble arises, specialized
skill is needed if there is to be any hope of locating it and putting it right."
Let us also not forget the inspirational plumber mentioned by Dummett in the introduction to The Logical Basis of Metaphysics.
I am the widow of Barrington Jones. He did indeed leave philosophy, having failed to get a permanent job in academia after a college lectureship at Pembroke College, Oxford, and being desirous of a more honest way to make a living. We have three sons. He died in 1993 at the age of 48.
I wouldn’t say plumbing made him unhappy. It was difficult to chase up clients. But really, although he enjoyed the problem-solving aspect, pace Midgley, it made him tired. I now know this is because he was suffering from the heart disease which killed him.
There was a good article written about him in the Sunday Telegraph. He was an honest, loving man with a brilliant mind and we still love and miss him.
I have tracked down these Private Eye issues, so I can clarify. The original article, in issue 503, is but a summary of an article published in January 1981 in Cherwell, the Oxford Student newspaper. The first letter in response to the article, published in issue 508, is signed by one Philip Hilton, and elicited two responses, both published in issue 509. One of these responses is from Victoria Neumark, the soon-to-be wife of Barrington Jones, who refers to Philip Hilton as P. Hylton in her letter (and, hence, the confusion re: Peter Hylton). I copy all three letters below, as printed, with typos and all, but I should add something else: Victoria Neumark Jones has informed me that the first letter was in fact written by Barrington Jones himself along with his wife and a friend and was meant as a joke, the only way one would be published in Private Eye (the train-set bit is not a joke but true; the story about the train-set also appears in the Cherwell article).
PE issue 508:
Gutter Expert
In Eye 503 you printed the ‘True Story’ of Barrington Jones, who left a lucrative lectureship in philosophy at Pembroke College to become a plumber, perhaps under the influence of common room rumours about the size of plebian ‘wage packets’. I should like to reassure members of Mr Jones’s new profession that this recruit is not musty interlectual (sic). Students found two things to remark in Mr Jones’s room. The first, which they could hardly overlook, was an unusually large train-set, the best in any study at Cambridge, I’m told. The second was the large quantity of ladies’ underwear that passed through Mr Jones’s hands, so easily mislaid around the study.
I think we should be told. Three cheers for Eye! Down with Homosexulists, provacy, Homosexulists, shady dealings, privacy and Homosexulists.
Yours sincerely,
PHILIP HILTON
14 Farm Close, West Wickham, Kent
PE issue 509:
A Maiden’s Overture
The reliability of your correspondent Mr P. Hylton (Eye 508) and, for that matter, of True Stories (Eye 503 The Philosopher turns Plumber) may best be gauged from the fact that Barrington Jones taught at Pembroke College, Oxford, not Cambridge, as averred. As for the “lucrative lectureship”, it paid the princely sum of 2,500 (two thousand, five hundred pounds) a year.
Since I am to marry Mr Jones in August, I like to think that the ladies’ underwear in his room is mine, but perhaps Mr Hylton’s informant would like to forward me a sample to make sure? Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Yours faithfully,
VICTORIA NEUMARK
37 Wakelin House, Sebbon Street, London, N1
Sir,
It is a pity that Philip Hilton damages his credibility in what he writes about Barrington Jones, the philosopher-plumber, by repeating the only error in your otherwise accurate piece by placing him in Cambridge rather than Oxford. When I went to Mr Jones’s room to buy his books I could see nothing more compromising that a flute. It is also well known that the finest train set in Oxford is that, the creation of the Rev Dr Hibbert OP, which runs in the cellars of Blackfriars Priory.
I understand that Mr Jones is exercising his new skills in Reading.
Yours,
JOHN STEPHENS
36 Park End Street, Oxford, OX1 1HJ
Chris Daly (Manchester) was kind enough to send me a copy of the Daily Telegraph article. It is a full front page of their Weekend section, with two excellent photographs, but the insight it offers is meager. According to the Telegraph, BJ's step-father worked in a smelter; so, he had "working class" origins. (To the upper class English mind, this explains anything and everything.) But the Telegraph also gives us a long quote from Raymond Geuss, who emphasizes his detachment from Ivy League snobbishness. ("He simply, effortlessly, failed to conform, and I admired that in him.") His philosophical idol was Aristotle, Geuss says, but he was also inspired by Wittgenstein. "I would not be surprised if Barrington's reading of Wittgenstein played a role in smoothing the transition to becoming a craftsman." Perhaps, but it is puzzling why, if he didn't like the snobby atmosphere of Princeton and Oxford, he didn't simply take a job at an unpretentious state school.
I’m glad Barrington’s widow, Victoria, posted a comment in this thread. Most of the other commentators don’t seem to know much about him. I was very close to Barrington, even shared a house with him for a while in Princeton. And I stayed close and saw him often in London until he died. He was, as Victoria says, a lovely man and particularly loved her and his three boys, all of whom are great young men. What some of the comments don’t get right is that Barrington became disenchanted with professional philosophy, even though he had a secure job at Pembroke. He never got disenchanted with philosophy. We talked philosophy together all the time, and he was brilliant at it. Toward the end of his life, he had been reading and thinking about Plotinus. I’m sorry he never got the chance to share his understanding of Plotinus in writing.
Very happy to hear that he continued to think about philosophy. I looked back at the comments, though, and I didn't think anybody suggested that he was "disenchanted" with philosophy–as distinct from the snobby atmosphere in some departments thereof.
Doug and Victoria (my mum) have said some profound things. My father died when I was 8, so I never knew him as an adult. I did study philosophy at university, probably in an attempt to understand and learn more about him. I always swore if I was able to I would study his thesis on Aristotle but he’d probably think it unnecessary. Either way, this thread has really touched me and brought me some insight. 30th September is the anniversary of his passing all those years ago. The fact that he rests in peace and power and memory heartens me. Maybe not all sound and fury signifying nothing; maybe. Thank you, everybody.
Perhaps tedious to go o’er, but in response to the question about teaching in an “unpretentious state school” by which I take it the writer means university, since we don’t refer to universities as schools in the UK, Barrington was in general, as Doug says, disenchanted with academia and moreover, enjoyed working with his hands. I’m not really sure if any British philosophy department is or was less snobbish, but it was more the general backstabbing that he disliked.
Barrington was a friend and mentor when I studied Classical Philosophy at Princeton in 1976-1981. I visited him twice after he left the United States, once in Oxford and once in London. Between the two visits he made the transition to plumbing and I actually saw his blackened, rough hands after a hard day's work. As for the reason, I understood that plumbing was his family's business and his father hired him. After two years of teaching at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a seven-year tenure track stint at Princeton that was a dead end, I think he became disillusioned with the United States, where he could have continued employment at a professor at a lesser institution. Oxford was a temporary respite. When that ended, I suppose he acted out of economic necessity, meanwhile having married in the UK. Barrington's fate hit me hard and played a role in my decision to drop out myself after eight years of graduate school at Berkeley and Princeton and pursue a career that I could control more myself.
Barrington was definitely denied tenure. I was with him when he received the news. I helped organize a farewell party. I do not know about Furley's position on the tenure issue, but I am sure that Frede (my advisor) very much wanted John Cooper to join the philosophy department and the classical philosophy program, and Frede had not had any input on the hiring of Jones during the Vlastos years. So, I conclude that he opposed granting tenure. But there may well have been other philosophy faculty members who were opposed to Jones.
Robert,
Please see my remarks of October 15 below. I knew Barrington well at Princeton and his life choices affected my own.
Chris Erskine
Victoria,
Thank you for writing here. I was a graduate student at Princeton and knew Barrington well. I visited him in Oxford and in London in the early 1980s. But we lost touch after that. What happened to him at Princeton greatly affected my own life choices at the time. After eight years of graduate school in classics and philosophy, I left the university to become a translator and lived in Germany for many years. The reasons were similar. I have fond memories of Barrington and a couple of photos.
Chris Erskine
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