J. L. Speranza

J. L. Speranza was born. Is that sentence incomplete? We don’t think so.

Speranza’s education went well. He was fortunate to have been born around a fully academic milieu, that brought him to his graduation.

Speranza completed his education, specialising in the philosophy of H. P. Grice, on whom he has published.

Speranza’s father is an architect, which helped. Speranza could relate to his father’s artistic inclinations, love of culture, and creativity.

Speranza’s mother is very actively cultural, which also helped.

Speranza’s milieu was geographically attractive too, and he spends the summers and long weekends by The Jockey Club on the riverside – as he progressed from the small pool, to the medium pool, to the large pool.

It was in that milieu that Speranza acquired a love for surfing – first by the riverside, and long summer holidays by the sea. He would join in the sport with his cousins.

Speranza’s mother has a sister and a brother. This means that Speranza, along with his brother and mother, grew up in the company of six cousins – three males, three females, on his aunt’s side, and three cousins – all male -- on his uncle’s side. This helped.

Kindergarten was a thing to enjoy.

Primary school was a joy in various respects. Literary education was promoted, and Speranza displayed an unusual ability for drawing. Some of his cartoons were indeed published in the school magazine.

This specialty when it came to drawing was birds – and, due to the connection of his uncle, Speranza became the youngest member of The Ornithological Asociation. He could name the species of the local birds in Latin, which amused him and surprised others.

Art was constantly present in the family, and one anecdote the family kept was Speranza being walked through an important art gallery, and he detecting and naming aloud the names of the painters just by distinguishing the style, to the amusement and admiration of gallery visitors.

The secondary school was seriously followed by Speranza. He enjoyed the literature classes, and was especially apt at what is called ‘syntactical analysis.’ Speranza saw a logic in language at this level – which other students would regard as boring.

The syllabus including courses in logic – including formal logic – and Speranza especially enjoyed to learn the symbolism of functions when it came to the predicate calculus – he never had much to say about the propositional logic, which he found primitive to the much richer predicate calculus that could go deeper into the now ‘semantical analyis’ of a proposition.

A source of wonder then was this divergence, or apparent divergence, between the syntactical analysis – and the grammatical syntactical categories that go with it – with the simplicity of the predicate calculus that could deal with predicates, F, G, H, … and constants, a, b, c, … often replaced by variables.

Philosophy course came too – but the ‘continental’ approach by the philosophy teacher did not quite fit Speranza’s style. Indeed, the professor of philosophy – on the last year of the secondary cycle – offered Speranza a full scholarship to a university, for which Speranza was helpful but did not accept, as he found it to be too denominational.

Given the performance at his ‘college,’ as his alma mater is called, Speranza had examination-free entrace to the Faculty of Philosophy, which was a new world.

Military service ‘interrupted’ the education – but only minimally. The courses being annual, Speranza spent some of the time doing things he would not otherwise do, like join a ‘riding club’ and perfection his horse riding.

Weekends were often spend in the countryside property, especially with long hikings and walks. These took place early in the morning, were performed by him and one of his cousins, and would follow a strict routine, as they walked through the valley, the prairie, to reach the local rivulet, where they would enjoy the natural wildlife and return back to the villa for tea.

Resuming philosophy studies was easy for Speranza. In the continental tradition, Philosophy is divided into chairs. The full professor remains a distant figure – participation is NOT encouraged, and it could well be that during the full year, you never interact directly with the full professor. He lectures, and Speranza takes notes. The passing is via via voce. In the university system, the student is allowed different dates for examination – the first being at the very end of the course, before the holiday. Most students would take the examination after the holiday – attendance not being mandatory, except for the practica – it was the students to catch up with the syllabus, readings, etc. Speranza NEVER let that happen and SYSTEMATICALLY took ALL of his examinations at the end of the course, never after the holiday.

During the holiday, if at the beach, he would prepare for the next year’s syllabus. Travel was also allotted during this period.

For the preparation of a resume, Speranza was able to retrieve the credentials of the many courses he attended and passed for his degree in philosophy. The history of philosophy was of course dealt in the traditional way: one full year for the history of ancient philosophy, one full year for the history of mediaeval philosophy, one full year for the history of modern philosophy, and the last year for the history of contemporary philosophy. The entrance year had no such course, but that was for Speranza before his military-service period.

Along with a full professor for each stage of the history of philosophy, there were seminars dedicated to the textual analysis – in the case of ancient and medieval philosophy, the text being in the original Greek and Latin. Speranza enjoyed this. The Greek was just exhilarating. The Latin was discipline.

Along with the ‘history’ courses, all branches of philosophy held a corresponding full professor: aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of history.

These regular courses were supplemented with ‘seminars’ that usually the same faculty would give on their speciality: from scepticism to phenomenology.

It was during these seminars that Speranza would often refer to the views of H. P. Grice. Speranza saw Grice as a mentor in more than one way – not just for the philosophy of language, as one would expect, with his intention-based theory of meaning-cum-implicature, but in general in philosophy as a whole.

For the dissertation, Grice was indeed chosen. The requirements included not just a ‘dissertation,’ but a number of higher seminars, which were allotted to Speranza in conjunction with his plan for the dissertation, and after a committee meeting that would judge which seminars and in what areas – faculty allowing – would be required. Speranza managed to find a room for the result of each of the appointed seminars to fit into his general dissertation. There was a seminar in the philosophy of logic – where the student was expected to give a presentation, which in Speranza’s case was ‘Postmodernist Grice --; there was a seminar in the history of the philosophy of language, which in Speranza’s case ended with a presentation on Grice’s meaning-liberalism --; there were seminars in the theory of argumentation, which in Speranza’s case ended with an essay and publication on the dialogical model and its associated rationality in the oeuvre of Grice.

The dissertation itself was sustained via Speranza having joined a local society for philosophical analysis. This was an independent association from the university, but allowed Speranza to deepen his research.

The dissertation was comprised of chapters that advanced from a dialogical-pattern of rationality to the final chapters that characterise this rationality and offer a proposal to the challenge against its presumed universality. By this time, Speranza was well embedded in Grice’s theory – his Kantotle – and saw himself as offering a Heglato thrown for good measure.

The cultural activities were just as important as his philosophical career. Living in a big metropolis, with an immensely rich culture, Speranza was not just witness to it all – and often complained of the insularity of the philosophical environment who hardly ever combined Town with Gown.

Speranza belonged to various ‘clubs’ – amateur, -- mainly for the enjoyment of musical evenings, and in charity as part of a denominational organisation. It was as member of such clubs that Speranza, with his piano abilities, was able to proceed to ‘study’ more or less systematically, for a number of consecutive years, different genres of popular song.

As a matter of history, the first festival was on G. and S. – where Speranza centred on the tenor repertoire. The notice was duly accredited in the local newspaper, which helped.

After G. and S., Speranza and his club focused on ‘folk-song’ – with an emphasis on the tradition of the English Folk-Song society, and it was enjoyable to review all different shires to locate and select on folksong for each (“Through bushes and through briars,” Essex – etc.).

After folk-song, the club was led by Speranza to a study of music-hall – at this time, the club had attained a double character – the musical performance was one thing, but Speranza and Ghersi (the co-director, and host at the villa) felt like a narrative thread was needed. The annual festivity would include then a master of ceremonies that would provide info on each of the music-hall selected, while the members of the group would enact a special play selected for the occasion. “Dear Ol’ Pal: sentimental ditties of the Edwardian music-hall, with excerpts from John Osborne’s The Enterainer’ came to be and duly accredited in the local newspaper.

Due to the help of J. H. Duncan-Hall, Speranza was able to dedicate the following year for the club’s activities to ‘Those foolish things: dance band songs from the swingin’ thirties, with excerpts from Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven.

After that, the full next year was dedicated to a related genre: musical comedy. Speranza had the help of R. W. Gray, who provided the essential material: Mander/Mitcheson. The festivity: Spread a little happiness as you go by, with excerpts from Ayckbourn’s A chorus of disapproval.

The next year, the club under Speranza’s guidance coped with a difficult ‘genre’: that of the musical review, but the companion volume by Mander-Mitcheson help. A review of review was the annual festivity.

After that, the club approached the genre of the concert ballad as once performed at St. James’s Hall, and with the help of the relevant literature, “A treasure of balladry” was performed as publicised in the local newspaper.

Special events – all covered in the local newspapers included, “Vicroriana revisited,” with C. Holland. Also a musical evening of ‘railway reminiscences’ with Lois Bird-Maddox, attended by the chair of the local charity, an evening to commemorate the publication of Chiswell’s Moving Places, and another to commemorate Anthony Newly, with A. Mccreery.

The Opera became a great passion. At the Melopea, Speranza would oganise with A. M. Ghersi various festivities. Each was centred around the repertoire of the local opera house. For the musical evening, the tenor aria was selected. This was spproriately ciculated through the local newspaper.

Along with the opera, Speranza founded with A. M. Ghersi the Literary film society that held bi-weekly meetings. At each musical evening, a discussion of the literary source was analysed, the film screened and a musical theme played by Speranza on the piano. Again, this was advertised in the local newspaper.

Galas were organised periodically, with A. M. Ghersi and M. E. Bunnell, and with the Italian Club, all circulated through the local newspaper.

The travels continued, the music kept filling his life, and happiness ensued.