Foreword: on becoming a philosopher

I am most grateful to Duncan and Jesper for bringing together this fine collection of essays by some of my former students, and to the editors of Synthese for kindly devoting a special number of the journal to it. It was suggested to me that I might like to contribute a few words by way of intellectual autobiography. That would require a much more demanding analytical reconstruction of my philosophical meanderings than I have the time or skills to undertake. What follows is a rather different story. Entry into academic philosophy has always been difficult. Anyone who manages it will have succeeded, in large measure, because of the inspiration provided by the teaching and example of their tutors. I take great pride in the fact that the contributors to this volume have hereby wanted to acknowledge mine. So I thought it might be of some interest to outline a brief chronicle of the interactions and coincidences that shaped my own early career and determined the kind of philosopher I have become. I am glad, in particular, to take this opportunity to acknowledge my debts to my own teachers and to document something of the remarkable good fortune that I have enjoyed throughout my career. The truth is that, as I suspect was not uncommon among my generation of professional philosophers, I became one more or less by a series of accidents. I entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1961 with no other intention but to read Classics, in which I had excelled at school. It came as an unpleasant surprise to realise within but a few months of starting that I had absolutely no appetite to spend 3 years translating contemporary political speeches into Ciceronian rhetoric or John Donne into Catullan verses—and that it was likely to prove a recipe for disaster to continue to try. The only practical option was to seek a switch to a non-school subject, where I might have at