Robert G. Turnbull

Wilfrid Sellars' first academic appointment was at the University of Iowa in 1938. He had lively and useful intellectual interaction with colleagues there, notably with Herbert Feigl, Gustav Bergmann, and Everett Hall. After service with the Navy late in World War II and with the enthusiastic backing of Herbert Feigl (who had gone to the University of Minnesota in 1941), Wilfrid joined the Minnesota department, in 1946. Though at that time without any publications, he was about to publish an astonishing series of articles. As much of the philosophical world knows now, those articles were the result of years of fruitful and sophisticated reflection, and they were the beginning of the lines of thought which Sellars consistently developed throughout his very influential career.

After having a class with him in spring, 1947, I abandoned my plan to leave Minnesota in the autumn to continue graduate work at the University of Chicago with Rudolf Carnap. Despite there being only an incipient graduate program at Minnesota, Wilfrid was that exciting. I simply have never before encountered a teacher with his learning, insight, and clarity. And I had then only a glimpse of the philosophical revolution which he was to bring about.

In late 1947, Wilfrid started meeting once a week for dinner and discussion with three or four graduate students. Topics of discussion were initially those of a course. Shortly, however, they shifted to the major topics of Wilfrid's early papers (i.e. "Pure Pragmatics and Epistemology", "Epistemology and the New Way of Words", "Realism and the New Way of Words", and "Concepts as Involving Laws and Inconceivable without Them"). Since I had been earlier immersed in Russell and an empiricism which was tied to the so-called "principle of acquaintance", I was overwhelmed one evening when Wilfrid laid out his insight that the initial link between language and the world is to be found in one and the same item's being at once a conditioned response and an element in a rule-governed system. Though the insight needs to be stated and qualified much more carefully, exploring its relevance and its consequences remains one of the best entries to Wilfrid's thought. I mention it here only to suggest the sense of philosophical excitement which pervaded those informal discussions.

Many who have found Wilfrid's writing difficult have suddenly understood him when engaging him in discussion -- especially in a small group and with a blackboard available. Wilfrid was a master teacher and never more so than when explaining his own philosophy. In the mid-50's I spent a convivial evening in Washington in which an effort was made to invent "fallacies" appropriate to various well-known philosophers. Quine's fallacy for Sellars was "the fallacy of one distinction too many". It has appeared so to other readers, but I am confident that neither they nor Quine ever heard and saw Sellars at work in a classroom-style setting.

I assisted Sellars twice in large introductory courses at Minnesota. He was as remarkable with freshmen as he was with graduate students, teaching a serious and somewhat difficult course, but never failing to have the rapt attention of students, with his dramatic style and apt but astonishing examples. Who ever took a course with Wilfrid without getting a detailed acquaintance with "Jones", and equal acquaintance with stick drawings and mildly Freudian symbolism on the blackboard?

His graduate seminars in those early days were incredibly demanding. Each student, in turn, was on the spot with a reading report. And each learned the hard way that nothing would do but precise statement of the argument of the text and equally precise statement of its ramifications. And each of us stayed on the spot until she or he got it right. To this day, when I am tempted to slovenly statement, there is a penumbral image of those seminars accompanying my self-castigation.

Wilfrid in those early years (and during much of his career) worked constantly, not only developing his own thought, but also reading and responding with marginalia to an incredible number of books and articles. During my first years at the University of Iowa, most of the books and journals I read from the library were enlivened by Sellars' marginal comments and criticisms. Those marginalia were commonly more illuminating than the text. He and Mary [his first wife] lived in an apartment during his first years at Minnesota. But he found it impossible to endure the noisiness around him, which he could not control. So they bought a house, and even there he spent much of his working time upstairs with ear plugs in to aid concentration.

Wilfrid devoted much of his meager spare time to exercise, largely tennis and swimming. Fortunately I was a strong swimmer, and we spent long hours together swimming in a lake near his home, all the while discussing my dissertation and various philosophical issues, often swimming two or three miles in an afternoon. In the 50's, he came up several times to our summer cottage in northern Minnesota where we walked long miles talking philosophy and where, however late we were up the night before, he joined our young son, Bruce, for a 6 am swim the next morning. He was and remained an ardent baseball fan. I remember a dinner in Philadelphia attended by my wife and son and a well known philosopher who greatly admired Sellars but had never talked with him. He was eager to hear Sellars discourse on some philosophical issues. Much to his dismay, most of the table conversation was baseball talk between Bruce and "uncle" Wilfrid.

Neither Wilfrid nor Mary had time for much social life. Mary wrote stories for popular magazines and later wrote advertising copy for a large Minneapolis department store. They were, however, a bit frivolous about automobiles. As soon as they could afford one, they bought a convertible, though they already had an old Chevrolet. Wilfrid cared a great deal about his father, and lest Roy Wood find him frivolous, he used the old car for trips to visit his parents in Ann Arbor. Indeed, using the old car for one of those trips led to a fearful accident in Wisconsin when a tie rod broke and the car shot off the road, and landed up-side down. Both Wilfrid and Mary suffered compression fractures, and Mary suffered facial injuries. Both recovered, but Wilfrid was left with an inoperable crushed disc at the top of his spine, resulting in a slight but permanent stoop.

Aside from baseball and world politics, Wilfrid had no small talk at all, and he abhorred any sort of gossip about colleagues and other philosophers -- confining himself only to a very occasional and censorious "Ugh!". Then, as in later years, his conversational interests were almost completely confined to topics which invited clarification or exposure of rationale or explanation. And he had a low tolerance for pronouncements which were unbuttressed with rational defense -- even pronouncements about baseball and politics.

Wilfrid's sense of humor was playful. I cannot remember his ever telling a joke for entertainment's sake. But he was good at enlivening metaphors and turns of phrase and he delighted in slightly outrageous and provocative illustrations of philosophical points or doctrines. Among the tales in illustration of the difference and inter-relations between and among intentions, deliberation, pondering, and action was the remarkable case of destitute Jones setting about to secure false teeth for his equally destitute grandmother. It was a ludicrous example, but it nailed down the necessary distinctions and commanded students' attention by its very absurdity.

A final comment. Wilfrid worked very hard both with and for the graduate students who studied with him. Writing a dissertation under his direction was rather more like engaging in joint exploration of a topic than like preparing something to satisfy him or a committee. Heaven knows he was demanding, but he always managed to give one the sense that what one was doing was an important contribution to philosophy. In the early days at Minnesota, placement of graduate students was a difficult matter. Outside departments did not line up to interview promising Minnesota PhD's. Wilfrid became very skillful at arranging for interviews and over the years acquired the reputation as an honest broker - most notably where his own students were concerned. In the years following a student's getting a job and working to establish him or herself in the philosophical world, Wilfrid remained a friend, counselor and advisor. He regularly responded to paper drafts sent him. He constantly wrote letters of recommendation. And he was always available for philosophical discussion.

And he did not expect conformity to his own views. Just before his appointment to the Yale department, he and I were together in an APA symposium on Leibniz. The old guard at Yale was present, headed by the late Charles Hendel. They expressed considerable surprise at the differences which emerged in the discussion between Wilfrid and me, differences which were candidly aired - though it was clear we had mutual respect. Hendel later told me that the symposium was a determining factor in Yale's issuing the invitation to Wilfrid. Though there is a tie which binds together Sellars' earlier and later PhD's, it is not the tie of slavish devotion to his ipsissima verba.

I am more grateful than I can say for being with him in the early years of his teaching and writing. From the vantage point of hic et nunc, it is not an exaggeration to think of having been present at the creation. I, at least, do not expect to see his like again.