Philosophy Research

We are saddened to report that our retired colleague Terry Greenwood has passed after a period of ill health. Terry will be remembered by former students for his forensic lectures on Kant.

Terry was a private person. His partner, Adrienne Jessop  writes:

“Terry was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, but the family moved to the outskirts of Leeds a few years later.   He attended West Leeds High School, where he was a high achiever; he thought of taking English at University, but changed his mind when he discovered Philosophy.  An interview with Freddie Ayer secured him a place in UCL, however he didn’t take it up straight away.  National Service was still a requirement, and Terry spent two years with RAF Turnhouse, in Edinburgh, where he plotted flight paths in the Control Room.  He thought that the method was too antiquated to be useful. 

When he finally got to UCL he took a 1st Class degree, which he followed up with a BPhil from Oxford. He had a brief experience of the commercial world during a vacation job in an Advertising Agency, where he was amused by how seriously his fellow employees took fish fingers and how to persuade the public to eat more of them.   Commerce was not for him.  He preferred Analytical Philosophy, and after completing the BPhil he joined Glasgow University’s  Dept of Logic.  

He enjoyed teaching, and prepared his classes with great care; some of his Honours lectures found him applying his own reasoning as well as appraising accepted views. But he did not expect students to be equally committed, rather he guided his tutees in directions that suited them. During his first decade in the Dept he joined Reading Parties in the Burn and gave tutorials in the Edinburgh Summer School.  Closer to home, he enjoyed the Philosophy Walks in the varied countryside surrounding Glasgow,  which Logic and Moral Philosophy staff and students went on annually.  When he went walking in the Trossachs in later years, he used to remember those excursions into Arcadia. 

Terry did not publish many papers, however those that he did complete were substantial.  Early papers that appeared in Philosophical Quarterly and Philosophy were on Personal Identity and on Mind.  He also wrote reviews of articles and books.  He was particularly interested in Wittgenstein and gave an Honours course on the late Philosophy;  he was planning to publish a detailed commentary on the Blue Book, but paused when  previously unavailable Wittgenstein text appeared, which he wanted to consult.  In the end he didn’t return to the Blue Book, possibly because he was becoming more involved with Kant.  He and Eva Schaper had ongoing and productive discussions on Kant’s Aesthetics, as she acknowledges in one of her papers, and he covered other topics for Kant Studien and  “Reading Kant - New Perspectives“.
    
After Terry retired, in 1998, he no longer pursued Philosophy.  Instead he taught himself Higher Mathematics, having always regretted not being better prepared for the maths in formal Logic.  He continued his interest in language by reading Proust in the original, trying (though failing) to decipher James Joyce’s meanings in Finnegans Wake, and on a more practical level teaching himself Italian.  On one Italian holiday we were walking in the Apennines and came across a party of locals, who were collecting fungi;  they were having lunch and invited us to join them for wine, bread and sausage.  Terry chatted happily and they responded by inviting us to dinner that evening - however Tuscan dinners are lengthy affairs and Terry doubted whether his conversational prowess was up to a full evening, so we regretfully declined.  He was not however successful with Czech; when we visited Prague and Brno he could only master enough to order beer!  

During his final couple of years Terry became more withdrawn, but retained the ability to assess ideas and arguments that came to his attention. “

Pat Shaw, a colleague of his tell us:

“Terry and I were colleagues for many years. Back in the more leisurely world of the 1960s my wife Hilary would occasionally join Terry, Eva Schaper and me for lunch in the College Club. Terry and I always got on well, but it was only towards the end of our careers that we became really close. Terry was quite a private person, very intelligent and well-read in philosophy and beyond. He was particularly good at teaching Honours students, individually or in small groups. He was never very keen to publish, but nobody doubted his quality. He set high standards. Terry and I jointly taught a postgraduate student for a while, and we seemed to bond over that, becoming firm friends. In retirement Hilary and I used to meet up with Terry and Adrienne for walks together, and for many years we attended the East Neuk Music Festival together.”

William (Bill) Lyons wrote:

“I got to know him a little mainly through chatting with him and Eva Schaper in the staff common room bar of an evening, though I always had to break off to go home to my family.  He was always good company there, informed about world and local affairs and cultural matters, humorous in a wry manner, and clearly enjoying a good drink and chat.

I also recall seeing him at staff seminars on a Friday.  He didn’t say a lot but, when he did, it was often very perceptive and informed in a scholarly way and phrased with a certain elegance.”

First published: 31 March 2025