Rupert Crawshay-Williams

Rupert Crawshay-Williams (23 February 1908 – 12 June 1977) was a music critic, teacher, writer, and philosopher.

Life Rupert Crawshay-Williams was born in London on 23 February 1908. he was the great-grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley. Crawshay-Williams was educated at Repton School and Queen's College, Oxford. who was later described as "a perfect companion for Rupert." Like Russell, Crawshay-Williams was an "outspoken humanist" and an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association. Crawshay-Williams' sister, Lady Greenwood, was reported to have said "They had no children and didn't want to trouble anyone," and the Deputy Coroner said, "They were a devoted couple, and there is no evidence that they were of unsound mind." A verdict of suicide was recorded.

Philosophy Following the Second World War, Crawshay-Williams focused largely on philosophy. His first book, The Comforts of Unreason, was published in 1947. According to Michael Potter, this was "a light and witty exposé of the human inclination towards deception, self-deception in particular". Potter adds:The Comforts of Unreason identifies and catalogues forces that lead minds astray – fallacious reasoning, euphemism, propaganda, and unacknowledged desires. Crawshay-Williams followed Russell and W. K. Clifford in emphasizing the necessity of basing beliefs on available evidence. Crawshay-Williams' best-known work is 1957's Methods and Criteria of Reasoning (1957), in which he attempted to explain "why so many theoretical and philosophical controversies seem to be intractable" (Potter). He is best remembered today as influential in the fields of argumentation theory, rhetoric, and communications studies, and on the work of Stephen Toulmin, Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca, and Chaim Perelman.

Works

The Comforts of Unreason: A Study of the Motives Behind Irrational Thought (1947)

Methods and Criteria of Reasoning: An Inquiry into the Structure of Controversy (1957) Russell Remembered (1970)