John Langshaw Austin was White's professor of moral philosophy at Oxford from 1952 until his death in 1960. Educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford, he became a fellow of All Souls College in 1933; in 1935 he moved to Magdalen College, where he taught with conspicuous success until elected to the White's chair. During World War II he served with distinction in the British Intelligence Corps; he attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel and was awarded the OBE and the Croix de Guerre, as well as being made an officer of the Legion of Merit.

In the years before the war Austin devoted a great deal of his time and energy to philosophical scholarship. He made himself an expert in the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and also did much work on Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle's ethical works. At this period his own thought, although...