The philosophical puzzles of the British Socrates

Imagine your donkey and mine graze in the same field. One day I conceive a dislike for my donkey and shoot it: on examining the victim, though, I realise with horror I’ve shot your donkey. Or imagine a slightly different scenario. As before, I draw a bead, but just as I pull the trigger, my donkey – perhaps more invested in this vale of tears than yours – steps out of the firing line and I shoot your donkey.

Now here’s the question. When, in either case, I turn up on your doorstep with the remains of your donkey, how should I frame my apology to you? In his 1956 presidential address to the Aristotelian Society, J.L. Austin (1911-1960), White’s Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, a man who, M.W. Rowe estimates in this scholarly yet entertaining and ultimately heartbreaking biography, was the leading philosopher at the world’s leading philosophy department, considered this literally asinine question.