Bernard Shaw, Philosopher

Extract

The irreverend and not always to be reverenced Frank Harris, in his book on Shaw, has sarcastically quoted Shaw's remark when the playwright was once told that he enjoyed a great reputation in America: “Which? I am a philosopher, novelist, sociologist, critic, statesman, dramatist, and theologian. I have therefore seven reputations.” Conceding his willingness to make Shaw a present of the last six, Harris nevertheless maintained that for the life of him he couldn't see how Shaw got in as a philosopher—even a laughing philosopher. A court jester, perhaps, or a “wit of the first water.” But being a philosopher entails, first, the formulation of a system of thought, and, second, the founding of a school of disciples to carry that thought on. Since, in spite of the “heaps of notes” Harris claimed to have gathered in a vain investigation of this subject, he could discover neither any system of thought nor any body of followers, he announced magisterially that, as a philosopher, Shaw “simply doesn't exist.”