https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9101-5851
Some people are, as it were, too big for their obituaries, and so it is with Graham McFee, who died on 10th October 2023. There is a great deal that should be said here about his life, work and achievements, and, most importantly, about the wonderful person he was and the enormous impact he had on others. Space doesn’t permit all of that, so what is here is inadequate, especially for those of us for whom Graham’s death was the loss of a dear friend, much esteemed colleague, and beloved teacher and mentor.
Having completed a BA in philosophy and English at Keele University in 1973, Graham took up a post at what was then the Chelsea College of Physical Education in Eastbourne, arriving just as David Best was departing. Graham made an enormous contribution to the development of the institution, and to the academic study of sport, through various phases, and various name changes, leading to it becoming the Chelsea School within the University of Brighton.
An MA by Research, also from Keele, followed in 1975 with a thesis, examined by David Wiggins, entitled Flesh: An Essay on Personal Identity. Graham’s doctoral work, conducted under the supervision of Richard Wollheim at University College London, saw his attention move to the philosophy of art, and led to the publication of the wonderfully titled Much of Jackson Pollock is Vivid Wallpaper in 1978. He was awarded the doctorate in 1982 for a thesis, entitled The Historical Character of Art: An Essay in Constructivist Philosophy, having been examined by Malcolm Budd and R. A. Sharpe.
Graham spent 1979-80 in Calgary, where he was a colleague of Charles Travis, who was to have a great influence on Graham’s work. He also sold Graham a car, which, shortly after Graham took possession of it, burst into flames. The 1980s was a period of many transitions in Graham’s thought. By the end of the decade what Travis would later call ‘occasion-sensitivity’ in combination with one particular therapeutic reading of Wittgenstein that was beginning to emerge in Gordon Baker’s work, began to form the core of what was to become the distinctive combination of elements at the heart of Graham’s approach in his mature philosophy. He was ready, by that point, to begin writing more books. Thirteen McFee books, plus an expanded edition of The Concept of Dance Education would appear between 1992 and 2021. Early in that period (in 1996) he became the University of Brighton’s professor of philosophy.
Graham’s work covered a wide range of topics, including, inter alia, the interpretation of Wittgenstein, free will, dreaming, philosophical aesthetics, the philosophy of science, the philosophical aesthetics of dance, dance education, leisure, Olympism, and philosophical matters relating to sport. He argued, unpalatably for some, that there isn’t really such an area of study as ‘the philosophy of sport’ because there aren’t philosophical issues in respect of sport, other than ethical ones. Nonetheless, he published three books on philosophical matters related to sport (plus a short collection of papers on human movement in 1977), and edited three others. Of those, Sport, Rules and Values (2004) is the one most obviously a classic of the philosophical literature relating to sport because of its fundamental focus on the nature of sport. The text is a detailed investigation of the implications of the view of rules and the notion of following a rule that Graham found in Wittgenstein’s work, not for the purpose of clearing up, once and for all, common confusions about the nature of sport and the explanation, judging and valuing of sport, but rather to help us develop the ability to dissolve such confusions where they arise for us.
Graham was, of course, also a very prominent figure in philosophical aesthetics. He served as Vice-President of the British Society of Aesthetics from 1999-2004 and published extensively in that area, including, depending on how one counts them, seven or eight books, and winning the 2012 Selma Jeanne Cohen prize, awarded by the American Society for Aesthetics, for The Philosophical Aesthetics of Dance: Identity, Performance and Understanding. His primary philosophical obsession, however, was with the work of Wittgenstein. His reading of Wittgenstein infuses all his work, but it wasn’t until 2015 that he gave us a book on the subject, aptly titled How to do Philosophy: A Wittgensteinian Reading of Wittgenstein. For Graham, it was important to approach Wittgenstein’s work as a philosopher doing philosophy in the way Wittgenstein approached it, something he felt was much less common than one would expect. In 2019 he dealt with some unfinished business regarding Wittgenstein with the publication of Wittgenstein on Mind, Meaning and Context: Seven Essays.
Graham became Emeritus Professor of the University of Brighton in 2012, bringing to an end a period in which his working life was split between Eastbourne and California, where he held a post at California State University, Fullerton. He continued in that latter role until he suffered a stroke in December 2022. Despite receiving treatment for multiple myeloma, Graham did not die of cancer. Rather, it seems most likely that he suffered additional stokes in the final two months of his life and died as a result of the cumulative impact of those. During his final days Graham was cared for by Myrene, his wife of forty years, and his stepdaughters Adrienne and Stephany.
Learning from Graham could, at least initially, be something of an unsettling business. There was a very distinct method to how he proceeded, but the trouble was that he didn’t feel it necessary to explain what that method was. As a consequence, it could initially feel rather like being thrown into the middle of the Pacific Ocean (in bad weather!). That was in no way an approach designed to intimidate (that was no part of Graham’s character at all). It was, rather, a consequence of him having acquired a sophisticated method from his detailed absorption in the work of Wittgenstein, coupled with the fact that he just knew such a great deal about all sorts of things, and had no trouble moving seamlessly from one thing to another. What was actually going on, and there may be some for whom this still comes as news, was the gradual dissolution of person-relative philosophical puzzlement by means of the consideration of objects of comparison until, gradually, one’s ability to fend for oneself developed. He knew exactly what he was doing, even if his student, colleague, friend, etc. didn’t. That method also had in its favour the fact that the best possible location for its exercise was the pub. The key point to emphasise is that Graham regarded philosophy as something one does, not a body of doctrine, so he was in the business of helping people develop the ability to do philosophy, not just telling them things about philosophy. The result was a genuine education, not what often goes by such a name these days. Graham changed the people with whom he engaged in these discussions. I am the person that I am, in large part, because of the example he provided, and the guided tour on which he took me, over thirty years of mentorship and friendship. I am very far from the only person who can say that.
Graham’s death is an enormous loss, that is why it has taken so long to produce this obituary, but it is far worse for those who never had the pleasure of gaining the great benefits that came from him having a central role in their life. For them, I can only recommend the work. There is a sense in which it was all about the work for Graham, although really more the doing of it than the finished product. Nothing much other than Myrene and his family, his friends, a whole set of Sussex pubs, and beer, preferably Harvey’s, got much of a look-in because it was all about doing philosophy.
A substantial, but not currently entirely complete, bibliography of Graham’s work can be found at www.graham-mcfee.co.uk.
A tribute by Paul McNaught-Davis and Alan Tomlinson, both of whom worked with Graham from the mid-1970s for over thirty years, can be found at https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/alumni/2023/11/08/professor-graham-mcfee-1951-2023/.
Tributes from colleagues of Graham’s in aesthetics can be found at www.british-aesthetics.org/resources/obituaries/graham-mcfee/, and https://cdn.ymaws.com/aesthetics-online.org/resource/resmgr/Newsletters/newsletter.pdf.