Memoirs Of A Semi-Detached Australian

In this challenging memoir, John Passmore mounts a passionate defence of the life of the mind, displaying the intellectual energy and insight that has made him a philosopher of international stature.

In this vivid and iconoclastic memoir, John Passmore takes us on an unsentimental journey from his childhood in Manly, then half-village, half-resort-‘seven miles from Sydney, a thousand miles from care’-to the hot-house environment of the University of Sydney, and on to the realities of his imagined Europe. ;;These physical voyages were rites of passage. The first marked the end of the fierce parochialism of childhood, inducting him into university life at a time of intellectual and political controversy. The second saw the death of ‘the little boy from Manly’ and his replacement by a semi-detached Australian-not a rootless ‘citizen of the world’, but an Australian whose angle of vision had been permanently changed.;;In this challenging memoir, John Passmore mounts a passionate defence of the life of the mind, displaying the intellectual energy and insight that has made him a philosopher of international stature.