Critical Times

Professor of Philosophy, Flinders University 1967-1988
(Emeritus 1988)
10/12/1927 to 27/10/2004

Professor Brian Medlin will be remembered by many South Australians for his very public leadership of the campaign to stop the war in Vietnam. For many of us, the enduring image of Brian Medlin is the long-haired professor of philosophy, spreadeagled between two policemen, being dragged from the front of the anti-war march in the September of 1970. Along with many others, Brian Medlin was arrested that day and after a trial widely condemned for its distorted, incoherent and contradictory testimonies, he was imprisoned. He was released three weeks later but during his incarceration, supporters kept a candle-light vigil outside the Adelaide Gaol.

Brian Medlin was born in 1927 in Orroroo, in the mid-north of
South Australia, and grew up in Adelaide. At secondary school he
was introduced to the work of Bertrand Russell, thus setting him
on his life’s course. After graduating, he worked as storekeeper
on the Victoria River Downs station, then worked as a kangaroo
shooter, stockyard builder, horse-breaker and drover with his own
plant, even taking a mob of 60 horses across the Tanami to the
West Australian coast.

Returning to Adelaide in the early 1950s, Medlin worked as a
clerk and as a teacher, while enrolling at Adelaide University to
study English, Latin and Philosophy. Brian Medlin’s intellect
and staggering capacity for comprehension were reflected in his
academic results. He graduated with first class honours in 1958,
having established himself as a brilliant philosopher of great
promise. He took up a Research Fellowship at New College,
Oxford, in 1961, where he was highly regarded, and where he met
Iris Murdoch, with whom he corresponded off and on for most of
his life.

Medlin returned to Australia in 1964, and was appointed
Foundation Professor of Philosophy at the Flinders University
of South Australia in 1967, by which time he had published
significant articles in several areas of philosophy. In his academic
post at Flinders Medlin came to wider attention, bringing to
his teaching charisma, dramatic flair and rigorous argument.
Demanding hard work and utterly scathing of shoddy thinking
Brian Medlin was, nonetheless, a sympathetic, generous and
amusing teacher. He encouraged us to see philosophy, not merely
as an intellectual pursuit but as something integral to our daily
lives. He also encouraged us, wherever possible, to engage in
philosophy in accessible language. “You ought to be able write a
lot of your philosophy in such a way that a bloke can pick up your
essay in bar, sit down quietly and with a bit of effort, understand
what you’re saying.”

Australia’s participation in the war in Vietnam appalled Medlin.
He was committed to democracy in all areas of society, including
the workplace, and set up a democratic Staff-Student Consultative
Committee, just one of the
many progressive developments in the Flinders University
philosophy department under his stewardship. In the ensuing
years, a number of radical courses were introduced, including the
first Women’s Studies course in Australia. Professor Medlin himself
wrote and taught the highly innovative and influential course,
Politics and Art, which gave rise to the Australian folk-rock band,
Redgum.

A fit and intensely physical man, Brian Medlin never fully
recovered from a serious motorcycle accident in 1983. He retired
early, in 1988, after which he was named Emeritus Professor. He
settled in the Wimmera with his wife, Christine Vick, where they
worked to restore ten run-down acres to covenanted bushland,
publishing their findings as they went. Medlin and Vick were
awarded an Environmental Hero Award (Wimmera 2004) for
their work.

In his later years Brian Medlin maintained his passionately active
interest in all things, including history, current affairs, science,
natural history and photography. To the time of his death, he
continued to write philosophy and exchange correspondence with
friends and academics from all over the world.

On hearing of his death, one of my friends remarked that he loved
the fact that we had an internationally renowned philosopher who
was also a poet, bushman, drover, horse breaker and photographer.
“Nowhere else but in Australia,” he said.

Brian Medlin is survived by his beloved wife, Christine, his
children Barnabus, Margaret, Jake and Bruno and his stepdaughters,
Alice and Rebecca. He is deeply missed.

John Schumann

John Schumann was a student of Professor Medlin’s at Flinders
University. The two remained very close friends from that time on.
The above is an excerpt taken from John Schumann’s obituary for
Brian Medlin, which can be found in full at John Schumann’s web
site