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Hello, welcome to the editor's desk.

This is the podcast where we take a closer look at the essays and articles and the latest print issue of

First Things magazine. I'm Rusty Reno. I'm the editor of First Things magazine, and I'm here

with you today at the editor's desk. I'd like to welcome Ed Faser to the podcast, familiar to

First Things readers as a regular writer for us,

and author of, most recently, The Common Sense of John Cyril in the December 2025 issue.

Welcome to the podcast, Ed.

Thanks for having me, Rusty. Appreciate it.

John Cyril, you know, a major figure in the American, English-speaking philosophical scene

in the second half of the 20th century, or I guess his productive career really spans

from the late 50s to the early aughts. Is that right? That's right. I think he

started teaching at UC Berkeley where he spent basically his entire career in I think

1959 after having studied under J.L. Austin and Peter Strauss and others at Oxford in the UK. But yeah, he ended up at Berkeley

and he was there from 1959 until his retirement in the, I think in the late 2010s.

And he was part of, he was, I mean, Austin, his mentor was a, he was, if you will, a dissenter from a fairly narrow conception of philosophy that kind of flourished in the English scene in the middle of the 20th century. Is that fair?

That's right. So Searle is generally associated with what's known as analytic philosophy,

this broad tradition that has dominated philosophy in the Anglo-American world since about the mid-20th century.

...