Carol Gullidge Apr 18, 2012:

@ Charles: As it happens you COULD be right all along! Chambers gives "having in mind; with the aim of..." for "with a view to", which seems highly ambiguous to me (having in mind, I mean). Whether this means (a) "having in mind" + an intention (with the idea of), or (b) simply "bearing in mind" is fairly unclear to me. I still think it should be (a), but it's not clear enough to say for sure. Cheers for now!

Charles Davis Apr 18, 2012:

@Carol No, you're right, I must be in an argumentative mood this afternoon. I get like that sometimes, but there's no call for taking it out on you in that grindingly pedantic vein. I'm sorry! I do appreciate you agreeing with my answer (since I tend to find that I usually agree with you).

Carol Gullidge Apr 18, 2012:

or have USED even!

Carol Gullidge Apr 18, 2012:

@ Charles: whatever the reason I just feel that "in view of" would be more plausible in this context than "with a view to", and that it COULD have been a slip of the pen, absentmindedness, a sort of malapropism, or whatever. I was merely suggesting that as a plausible explanation, and it was by no means intended to be the be-all and end-all of the matter regarding all other possible instances. As I can't read the author's mind, I can't comment any further on what was ACTUALLY going through his mind, or why he chose (if that is indeed the case) to use this particular expression. I did after all agree with your answer, and really don't think this warrants an essay on how others - however learned - may or may not have use this expression and the rights and wrongs of other examples of its use.

Charles Davis Apr 18, 2012:

They sound wrong to me too, in the sense that I am not (or was not) familiar with this usage, but my subjective response may not mean that there is something wrong with what I am reading, but may simply reflect a gap in my knowledge. And it certainly could be germane to the asker's question, because your suggestion that "with a view to" is a slip of the pen for "in view of" is not unquestionably right. This writer could be deliberately using the expression in the way others have used it in the past. If there were no other examples, or none that could not be written off as mistakes, there would be nothing to argue about, but there are quite a number of other examples. That's why it's germane.

If this writer is deliberately using it in that sense, he or she is not alone; just to take one example, see the Iowa seminar programme I have quoted.

From time to time one comes across unfamiliar expressions. They are sometimes mistakes, but not always.

Carol Gullidge Apr 18, 2012:

in my view they all sound wrong! But that's not really germane to the Asker's question. He simply asked about the usage in this particular context

Charles Davis Apr 18, 2012:

@Carol As I say, you may well be right that this writer used the wrong "view" expression by mistake, and meant to say "in view of". But I don't think the Cambridge prof. did so, nor all the other writers who have used "with a view to" to mean something distinct from "with the intention of", but not identical to "in view of". Such uses of "with a view to" are actually not that rare. Are all of them mistakes?

Modern dictionaries define "with a view to" as expressing purpose or intention, and nothing else. But I don't think this has always been so. In 1820 Thomas Malthus published his Principles of Political Economy Considered with a View to their Practical Application. What he meant is clear from his earlier working title:

"For these two years past he has informed us, that he is preparing new Principles of Political Economy, considered with respect to the practical Applications. This work, which was impatiently expected, appeared in London, a few months since."
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/say/letter.html

So "with a view to" once meant "with respect to", and perhaps this usage, or something like it, survives today in some quarters.

Carol Gullidge Apr 18, 2012:

to me, "with a view to" used in the ways you describe above - whether by Henry Melvill Gwatkin or not - simply sounds odd. But, in any case, in the question posted here (which is all that matters), it definitely sounds slightly wrong, as though the writer just somehow plucked the wrong expression out of the air. It happens to all of us, including perhaps to such famous chaps as Henry Melvill Gwatkin, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge, who wrote these words in 1912. One would indeed expect such a chap to use correct English, but who knows? He might have been better at Ecclesiastical History than at the use of English. But all that is beside the point... I'm pretty sure that "in view of" isn't a variant of "with a view to" (or vice versa), but that whoever wrote this simply made a mistake - got the wrong "view" expression

Charles Davis Apr 18, 2012:

"In view of" would fit very well here, and it is certainly possible that the author really meant to say that. Indeed, I understood it to mean more or less exactly that. However, I'm not convinced that "with a view to", used like this, is simply a non-standard variant of "in view of". It's certainly not just a personal idiosyncrasy of this author. I have quoted a few comparable examples, and there are a number of others out there. My second example, "The present edition has been revised with a view to recent work on the subject", comes from a book by Henry Melvill Gwatkin, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge, who wrote these words in 1912. One would expect an author like that to use correct English (though no one's infallible). I'm not sure that sentence would mean the same with "in view of". "The present edition has been revised in view of recent work on the subject" would mean that it has been revised because new work has been done, but I think he meant to say that it has been revised to take account of recent work, and I don't think "in view of" would express that. Therefore I don't think "with a view to", used like this, always means precisely "in view of".

Abdelmonem Samir (asker) Apr 17, 2012:

Thanks, Carol. That's what I thought also. "In view of" would have been more appropriate.

Carol Gullidge Apr 17, 2012:

@Abdelmonem I quite agree with your doubts about the use of this term here, and am pretty sure the author should have used "in view of" instead of "with a view to", which, as you quite rightly point out, does mean "with the intention of"