Login
Maria Rosa Antognazza, professor of philosophy at King’s College London, has died.
Professor Antognazza was known for her work on the history of philosophy, particularly Leibniz, philosophy of religion, and epistemology. She is the author of, among other things, Leibniz: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016), Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation: Reason and Revelation in the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press, 2007). Another book, Thinking with Assent: Renewing a Traditional Account of Knowledge and Belief is due out from Oxford University Press this year.
You can learn more about her research here and here.
Professor Antognazza joined King’s College London in 2003. Prior to that, she was a member of the philosophy faculty at the University of Aberdeen. She earned her PhD in philosophy from Catholic University in Milan. She was the current the chair of the British Society for the History of Philosophy (BSHP) and a recent president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion (BSPR)
According to a memorial notice published on the King’s College London philosophy department page, Professor Antognazza died on Tuesday, March 28th, after a short illness. In a memorial notice at the BSPR site, she is remembered as “a brilliant and learned philosopher, kind and sensitive, and always so energetic and generous.”
Her funeral is to take place on Friday March 31st, at the Holy Road Catholic Church, Abingdon Road, Oxford, at a time to be confirmed.
You can listen to an interview with Professor Antognazza here.
UPDATE: Readers may be particularly interested in Professor Antognazza’s article, “The Benefit to Philosophy of the Study of Its History” which appeared in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy in 2014 (ungated version downloadable here). In it, she says:
The history of philosophy should be both a kind of history and a kind of philosophy, and that its engagement in genuinely historical inquiries is far from irrelevant to its capacity to contribute to philosophy as such. As a kind of history, the history of philosophy must meet the standards of any other serious historical scholarship, including the use of the relevant linguistic and philological tools, and the study of the broader political, cultural, scientific, and religious contexts in which more strictly philosophical views developed. As a kind of philosophy, however, its ultimate aim should be a substantive engagement with those very philosophical views—first, in striving to understand them on their own terms, and secondly, in probing and interrogating them as possible answers to central questions of enduring philosophical relevance.
Wayne J. Froman, associate professor of philosophy at George Mason University, has died.
Professor Froman worked in 20th Century Continental philosophy, especially phenomenology and figures such as Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Franz Rosenzweig, as well as philosophy of art. He is the author of Merleau-Ponty: Language and the Act of Speech (1982), among other works, about which you can learn more here.
Professor Froman joined the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at George Mason University in 1985. Prior to that, he taught at the New School for Social Research, Marist College, and SUNY Potsdam.
In a memorial notice on the George Mason website, Froman’s colleagues remember him as a leading scholar in his area and an inspiring example for his students, recalling his intelligence, sense of justice, and humor.
There is also a brief memorial notice here.
Ernst Tugendhat, an influential German philosopher who taught at the University of Heidelberg, the Free University of Berlin, and other universities, has died.
The following memorial notice was written by Stefan Gosepath (Free University of Berlin).
The philosopher Ernst Tugendhat (1930-2023) died on March 13, 2023. Tugendhat was an eminent contemporary German philosopher who made important contributions to re-establishing analytic philosophy in Germany after the Nazi era, when almost all analytical philosophers had had to leave.
At the same time, Tugendhat distinguished himself as an intermediary between continental and analytic philosophy.
Trained by Heidegger in the Aristotelian and phenomenological traditions, he offered original arguments to show that analytic philosophy of language is the culmination of Aristotle’s ontological project. In his systematic, historically-oriented treatise on (analytic) philosophy of language (Traditional and Analytical Philosophy, P.A. Gorner trans., 1982), he bridges the gap between continental and analytic ways of philosophizing.
In response to the tradition of the so-called philosophy of consciousness, Tugendhat applies linguistic analysis to explain the problem of consciousness of the self (Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination, P. Stern trans.,1986). He argues that Wittgenstein’s view of self-knowledge and Heidegger’s account of practical self-understanding are intrinsically connected, because one is only conscious of oneself when one asks what kind of human being one aspires to be. This self-addressed question is also central in Tugendhat’s conception of ethics: for him, morality is justifiable only in relation to conceptions of the goodness of the self. His lectures on ethics (Vorlesungen über Ethik, 1993), in which he developed his ethical views, are considered the most significant contribution to German systematic moral philosophy of their time alongside the discourse ethics of Apel and Habermas.
Born into a Jewish family in Brno, Tugendhat emigrated to Venezuela; he received his BA at Stanford in 1949, his PhD at Freiburg in 1956, and his Habilitation at Tübingen in 1966. He held professorships in Heidelberg, Starnberg, and Berlin.
UPDATE (March 19, 2023): German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sent public condolences to Tugendhat’s sister, Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat, calling him “one of the most important philosophers of the post-war period, whose thinking revolutionized and shaped German philosophy.” You can read the whole statement here. (via Christian Beyer)
Readers interested in learning more about Professor Tugendhat’s writings can browse some of them here and here.
Obituaries elsewhere:
Jitendra Nath “J.N.” Mohanty, professor emeritus of philosophy at Temple University, has died.
Professor Mohanty was well-known for his work on phenomenology (especially Husserl), Kant, and Indian philosophy. He is the author of, among other works, Between Two Worlds: East and West, an Autobiography (Oxford University Press, 2002), Classical Indian Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2002), The Self and its Other (Oxford University Press, 2000), Logic, Truth, and the Modalities (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), and Phenomenology: Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy (Northwestern University Press, 1997), Husserl and Frege (Indiana University Press, 1982), and Edmund Husserl’s Theory of Meaning (Springer, 1976). You can learn more about some of his writings here.
Prior to taking up his position at Temple, Professor Mohanty taught at various institutions, including the University of Burdwan, the University of Calcutta, the New School for Social Research, the University of Oklahoma, and Emory University. He earned his PhD at the University of Göttingen, and his MA and BA at the University of Calcutta.
He died on March 7th.
(via Malcolm Keating)
Anne Fairchild Pomeroy, professor of philosophy at Stockton University, has died.
The following memorial notice was provided by Peter Amato (Drexel University).
It is with profound sadness that I share the news of the passing of Anne Fairchild Pomeroy, Professor of Philosophy at Stockton University.
A legendary teacher and mentor at Stockton, Anne developed and taught courses that expanded the breadth of her program and her students’ horizons dramatically, including Critical Social Theory, Modernity and its Critics, Process Philosophy, African American Philosophy, Feminist Theories, Philosophy of the Other, Power and Society, Existentialism and Film, among others. She created and co-taught a highly successful course on Marxism and Economics with a colleague from the Economics program.
Anne’s scholarship was focused on social justice, and she produced scores of articles, conference presentations and the acclaimed book, Marx and Whitehead: Process, Dialectics, and the Critique of Capitalism, over the course of a long and successful academic career.
Anne was also an accomplished classical flute player, and performed on multiple instruments and sang with the Stockton Faculty Band for twenty years.
She served as Stockton Federation of Teachers Union President from 2012-2017, guiding the local through some of its most challenging times and complex negotiations. She said the Union was not an organization, but “a way of being in the world that we have chosen with each other.”
When I met Anne in the early 1990’s she had just arrived at Fordham from Columbia, in search of philosophy and philosophers who weren’t just interpreting the world. The community of scholars and activists she gathered around her provided what she had been seeking in an academic career and in her life. For Anne, the quest to be part of and help create such a community as an educator, philosopher, and activist was the work of her life, a life well lived and with great success.
But in the background for most of her stellar work Anne was fighting a battle with breast cancer, its effects, and the effects of its treatment. She defeated breast cancer, but not long after developed the endometrial cancer that would be fatal.
In the days since her death there has been a tremendous outpouring of admiration and sadness from students, colleagues, friends, union staff and rank-and-file, band-members, and others who knew Anne sharing stories and expressing their love for her and feeling of loss. In her research, her music, her activism, and her life, Anne always sought to build others up through connection and compassion. She will be remembered for her kindness, her intelligence, and her passionate advocacy for justice. In lieu of flowers or cards, please consider donating to your local SPCA, shelter, or farm animal sanctuary.
Stockton University will hold a remembrance and celebration of Anne’s life on Monday, March 20 on campus that can also be seen via Zoom. Please contact me if you would like further details: [email protected].
An obituary for Professor Pomeroy has been published in The Argo.
Charles H. Kahn, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, has died.
The memorial notice, below, was provided by Michael Weisberg, chair of the Department of Philosophy at Penn.
Charles H. Kahn, one of the most important historians of philosophy in the last century, has passed away at the age of 94. Kahn’s books and articles on ancient Greek philosophy, particularly on the Presocratics and Plato, are landmarks in philosophical and classical scholarship.
Born in Louisiana, United States of America, in 1928, Kahn enrolled in the University of Chicago at the age of sixteen, where he completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. After further study at the Sorbonne, he completed his doctorate in classical studies at Columbia University, then served as Assistant and Associate Professor of Classics at Columbia from 1958 to 1965. He was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965, where he remained until his retirement in 2012. In addition to serving as chairman of that Philosophy Department, he held visiting appointments at other major universities, including Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford.
As a leading scholar in his field, Charles Kahn served as editor or on the editorial board of several philosophical journals, as President of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy (1976-8), as Vice President of the American Philosophical Society (1997), and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000). His many honors include major research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies (1963/4 and 1984/5), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1974/75 and 1990/91), and the Guggenheim Foundation (1979/80).
While he wrote widely in ancient Greek philosophy, his focus was especially on Presocratics in the early decades of his career and on Plato in later decades. His doctoral dissertation, which was published as a book, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (Columbia University Press 1960), was a groundbreaking contribution to the study of pre-Socratic philosophy and is still unsurpassed today. His other books on the Presocratics include The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An edition of the fragments with translation and commentary (Cambridge University Press 1979), still widely admired among literary and philosophical scholars, and Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. A Brief History (Hackett, 2001), which was aimed at a wider audience.
In 1973 Kahn published the monumental work, The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek (Reidel, Dordrecht), in which he systematically studied all the uses of the verb “to be” in ancient Greek literature from Homer onwards, discovering uses and subtle nuances that had escaped the attention of scholars. The book continues to have a significant impact on our understanding of ancient Greek language and philosophy. It provoked numerous debates and responses over the years. In 2009, Oxford University Press published a collection of Kahn’s articles in reply to those responses, in a volume entitled Essays on Being.
Kahn’s enormous contribution to the study of Plato’s philosophy lies particularly in two important books. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge University Press 1996) and Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue: Return to the Philosophy of Nature (Cambridge University Press 2013). The first in particular was very widely discussed and provided both a trenchant critique, as well as compelling alternative, to a dominant paradigm in Platonic interpretation. Its enormous impact on Platonic studies made Charles Kahn one of the most important contemporary Platonists, along with the late Gregory Vlastos.
Charles is survived by his wife, sister, four daughters, son, and ten grandchildren.
Martin Perlmutter, professor emeritus of philosophy at the College of Charleston and director of its Jewish Studies program, died this past January.
The following obituary is by David Benatar, professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town.
Martin Perlmutter, who, for many years, was professor of philosophy and director of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston, died early on the morning of January 16, 2023, a few months short of his eightieth birthday. Marty, as he was known to most, was not only a builder of institutions but also an institution himself. He was a legendary figure on campus, and widely known further afield.
He joined the College of Charleston in 1979, following appointments at the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Tennessee at Nashville. At the College of Charleston, he served as Chair from 1983 to 1991, and was instrumental in creating an excellent philosophy department. For his colleagues, he was an astute philosophical interlocutor, helping people clarify and shape their ideas. His own philosophical interests were primarily in bioethics and philosophy of religion. He taught courses in these and other areas.
During his tenure as Chair, he also established a program in Religious Studies, the forerunner of the College’s current Department of Religious Studies.
In 1991, he was persuaded to lead the incipient Jewish Studies program at the College. Between then and his retirement in 2019, he defied all doubts, growing the program and creating infrastructure to an extent that had been unimaginable to many—but not to him.
What became the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program now offers a major (and a minor) in Jewish Studies, supports Jewish student life, and provides an extensive outreach program to the broader community. It also has an impressive endowment, which Marty raised. The program is housed in its own building, initially purchased by a non-profit corporation that Marty established.
The Center’s kosher vegetarian and vegan dining hall, open not only to students, staff, and faculty at the College, but also to the public, was named in his honor – formally the “Dr Martin Perlmutter Dining Hall,” but more affectionately “Marty’s Place.”
He was amused by this unusual way of honoring an academic, but it was a fitting tribute to a man who liked to feed people not only figuratively with ideas, but also literally with food. To say that he “fried a good latke” would be an understatement, because he fried hundreds of latkes every Hanukkah. That was typical of Marty’s hands-on approach. Nor was he all hands and head, as his impressive 3:17 marathon time demonstrates.
In the early 1990s he established the African American-Jewish Connection, which brought together African American and Jewish students. In 1994, he was among those who started the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina.
Marty’s parents, Jacob and Esther Perlmutter, fled Berlin in 1938. He was born in New York on April 30, 1943. He grew up there, attending Yeshiva University High School. He did his BA at City College of New York, and his graduate work at the University of Illinois. His doctoral dissertation was written under the supervision of Frederick L. Will.
Marty was a superb and trusted friend, generously helping innumerable people over the course of his life. He was welcoming to all, and easy to like. His warm, endearing demeanour coexisted with a resolute determination. He and a much younger friend always wanted to let the other one through the door first. He jokingly told his friend that he was stubborn. His friend replied: “Look who’s talking!”
Marty preferred to focus on others rather than to be the object of focus. It was clearly a source of discomfort for him that becoming ill led him to be more the subject of attention than he would have liked. Even then he sought to deflect attention from himself. Despite that, he acceded to being the subject of an article about the novel medical treatment he was receiving, because it might bring some hope to others afflicted with cancer.
He was immensely grateful for the cutting-edge treatment he received. It extended his life for a decade, most of it of good quality. His wonderful sense of humor did not desert him even in his final days, when he was still sharing jokes. It was always a delight to experience his full-bodied laughter.
Marty is survived by his wife, Jeri, their children, Jacob, Aaron, Daniel, and Esther, their spouses and children, and by Marty’s sister Ruth, and the rest of their family. He was buried at the KKBE synagogue cemetery on Huguenin Avenue in Charleston, on January 17, 2023.
One of those eulogizing Marty quoted him as saying that those delivering funeral eulogies should always speak favorably of the deceased, but not so favorably that people think that they are at the wrong funeral. The eulogies for Marty were all glowing. Yet, given who Marty was, nobody could have had any doubt that they were at the right funeral.
David Benatar, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Stephen Nathanson, professor emeritus of philosophy at Northeastern University, has died.
Professor Nathanson was known for his work on economic justice, war and peace, patriotism, punishment, and social and political philosophy. His books include Terrorism and the Ethics of War, An Eye for an Eye: The Immorality of Punishing by Death, The Ideal of Rationality: A Defense, Within Reason, and Patriotism, Morality, and Peace. You can learn more about his writings here.
Professor Nathanson was on the faculty of Northeastern for over 40 years, serving twice as department chair, and for several years leading the university’s center for teaching and learning. He earned his PhD from Johns Hopkins University and his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College.
His colleagues rememember him as a dedicated educator and write, “Professor Nathanson was a mentor, musician, activist, and lover of ideas. He pursued a collaborative and supportive version of philosophical practice, and believed that philosophy was crucial to understanding and responding to the challenges of our times.”
Bruce Waller, professor emeritus of philosophy at Youngstown State University, has died.
Professor Waller was known for his work on free will and moral responsibility, authoring books such as Freedom Without Responsibility, Against Moral Responsibility, The Stubborn System of Moral Responsibility, The Injustice of Punishment, and Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and the Desire to Be a God, among others. You can learn more about his writings here and here.
Professor Waller taught at Youngstown State from 1990 until his retirement in 2019. He previously taught at Elon College (now Elon University). He earned his PhD at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1979.
Philosopher Gregg Caruso writes:
Bruce Waller was an innovative and inspiring philosopher who almost singlehandedly revitalized moral responsibility skepticism in the 1980s and 90s, making it a serious and attractive position for a whole new generation of philosophers. Not only did he present powerful arguments against the kind of moral responsibility needed to justify our desert-based attitudes, judgements, and treatments (such as resentment, indignation, moral anger, blame, and retributive punishment), he also developed a kind of error theory to diagnose our stubborn attachment to the moral responsibility system, which he argued is ultimately a harmful and dehumanizing set of practices and beliefs. Perhaps more than any other philosopher, Waller showed that by abandoning belief in moral responsibility and the notion of just deserts, we can look more clearly into the cause and more deeply into the systems that shape individuals and their behavior, and this will allow us to adopt more humane and effective practices and policies. Waller’s work will continue to inspire and challenge philosophers for generations to come.
He died on February 8th, 2023. There is an obituary here.
UPDATE: This post was updated with information provided by Robyn Waller, Bruce Waller’s daughter-in-law.
Benjamin Ross Tilghman, professor emeritus of philosophy at Kansas State University, has died.
Professor Tilghman worked in philosophy of art and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is the author of But is it Art? (1984), Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics (1991), An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1993), The Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts (2012), and Reflections on Aesthetic Judgment (2017), among other works.
Professor Tilghman joined the faculty of Kansas State in 1967, retiring in 1994, and served as department head there from 1967 to 1980. Before that, he had taught at the University of Wyoming, Western State College of Colorado, and Reed College. He earned his PhD from the University of Washington and his BA and MA from Washington University in St. Louis.
His colleague, Jim Hamilton, writes:
Ben’s interest in the philosophy department and its students at Kansas State University was everlasting. He often contributed to a fund for scholarships for students, called the “Tilghman Excellence Fund,” set up in Ben’s name by several former students. And. significantly, he was instrumental in helping faculty establish, explore, and excel in their philosophical interests.
While at the University of Washington he was introduced to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein whose conception of philosophy continued to be the primary influence on this work. His interests were largely in aesthetics and the philosophy of art although he has “dabbled” (his word) in philosophy of religion, humorous philosophical short stories, and translations of works in French literature. Those who knew Ben will miss his keen intellect, curiosity, and wit.
You can learn more about Professor Tilghman’s writings here.
FreshRSS 