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It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of Jon Altschul, associate professor of philosophy at Loyola
University New Orleans. Jon was born in Evanston, Illinois, on May 18, 1981. He earned a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a Ph.D. from the University of California–Santa Barbara, where he completed his dissertation under the direction
of Kevin Falvey. Jon joined the philosophy department at Loyola in 2009 and was awarded tenure in 2015. In the same year, he was elected president of the University Senate by his faculty colleagues. He was one of the most well-liked and well-respected
faculty members at Loyola.
Jon specialized in epistemology and philosophy of mind. Much of his research (following from his dissertation) focused on epistemic justification and entitlement. His views on perceptual entitlement were central to this research and were greatly influenced
by the work of Tyler Burge. Jon also published work on the bootstrapping problem, the disjunction problem, and epistemic deontologism.
Besides teaching courses in his research areas, Jon had also taught logic, metaphysics, and senior seminars in perception and in the philosophy of John Locke. He was a devoted teacher, advisor, and mentor to students in the philosophy and general studies
programs.
Although Jon’s work was technically sophisticated, he was not an ivory tower philosopher, but preferred to practice philosophy on the ground. He had a knack for communicating complex philosophical ideas in clear, simple terms and was determined to take
philosophy beyond the college classroom into the community. To that end, he founded the Philosopher Kids program in partnership with the Good Shepherd School, a school for underserved children in New Orleans. Jon recruited and coached Loyola students
to conduct weekly after-school classes with second-graders at the school. By engaging grade-schoolers in discussions about philosophical themes taken from children’s literature, the program strives to set the proper foundation for critical thinking
in young children to equip them to become more discerning thinkers. For his work with Philosopher Kids, the University Senate honored Jon with an award for Community Engagement.
Jon will be remembered as a wonderful friend, colleague, and faculty leader. As Reverend Kevin Wildes, S.J., university president, noted, "All who knew Jon remember his gentle laughter and a frequent twinkle in his eye. They also remember the care, thoughtfulness,
generosity, intelligence and rigor with which he approached his research, led faculty meetings, and taught classes. Jon was well respected by colleagues and students alike."
Jon is survived by his parents, Lynn and Joel, grandmother, Esther, brother, Jason (Karen), sister, Sarah (Robert), nieces, Emma and Ellie, and nephews, James and Jamal. A memorial service for Jon was held at Loyola University on February 29. A second
memorial service was held April 8 in Kenilworth, IL. Jon will be greatly missed.
- J. C. Berendzen and Constance Mui, Loyola University New Orleans
Robert James Baum, a specialist in applied ethics, passed away at the age of 74 in Baltimore on May 17th, 2016, following a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. He is survived by Barbara Ann White, his partner of 10 years; his daughter, Aimee Belser,
and her family; his two nieces, Cindy Cutler Skacel and Tammy Randa, and their families; and his stepson, John Murphy, and his family.
Baum was born on October 19, 1941, and was educated at Northwestern University, earning his BA in 1963 and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Ohio State University in 1969, with a dissertation on George Berkeley's philosophy of mathematics, under the supervision
of Paul Olscamp. He taught for some time at the Middle East Technical University in Turkey and at the University of Maryland at College Park, but spent most of his career at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and at the University of Florida.
He spent 12 years at Rennselaer, there achieving the rank of full professor, before moving to Florida in 1981 as a new department chair. He retired in 2008, having devoted 27 years to the University of Florida.
Baum's primary research and professional service was in the area of applied ethics, especially business ethics and ethics for specific professions. With Deborah Johnson and Norman Bowie he co-founded the Business and Professional Ethics Journal in 1981 and was co-editor through 1988, after which he was sole editor until 2010, when the journal was acquired by the Philosophy Documentation Center, which currently publishes it in cooperation with the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics
at DePaul University. In 1991, Baum founded a second publication, Professional Ethics: A Multidisciplinary Journal, to provide a venue for what he saw as important work deserving exposure that could not fit comfortably under the purview of
the first journal. This publication was folded back into the first one in 2003. Both were sponsored for a time at the Center for Applied Philosophy and Ethics that Baum directed at the University of Florida.
His published research includes a short monograph, Ethics and Engineering Curricula, several edited anthologies on ethics, an edited anthology in the philosophy of mathematics, and many articles in such journals as Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science,
Teaching Philosophy, and Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association. He gave more than 80 lectures at conferences, and himself organized conferences on professional ethics, the ethics of health care, the ethics of finance,
and a special conference in honor of R. M. Hare. He had an overriding concern with bringing philosophical expertise to bear on practical problems, as also evidenced by his serving from 1974 to 1976 as the director of the Ethical and Human Value Implications
of Science and Technology Program sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
This concern extended to his teaching. He authored a textbook on logic that has gone through four editions, first published in 1975 and still in print today with Oxford University Press. As one of his former teaching assistants reports, he made great
efforts to make his lectures engaging to students (even in as dry a subject as logic) and worked to connect the issues in his ethics courses with those students would encounter outside the classroom.
Outside of academic philosophy, Baum pursued a secondary avocation as a collector of antique kilims—flat weaves created by nomadic tribes in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the last decade of his time as a professor, he was often invited to speak at conferences
on kilims, and his collection numbered over 800 pieces, a collection that will be broken up and donated to museums around the country. Some of his more valuable pieces were shown at the University of Baltimore Law School's Gallery of Art in an exhibit
entitled "19th Century Women's Abstract Art."
Baum was a relatively quiet person, thoughtful and mostly keeping to himself. His character is perhaps well portrayed by something we learned in the course of preparing this notice. He was very fond of picking blueberries and would arrange his travel
so that he would be home when they were in season. He would drive to different farms to pick blueberries and prepare them with tofu, a dish he reported to be delicious.
- Department of Philosophy, University of Florida
Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., was born in Philadelphia on July 30, 1942, the eldest of five children in a devout Catholic family. He married Barbara Dean on June 4, 1966. They had three daughters and a son, and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary some two
months before he was stricken with what turned out to be an aggressive brain tumor. He died on September 24, 2016. On September 29, the flag at the main administrative building of the University of Toronto was flown at half-mast in honor of Joe and
Professor Robert Craig Brown (who had died on September 22).
In 1970, Boyle completed his Ph.D. dissertation at Georgetown University under the supervision of Germain Grisez. He held positions at Fidelis College in Herman, Pennsylvania (1968–70); Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan (1970–76); the College
of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota (1976–81); and University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas (1981–86). In 1986 he moved to the University of Toronto to take up a position as professor of philosophy at St. Michael’s College in the Department of Philosophy.
He retired in 2013.
Although his main focus was on teaching and scholarly work, he was also a highly effective administrator, serving as principal of St. Michael’s College (from 1991 to 2001) and as interim chair (2003) and acting chair (2008–2009) of the Department of Philosophy.
He also served as president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association in 1988–89.
Boyle had a rare ability to collaborate with other philosophers. He made an important contribution to the three volumes of Grisez’s The Way of the Lord Jesus. He authored Free Choice: a Self-Referential Argument (1976) with Olaf Tollefsen
and Grisez; Life and Death with Liberty and Justice: A Contribution to the Euthanasia Debate (1979) with Grisez; Catholic Sex Ethics (1986) with Ronald Lawler and William May; and Nuclear Deterrence, Morality, and Realism (1989)
with Grisez and John Finnis. He co-edited Philosophical Perspectives in Bioethics (1996) with his colleague L. W. Sumner, though the two strongly disagreed on many issues. Of his 98 published articles and chapters,
17 were co-authored.
Boyle’s working relationships with his colleagues were also a striking feature of his career. In his early appointment at Fidelis College, he formed an enduring friendship with Ronald Lawler, O.F.M.Cap., with whom he later coauthored a book. While at
Aquinas College, he took part in weekly discussions with the philosophers at neighboring Calvin College. He worked under Roderick Chisholm’s supervision while on a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at Brown University in 1975–76, and
with Robert P. George and others as a Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton in 2010–11. At Brown he met Thomas Sullivan, whom he joined as a colleague at St. Thomas in Minnesota and who became a close friend and collaborator. Beginning
at a conference on moral philosophy in Rome in 1986, he formed a close friendship with Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach. From 2013 to 2016 he was a leader of a philosophy of religion reading group in the Department of Philosophy of the University
of Toronto, focused on classical theism.
Boyle gave considerable attention to end-of-life issues through his career, authoring many papers on the provision of nutrition and hydration at the end of life; palliative sedation; authority in medical decision-making; allocation of scarce resources;
and the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary care. In the last year of his life, he delivered the Sixth Anscombe Memorial Lecture at Oxford University, “Against ‘Assisted Death’,” arguing that the traditional prohibition against intentional
killing of innocent persons is a “coherent, stable, and justly compassionate approach to addressing suffering at the end of life.”
Boyle’s work on nuclear deterrence, as well as on end-of-life ethics, depended heavily on his work on intention, side effect, and the principle of double effect. Boyle’s essays on double effect appeared in Ethics, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy,
The American Journal of Jurisprudence, and elsewhere, and have been widely cited and discussed. Two important claims emerged from his work on this topic.
Boyle’s work encompassed many other topics, including property rights and obligations; Roman Catholic ethics; the foundations of ethics; and the incommensurability of goods. He was deeply conversant with the thought of St Thomas Aquinas and skilled in
dialectical argument.
When Boyle arrived in Toronto as a Catholic moral philosopher, he had to earn the respect of his colleagues, and quickly did so. He defended his positions vigorously, but was known for his generosity and willingness to listen to people who disagreed with
him. As his colleague Arthur Ripstein said the evening before his funeral, “You cannot write about those kinds of questions without being a person of strong moral opinion, and Joe was certainly a person of strong moral opinion. He was also a person
of strong moral character. People like that can sometimes be difficult or dogmatic, but not Joe. As a colleague or an administrator, he was the most nonjudgmental and welcoming person. That doesn’t mean that he was tolerant of wrongdoing, only that
his manner was always open to the humanity in every person.”
He died surrounded by his family just as dawn was breaking. His son Thomas was struck by the beauty of the sunrise that morning. May he rest in peace.
- Elmar J. Kremer (University of Toronto)
- Christopher Tollefsen (University of South Carolina)
Donald G. Brown, a distinguished Canadian philosopher, passed away at the age of 89 on July 18, 2016. Don was educated at UBC (BA, honors philosophy, 1947) and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which he entered as a commoner with senior status in 1948.
He became a Scholar of Corpus in 1949, and attained his BA with a first in PPE in 1950. In 1951 Don was a Senior Demy of Magdalen College, then in 1952 a Fellow by Examination of Magdalen; he received his MA and D.Phil in 1955. His dissertation, written
under Richard Hare, was “Practical Reason: A Study in the Logic of Theory and Practice.” His examiners were H. L. A. Hart and J. D. Mabbott. Don joined the philosophy department at UBC in 1955 as an assistant professor, took a leave of absence in
1958–59 to teach at Magdalen, then came back to UBC where he remained until his retirement as full professor in 1985.
Don’s primary philosophical interests were in the nature of inference and practical reason, action, and ethics, with a specialty in J. S. Mill. His major publications include “What the Tortoise Taught Us” (Mind 1954), “The Nature of Inference”
(
Phil Rev., 1955), Action (University of Toronto Press, 1968), “Mill on Liberty and Morality” (Phil Rev., 1972), and “Mill’s Moral Theory: Ongoing Revisionism” (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, 2010). In retirement he
read voraciously and widely, almost as if comps were coming up. He never met a philosophic problem he did not like (except, he once confessed, in aesthetics), and he pursued those he came across with vigor and determination. He also wrote until about
a year before his death and has an article on Mill’s Harm Principle in press.
Don also was remarkable for how seriously he took his teaching, and the time and energy he devoted to it. The resulting influence he had on students was enormous. He had the ability to make philosophical problems sound interesting and important, gave
model lectures (and was even better in discussion), and lavished attention on us. The comments he put on our work were unsurpassed, and he was unfailingly helpful, encouraging, and accessible. All his students had his home phone number and an invitation
to call. The evaluations he received would make an immodest person blush.
Don had non-philosophic interests too. He liked chamber music, jazz, plays, literature and poetry (Phillip Larkin along with Yeats and Hardy were among his favorites), swimming, and sunbathing, and took a lively interest in science and politics and human
affairs generally. He also had a practical bent. He taught in and was a staunch advocate of Arts I, was a moving spirit in developing an experimental free school for primary grades, was one of the founders (along with Bob Rowan and Reg Robson of UBC)
of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (which remains a force for social change to be reckoned with), and served on the ethics committee of Vancouver General Hospital.
He leaves a daughter, Claire Zaslove, and grandchildren Max and Jessica in Seattle, his partner of 18 years, Monica Robson, in Vancouver, and many former students, colleagues, friends, and acquaintances who remember him with affection, gratitude, and
admiration.
- On behalf of the Philosophy Department, University of British Columbia
Robert Fogelin, professor of philosophy and Sherman Fairchild Professor in the Humanities (emeritus)
at Dartmouth College, died at his home in White River Junction, Vermont, October 24, 2016, after dealing with Parkinson’s disease. A leading American philosopher known for his work on philosophical skepticism, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and David Hume,
he received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1960 and then taught at Pomona College and Yale University before joining the faculty at Dartmouth in 1980.
Fogelin was a legendary, inspirational teacher, receiving awards for teaching at every institution he joined. At Yale, his introductory philosophy course had enrollments of almost 800 students. Leading by example, he instilled in his students an appreciation
for the importance of reading difficult texts closely, of representing conflicting perspectives fairly, and of writing clearly and concisely without unnecessary technical terminology. He brought out the excitement, the challenge, and the sheer fun
of doing philosophy.
National and international recognition of his teaching and scholarship includes the Robert Foster Cherry Great Teacher Award (Baylor), the Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Professorship in Philosophy, and fellowships at the Rockefeller Study Center (Bellagio),
the Liguria Center for the Study of the Arts and Humanities (Bogliasco), the Australian National University, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford). In 2005 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences (AAAS).
Fogelin’s many books include Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification, Walking the Tightrope of Reason, Figuratively Speaking, and Philosophical Interpretations; two studies of Wittgenstein; one study of Berkeley; and four studies
of different aspects of Hume’s philosophy, including one forthcoming, Hume’s Presence in The Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (a posthumous book about Hume’s posthumous book). His informal logic textbook, Understanding Arguments,
is now in its ninth edition. His first book, Evidence and Meaning (1967), remains a model of how to develop an original theory of modality, knowledge, perception, argument, and values and norms—all within less than 200 pages.
Fogelin’s works established him as both a leading historian of philosophy and the most prominent contemporary exponent of Pyrrhonian Skepticism. In contrast with Academic or Dogmatic Skepticism, which denies that we know anything, Pyrrhonian Skepticism
suspends belief about whether or not we know anything. This brand of skepticism has ancient roots in Sextus Empiricus but is often overlooked in recent epistemology. Fogelin revived it by invoking a skeptical regress argument, by showing how it can
avoid self-refutation and meet other standard objections, and by using it to interpret many mysterious passages by Hume and Wittgenstein.
In addition to his research, Fogelin was known for enjoying life and philosophical discussion. He and his wife Florence were avid travelers and lovers of art, music, and poetry. Yet he also fit naturally in his family’s rustic cabin on Partridge Lake,
rowing in his shell, and living a simple life enhanced by his homemade pasta, foraged mushrooms, and good scotch. It was all very down-to-earth, warm, and welcoming. In more official settings, his sense of humor came out when, for example, he explained
one critic’s meanderings by performing a backwards dance on stage during a prestigious conference. He had many philosophical friends, all of whom benefited greatly from his clear, constructive, and good-natured comments and guidance. In sum, he was
an exemplar of Hume’s model of a virtuous person—that is, “a person with a generous array of mental qualities useful and agreeable to the possessor and others, mixed in just the right proportions.”
He is survived by his wife, Florence Fogelin; by sons Eric Fogelin (Shasta, CA), John Fogelin (Petersfield, England), and Lars Fogelin (Tucson, AZ); and by two grandchildren, Oliver and Isabelle (Petersfield, England).
- Don Garrett, Doug MacLean, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Susan Wolf
Professor Dale Jacquette of the University of Bern in Switzerland died suddenly and unexpectedly on Monday, August 22, 2016, at the age of 63. After graduating from Oberlin in 1975 with high honors in philosophy, Jacquette earned his Ph.D. at Brown University
in 1983 with a doctoral thesis on the logic of intention under the direction of Roderick Chisholm. Thus began an amazingly productive career which saw the publication of a long series of informative and influential books appearing at a rate exceeding
one per year, and covering a vast range of philosophically salient topics in logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind. Of special interest to Jacquette were Meinong, Russell, and Frege—to each of whose work he dedicated several books. His breadth
of vision is indicted by the fact that Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein also figured in his pantheon. Beyond his own writings, Jacquette rendered service to the profession in various important editorial projects, including a term as editor of the American
Philosophical Quarterly (2002–2005).
There is a long tradition of transatlantic migration of European scholars into American universities, but movement in the reverse direction is exceedingly rare. Jacquette became one of its few instances when he moved from Penn State University to the
University of Bern in 2008. His transit betokened the deep appreciation his European colleagues had for his extensive work on modern Germanophile logic and philosophy.
Jacquette was a devoted and indefatigable researcher possessed of a keen insight into fundamentals and a tenacious determination to get to the heart of the matter. His premature death left several important projects in a state of near-readiness for publication,
including a monumental philosophical biography of Gottlob Frege in preparation for Cambridge University Press.
An accessible and friendly person who always manifested a spirit of cooperation and collaboration, Dale Jacquette had accumulated a wide circle of admiring and dedicated friends and associates. His departure is a great loss both to philosophy itself and
to the philosophical community.
- Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh
Professor Emeritus Haig Khatchadourian was born in East Jerusalem, Palestine, in 1925 and died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2016. He was married for more than 61 years to Arpiné Khatchadourian (Yaghlian), who preceded him in death in 2012. He is survived
by two sons, a daughter, and two grandsons.
Professor Khatchadourian earned his BA and MA from the American University of Beirut and his Ph.D. from Duke University. In addition to numerous (at least 130) journal articles in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, Epistemology and Ontology,
Ethics, Social Philosophy, and Philosophy of Religion, he has published fourteen original books in philosophy: The Coherence Theory of Truth: A Critical Evaluation; A Critical Study in Method; The Concept of Art;
Music, Film and Art; Philosophy of Language and Logical Theory; The Morality of Terrorism; Community and Communitarianism; The Quest for Peace between Israel and the Palestinians; War, Terrorism, Genocide, and the Quest for Peace – Contemporary Problems in Applied Ethics;
Meaning and Criteria: With Applications to Various Philosophical Problems; Philosophical Reflections: Philosophical Reflections of a Minute Philosopher; Truth: Its Nature, Criteria, and Conditions; and, most recently, How To Do Things with Silence (September
2015, DeGruyter).
In addition, Professor Khatchadourian published Shadows of Time, The Raven and the Cardinal: Poems of Remembrance and Celebration, and a Verse Play, Valentio Di’ Buondelmonte, A Tragedy in Five Acts. The play, The Raven and the Cardinal,
and Thoughts, Impressions, Reminiscences (1946–2013) have also been published as e-books. He also edited his wife Arpiné’s posthumously published book, David of Sassoun: An Introduction to the Study of the Armenian Epic (July 2016, Wipf
and Stock)
Before joining the philosophy faculty as a tenured full professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1969 where he taught until his retirement in 1994, Professor Khatchadourian taught at Melkonian Educational Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus (1950–51),
at Haigazian College (now University) in Beirut (1951–52), and he was a professor of philosophy at the American University of Beirut, where he taught for fifteen years, culminating in his promotion to full professorship in 1967–68. During 1967–68,
he was a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. In 1968–69, he taught at the University of Southern California, and from 1969 on, he taught at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee as a tenured full professor. In
1976–77, he was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (Semester II) and was distinguished visiting professor at the University of New Mexico–Albuquerque in 1978–79.
Professor Khatchadourian’s areas of specialization were aesthetics and philosophy of the arts; normative ethics, including feminist and environmental ethics and political ethics (ethics of terrorism, revolution, war, and peace); value theory; philosophy
of language; contemporary analytical philosophy, and social philosophy. His areas of competence were metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of law, and history of modern philosophy.
Professor Khatchadourian’s selected honors and awards included Phi Beta Kappa, Graduate Division, Duke University (1956); J. Walker Tomb Prize, Princeton University (1958); Harvard International Seminar (June–July 1962); Prize, Essay Contest, Ararat (1964); Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pittsburgh (1963–64); Outstanding Educators of America Award (1973); Senior Fellow, Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (1975–76, Semester II); Charter Member,
Phi Kappa Phi; Phi Beta Kappa-Eta Chapter; Liberal Arts Fellow in Philosophy and Law, Harvard Law School (1982–83); University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Alumni Association Award for Teaching Excellence (1987); Seminar on Postmodernism: A Philosophical
Genealogy Readings in Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida, University of California, Riverside (June–August, 1994); Fellow, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture, and Commerce (FRSA), England (1994–2016); Ernest Spaights Plaza Award,
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (2005).
Memberships in learned societies included the American Philosophical Association; American Society for Aesthetics; Philosophy of Time Society; Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society; International Society for the Study of Argumentation; Armenian Academy
of Philosophy; International Academy of Philosophy; Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia; and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.
At the time of his death, he was working diligently on two books: his autobiography, Leaves from My Life, Volume I, and a book on “World Tragedies: Drama.” Also, to use his own words, he has “reams and reams of writing” already completed that need
to be published.
Haig Khatchadourian was an exemplary man who dedicated his life to peace, truth, and beauty. He was loved and admired by all who knew him.
- Sonia Khatchadourian, Department of English, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Professor Helen S. Lang died June 20, 2016, after a 15-month battle with brain cancer.
Forced by illness to leave her beloved Philadelphia, Helen spent the end of her life in hospice care in New York, surrounded by family and friends. She is survived by two daughters and their families: Ariella Lang and Alexander Kornfeld and their
children Nina, Lela, and Gabriel; and Jessica Lang and Joerg Riegel and their children Hannah, Leah, and David.
Helen was born February 19, 1947, in Urbana, IL, and grew up in Albuquerque, NM. After earning bachelor’s (1970) and master’s degrees (1971) at the University of Colorado, Helen completed her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Toronto in 1977.
Her dissertation, supervised by Joseph Owens, was entitled “Aristotle and the Supreme Mover of the Physics.” In the course of her long and productive career, Helen taught at the University of Colorado, the University of Denver, SUNY Albany,
the University of Pennsylvania, Trinity College, and Villanova University. Most of her career was spent at Trinity College, where she was honored as the inaugural holder of the Alfred J. Koeppel Chair in Classical Studies, and at Villanova University,
where she chaired the philosophy department from 2002 to 2005. As a researcher, Helen was a fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT and at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Her work was
also recognized in major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.
By all standards Helen’s research project was impressive. Her specializations were ancient Greek philosophy, and science and medieval and Renaissance thought. (She also described herself as competent in the history of medieval science, but what she considered
a competency most of us would consider a specialization.) Helen published two groundbreaking books on Aristotelian natural philosophy, Aristotle’s Physics and Its Medieval Varieties (SUNY Press, 1992) and The Order of Nature in Aristotle’s Physics (Cambridge University Press, 1998). Together with A. D. Macro, she published an edition and translation of Proclus’s De Aeternitate Mundi (University of California Press, 2001). Helen published more than three dozen articles, wrote dozens of
scholarly book reviews, and gave scores of lectures.
At a time when many philosophers were reading Greek philosophy as a source to be mined for responses to contemporary philosophical problems and unearthing these lost riches with the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy, Helen championed a combination
of philosophical rigor and historical sensitivity. Ancient thinkers were to be understood and appreciated on their own terms even if there was no philosophical coin to be made with respect to some current problem. The task of the reader of ancient
texts was principally to submerge oneself into their world. Thus when her peers were reading Aristotle’s logic, psychology, or metaphysics with an eye to contemporary philosophical issues, Helen was reading texts in ancient science, particularly physics,
and seeing the world through its lens.
Helen loved ancient Greek as a language, and her fascination with ancient physics put her at the very forefront of the wave of interest in the late Greek Commentators on Aristotle. At the time of her death, Helen was developing a new study of the concept
of body in Plato and Aristotle. Two essays, “Plato on Divine Art and the Production of Body,” (in B. Holmes and D.-K. Fischer, ed. The Frontiers of Ancient Science: Essays in Honor of Heinrich von Staden [De Gruyter, 2015]) and “Embodied or
Ensouled? Aristotle on the Relation of Soul and Body,” (in J. E. H. Smith, ed. Embodiment [Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2017], show the preliminary results of her research.
Helen’s work has been an inspiration to students and colleagues. Excellence was always her motto. She was a passionate, generous teacher and mentor, always eager to talk philosophy and always a source of encouragement, constructive criticism, and intellectual
energy. She believed in philosophy as a democratic endeavor and wanted to hear a good idea or a good question from anyone who had one. Helen was deeply committed to nurturing the work of younger scholars; those of us whose manuscripts and proposals
have been through the “Lang Treatment” are forever in her debt. Helen was also deeply committed to improving the academy for women and members of other underrepresented groups.
Outside the academy, Helen was a gifted pianist who took great pleasure in the Philadelphia music scene. She was immensely hospitable and a gourmet cook; her dinners are legendary among her friends. She particularly loved to host her daughters and their
families at home in Philadelphia. “Camp Gram” was a yearly treat for all of the grandchildren. Helen had a gift for friendship, was quick with a laugh, and was always up for adventure. She was also a generous donor to many charities, foremost among
them the Southern Poverty Law Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Congregation Darkhei Noam. Helen’s combination of brilliance, warmth, and joie de vivre is profoundly missed by her colleagues, friends, and family.
- Julie Klein, Villanova University
- Jon McGinnis, University of Missouri–St. Louis
Thomas Anthony Losoncy was born January 17, 1939, and passed away on June 12, 2016. He received his bachelor of arts degree in 1961 from Sacred Heart College in Detroit, his master of arts degree in 1963 from the University of Detroit, and his Ph.D. in
1972 from the University of Toronto, writing on “The Nature of the Intellectual Soul in the Teachings of Giles of Rome.” Tom’s thesis supervisor was A. C. Pegis, and his advisor was A. A. Maurer. Tom began his career teaching philosophy at Villanova
University in 1967, retiring in 2005 as associate professor. For 38 years, he was intent that freshmen receive the best possible introduction to philosophic thinking. In this way, he brought his love for the history of philosophy to thousands of students.
In addition to philosophy students, Tom also taught students studying medicine, law, and religion.
A recognized and highly regarded scholar in the field of medieval philosophy, Tom Losoncy’s research focused on Saints Anselm and Augustine, but he also appreciated and taught courses in Greek philosophy, medieval philosophy, ethics, political philosophy,
and philosophy of human nature. An author and editor with more than 30 scholarly works in the field of medieval philosophy, Professor Losoncy delivered numerous papers on Saint Anselm at conferences held in the United States and Europe (including
Italy, England, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany, and Hungary). Two of these papers he gave at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. He served on the International Saint Anselm Committee and was U.S. National secretary for the 5th
International Saint Anselm Conference in 1985. Among his scholarly works may be found “St. Augustine,” in Ethics in the History of Western Philosophy (St. Martin's Press, 1989), 60–97; “The Soul-Body Problem in the Thirteenth Century: Countering
the Trend Toward Dualism,” Studies in Medieval Culture XII (1978): 91–96; “St. Anselm’s Rejection of the ‘Ontological Argument’—A Review of the Occasion and Circumstances,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, LXIV(1990): 373–85;
and “Plato’s Meno Argument for Recollection: Correct and Incorrect,” Methexis (Etudes Neoplatoniciennes Presenteees au Professeur Evanghelos A. Moutsopoulos) (Athenes: Centre International d'Etudes Platoniciennes et Aristoleciennes, 1992),
60–66.
In addition to his own scholarly work, Tom was a generous colleague and mentor. He is perhaps best remembered as the founder and principal organizer (for nearly three decades) of the annual International Conference on Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance
Studies held at Villanova University. Tom envisioned the PMR as a “working conference,” where scholars would roll up their sleeves and work through an idea with colleagues. He was especially dedicated to giving younger scholars a venue to present
their work at the PMR conference.
Loving husband and father, Tom was also deeply involved in his church and his community. He played the organ and sang, contributed to parish leadership, and taught in the religious education programs. Tom was proud of his Hungarian heritage and, recalling
the era when smoking was a common feature of faculty meetings, colleagues remember his affinity for cigars.
Professor Thomas Losoncy’s love for the history of philosophy and dedication to passing that love on to others created an immense impact on both the world of philosophy and his local community.
- On behalf of the Department of Philosophy, Villanova University
Daniel D. Merrill died on March 13, 2016, after a brief hospitalization. The Oberlin community
will greatly miss his wisdom and friendliness.
Dan was a central member of the Oberlin Philosophy Department from 1962 until his retirement in 1998. He was a longtime professor of philosophy who also served as chair of the department from 1965–1968 and from 1982–1986. He published a number of articles
on logic and the history of logic in leading journals as well as a book, Augustus De Morgan and the Logic of Relations. He also organized a large number of philosophical conferences, the Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy, and edited the proceedings
for publication.
Dan was born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1932, and attended Princeton University, where he majored in mathematics. In his senior year, he developed an interest in the philosophy of mathematics and logic. A young professor at Princeton, Hilary Putnam, encouraged
him to continue his studies in philosophy, and he entered the graduate program at the University of Minnesota where he worked with Wilfred Sellars and Herbert Feigl. After completing his Ph.D. with a dissertation on The Theory of Logical Constants,
he taught for three years at Knox College in Illinois before becoming an assistant professor at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1962. He was promoted to associate professor in 1967 and to professor in 1975. At Oberlin, Dan regularly taught courses in logic,
philosophy of science, modern philosophy, philosophy of religion, and theory of knowledge.
Dan served as associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1970–1973. He was a highly respected member of the Oberlin faculty who was regularly elected to the most important faculty committees. He had a well-deserved reputation for dealing
with college issues in a rational, non-ideological way. Dan would patiently listen to opposing viewpoints and form his positions on the basis of the available evidence. He was a paragon of reasonable thinking in that he was willing to change his initial
position if he was given sufficiently good reasons.
Dan’s major research interests were in logic, the history of logic, and the philosophy of science. His 1990 book, Augustus De Morgan and the Logic of Relations, concerned the development in the nineteenth century of a formal notation for expressing
relations and of rules for deriving consequences from statements about relations. From ancient times, geometrical reasoning was considered a paradigm of logical thinking, but until De Morgan developed a formal logic for relations, formal logic was
unable to express geometrical reasoning. Dan’s book examines the history of De Morgan’s attempts to create a formal logic that can deal with these issues. He was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for research for
this book.
Dan served on several committees of the American Philosophical Association: the Committee on the Status and Future of the Profession (1979–1982), the Central Division Nominating Committee (1970, 1984), and the Central Division Program Committee (1983).
Dan was a great colleague who was regularly available to discuss philosophical and college issues. I would sometimes stop by his office to talk, and he was always ready to contribute insights. After his retirement Dan continued to be interested in philosophical
issues; he would attend the lectures of visiting speakers and raise interesting questions during discussion periods.
Dan is survived by his beloved wife, Marly, his son, Steve, and his daughter, Karen.
- Peter K. McInerney, Oberlin College
Myra E. Moss, emeritus professor of philosophy and government at Claremont McKenna College, died on July 26, 2016, at age 79. Her BA was from Pomona College and her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University. She came to Claremont McKenna College (CMC) in
1975 (originally as an adjunct professor), was tenured in 1991 (she was at the time one of the few tenured women professors here), served as chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies from 1992 to 1995, and retired in 2007.
Myra was an expert in modern philosophy, with a special emphasis on Italian philosophy. At the height of her career, she was undoubtedly the top American expert in Italian philosophy, and was so recognized by Italian academics. She was the author and/or
editor of several books and multiple essays in philosophical journals. Her edited works included The Philosophy of Jose Gaos (Rodopi, 1997). Her books included Benedetto Croce Reconsidered: Truth and Error in Theories of Art, Literature, and History (University Press of New England, 1987) and Mussolini’s Fascist Philosopher: Giovanni Gentile Reconsidered (Peter Lang, 2005). Two of her most cited essays are “Enduring Values in the Philosophy of Benedetto Croce,” Idealistic Studies 10,
no. 1 (1980): 46–66, and “Croce and Collingwood: Philosophy and History,” in The Legacy of Benedetto Croce: Contemporary Critical Views, ed. Verdicchio, Trafton, and D’Amico (University of Toronto Press, 1999).
Myra was a committed teacher, dedicated to her craft; her students frequently commented on how much real learning went on in her class. For several years she taught seminars in philosophy for selected CMC first-year students. Later in her career she was
known for courses in fascism and theories of history. She was also an excellent colleague and citizen of CMC.
On a personal level, it should be noted that in her youth Myra was a highly accomplished, near-Olympic level equestrian, and her love of horses continued throughout her life. She was married to Dr. Andrew Rolle, Robert Glass Cleland Professor of American
History at Occidental College, for many years.
- Department of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College
Clifton J. Orlebeke served on the philosophy faculty at Calvin College from 1957 until his retirement
in 1992. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on November 17, 1926, he passed away on October 13, 2016, at the age of 89. His wife of 65 years, Barbara Cosand Orlebeke, passed away in February 2016. He is survived by four children and eight grandchildren.
One of the latter, grandson Benjamin Orlebeke, received a B.A. in philosophy from Calvin College in 2014.
After graduating from Calvin College in 1948 with a B.A. in philosophy, Clif initially pursued graduate study in applied science, earning an M.A. in engineering from the University of Michigan in 1950. His interests soon turned to philosophy, and he moved
east to pursue that interest. In 1963 he received the Ph.D. from Harvard University, having written a dissertation on “Plato’s Theory of Natural Law.” The philosophy of the ancient Greeks remained a major interest, particularly after he had the opportunity
to study Socrates in a summer seminar directed by Gregory Vlastos. During a sabbatical spent at the University of Notre Dame, he also developed a lasting interest in issues related to artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind. While at Harvard
Clif taught freshman composition, and in all of his later classes he emphasized the connection between clear thinking and cogent writing.
During his long career at Calvin he taught a wide range of courses, including American philosophy, Asian philosophy, logic, and history of philosophy, and from 1985 to 1988 he served as department chair. As department member and as chair he contributed
in many ways to the emergence of a remarkable undergraduate philosophy department: within a few years of his arrival at Calvin, his colleagues included Peter DeVos, Alvin Plantinga, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. A tribute given at the time of Clif’s
retirement notes that “as a colleague he was always calm, measured, thoughtful, and helpful; he was an unfailing source of sensible advice, a trait which earned him heavy committee assignments in the college.” Clif inspired generations of students
with his love for philosophy, his eagerness to explore questions on the intersection of theology and philosophy, his warm and welcoming spirit, and his quick wit.
In 1975 Clif collaborated with Lewis Smedes, a theological ethicist at Fuller Theological Seminary, to assemble a collection of essays, God and the Good: Essays in Honor of Henry Stob. The dedicatee of this Festschrift was a colleague who taught philosophy
first at Calvin College and later at Calvin Theological Seminary. This collection, widely referenced in discussions of ethics and philosophical theology in the decades that followed, included contributions by Arthur Holmes, Allen Verhey, Alvin Plantinga,
O. K. Bouwsma, and Nicholas Wolsterstorff. (All but the first of these, it may be noted, were graduates of Calvin College.) Clif’s contribution, the last in the volume, concerned “The Behavior of Robots,” and it opened with this arresting comment:
Robots, like Hamlet, are fictitious beings. Unlike Hamlet, robots have no hearts, not even fictitious ones. Hamlet, though he had a heart, slew his stepfather. What will robots do to their parents?
Members of the Calvin department who were once Clif’s students or served with him on the faculty remember him as a man of wide interests, calm and patient demeanor, and devotion to his students. One student and colleague told the college news office,
“Clif was one of the professors who persuaded me that philosophy was my calling, because there was nothing more important for a young Christian to think about.” Another commented, “One of Clif’s greatest contributions was chairing the department.
His organization was superb, his personal style was warm, and he could coax people into taking on the most unpleasant assignments.”
From 1979 until 1985 Clif served as editor of Christian Scholar’s Review, a journal of interdisciplinary scholarship grounded in Christian commitment. During his six-year tenure the journal grew steadily in quality and in readership, and the ranks of
its affiliated institutions expanded to include colleges and universities representing a wide range of Christian traditions. The journal continues today to publish quarterly issues exploring the relationship between religious commitment and scholarly
inquiry.
Immediately following his retirement, Clif spent three semesters teaching philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist College. While there, in the last years of the last remaining British colony, Clif and Barb opened their home to many young Chinese men and women,
offering them advice and encouragement in their studies and also helping them to explore religious questions in an atmosphere less and less open to such discussions. Several of the students they mentored later pursued further education at Calvin and
elsewhere in the United States.
Those of us who served with Clif on the faculty remember his ready wit and his dry sense of humor, which lifted the spirit in long faculty meetings. We also remember how highly he esteemed precision and clarity, in ordinary conversation no less than in
written form. “He was kind, supportive and well-spoken,” a colleague told the college’s writer, a man who “regularly spoke in graceful, perfectly formed prose paragraphs—I admired him greatly for that.”
- David A. Hoekema, Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College
Daniel T. Regan passed away December 17, 2016. Dan was born August 5, 1936, and attended St. Michael’s College, part of the University of Toronto. In addition to his major in philosophy, Dan played football and basketball and was active in student government.
He earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Villanova University. After teaching at Archmere Academy, and Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, Dan was appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Villanova in 1966. The
department and the university counted him among its faculty leaders for fifty years. His lifelong love of philosophy gave him expertise in history of philosophy, American philosophy, Catholic social thought, peace and justice studies, and logic. He
loved teaching, and he loved teaching first-year college students.
Dan introduced approximately 15,000 students to the joys of philosophy during his time at Villanova. With his infectious laughter and unfailing good humor—paired with his remarkable memory and brilliant analytic mind—Dan demonstrated the love of wisdom
in every class session. He was a gifted teacher who transformed generations of students from, as he describes in his logic course, “satisfied sloppy thinkers to intellectually tough logicians.” Dan instigated a number of new courses, including PHI
2450 Catholic Social Thought, which are still being taught today. He received the prestigious Lindback Award for Teaching Excellence in 1971 and maintained his status as one of the most popular teachers at the university throughout his career. He
was a longtime member of the American Philosophical Association.
Dan was a committed athlete who coached generations of kids and students. In the early 1950s, Dan returned to his middle school alma mater to coach seventh and eighth grade football teams at St. Matthias School in Bala Cynwyd. While there, he coached
his future philosophy colleague Joe Betz. He also acquired the very complimentary—and very fitting—nickname “Moses,” although “Coach” was the nickname that followed him into the department. Dan organized faculty intramural teams for an estimated thirty-five
years and served as umpire to the faculty softball league when his own playing days were over.
Dan’s commitment to athletes led him to found the Office of Academic Support for Athletes, and he served as the director and faculty academic advisor for all of Villanova’s varsity student-athletes for over forty years. He was chair of the Athletic Advisory
Committee of University Senate starting in 1971. In 1987 he became the first NCAA Faculty Athletic Representative (FAR) for Villanova University. The Villanova Athletic Department created the Dr. Daniel T. Regan Award in his honor; the award is presented
annually to the varsity team with the most improved GPA from the prior academic year. Dan was inducted into the Villanova Varsity Club Hall of Fame and, in 2016, was honored again for his lifetime of service to the Athletics Department with the Nova
Nation Award.
Modeling the life of the academic citizen, Dan transformed the campus through his service. With Fr. Ray Jackson, he was the founder and first director of the Center for Peace and Justice Education in 1977, one of the first in the nation. He consulted
for the establishment of Peace and Justice Programs at St Mary’s in California (1991), Iona College in New York (1993), Benedictine College, Bellarmine College, Loyola of New Orleans (1991). (Indeed, his commitment to peace and justice also led him
to a featured appearance on the William S. Buckley show to debate the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.) In 1989, Dan received the honorary degree of doctor of humane letters from Niagara University for his work on the Peace and Justice program. He
broke new ground for social justice in academia as well. Dan served for a time as the faculty moderator for student government and was a leader on the committee that became the University Senate. He served as the Villanova AAUP Vice president (multiple
years), the Villanova Gender Equity chair, the Villanova Minority Presidential Scholar program faculty member, and the chair of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Core Curriculum committee. Dean at the time, Fr John O’Malley (in 1982), described
that core curriculum as “the glory of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Envy of other institutions,” and told Dan “your contributions are immeasurable, intangible, and of the highest order. The students, faculty, and administration
salute your wisdom, integrity, grace, and wit. . . . We look forward to your continued beneficent influence and grand presence.” Having served on every conceivable committee within the department, the college, and the university, Dan received the
university’s top honor for service, the Lawrence C. Gallen, OSA, Faculty Service Award, in 2013.
Many of these service commitments were mirrored in national committees as well. Dan served on the American Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) National Advisory Board for Peace and Justice (1991), the NCAA gender equity committee and minority concerns
committee (early 1990s), and was a national liaison and executive board member of the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletes (N4A) as well as a member of the long range planning committee and minority concerns committee for N4A.
Members of the philosophy department recall Dan’s witty meeting minutes, his abiding smile, and his glorious singing voice. Dan was married to Dorothy Foley Regan (dec.). They had four children: Paula Regan, Daniel Regan (Cathy), Matthew Regan (Sarah),
and Katherine Lenehan (David); and eight grandchildren. Dan was surely among the wisest of men. His legacy in higher education extends far beyond philosophy and he is deeply missed.
- Department of Philosophy, Villanova University
The Department of Philosophy of the Ohio State University is saddened to report the death of James Patrick Scanlan, a leading specialist in Russian philosophy. He died on October 28, 2016, at Mount Carmel Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, after a short and
difficult struggle with cancer. Jim was born on February 22, 1927, in Chicago. After serving in the Marine Corps in 1945–1946, he attended the University of Chicago, where he received his bachelor’s (1948), and master’s (1950) degrees, followed by
a Ph.D. in philosophy (1956). In 1948 he married Marilyn Morrison, who became his lifelong companion.
Jim taught philosophy at the Goucher College in Baltimore from 1956 to 1968, rising from instructor to associate professor. He then became a professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Soviet and East European Studies at the University of Kansas
for two years, after which he moved to the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where he remained as a professor of philosophy until his retirement in 1992. In 1988–1991 he also served as director of the Center for Slavic and East European Studies
at Ohio State.
Beginning in the late 1950s, Jim became interested in Russian philosophy, and it was in this field that he made his lasting contribution as an author, editor, translator, and teacher. Together with his senior collaborator and friend of many years, George
Kline (who died two years earlier almost to the day), Jim was largely responsible for the growth of this field in the U.S. from a handful of scholars to a firmly established and continually expanding area of study. The joint effect of their work and
influence is hard to overstate. Jim’s interests focused on the history of Russian philosophical thought, Russian Marxism, post-Soviet Russian ideology, and the philosophies of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. But in the course of his long and productive career,
Jim’s mind and pen turned to a surprising variety of subjects, both historically and across areas of philosophy. He wrote about Russian and Soviet political philosophy, epistemology, dialectics, religious thought, aesthetics, and philosophy of history
as well as about topical issues in U.S.-Soviet relations such as the nuclear arms race. He delved into the theories of both socialists and religious mystics, Slavophiles and Westernizers, spanning a bewildering spectrum of opinions. Among his editorial-cum-translation
projects, the collaboration on the widely used three-volume reader titled Russian Philosophy (1965) particularly stands out; it has gone through several editions, has been translated into Korean in 1992, and remains in use today. Solo translation
projects include Peter Lavrov’s Historical Letters (1967) and Michael Gershenzon’s History of Young Russia (1986), for which he received an award from the National Translation Center. Jim authored two books, Marxism in the USSR: A Critical Survey of Current Soviet Thought (1985) and Dostoevsky the Thinker (2002), both of which got a lively reception in the field. The Dostoevsky volume was translated into Russian in 2006, a sign of recognition of his work outside the U.S. This book, which has received critical
acclaim both in the West and in Russia, especially will define his legacy as a student of Russian thought and literature. He also edited and co-edited several anthologies, among which Russian Thought after Communism: The Recovery of a Philosophical Heritage (1994) is particularly notable for the caliber and quality of contributors. Several dozen scholarly articles and book chapters as well as numerous reviews, encyclopedia entries, and introductions complete the picture. He was in high demand as a speaker
and gave over 175 scholarly and public presentations in 11 countries in the course of his career. Death interrupted his work on a book dealing with Tolstoy’s philosophy.
Jim’s work was recognized by numerous awards and research fellowships from such prestigious funding sources as the Ford Foundation (twice), International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (twice), Fulbright-Hays
Program, Rockefeller Foundation, University of Fribourg (Switzerland), and Hokkaido University Slavic Research Center (Japan). Accompanied by his wife, Marilyn, he made several long-term trips to Russia to study the history of Russian thought at the
Moscow State University’s Department of Philosophy, the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of Philosophy, and Russian State University for the Humanities. His work influenced fellow students of Russian philosophy around the world, including Russia
itself. In 1993, for example, he gave a provocative paper titled “Does Russia Need Russian Philosophy?” at an international congress in Moscow that occasioned a lively debate in Russia about the future course of philosophical thought in that country.
This was not an isolated incident when Jim’s work disturbed the prevailing opinion; rather, it showed a trait in his intellectual persona. In his book on Soviet Marxism he showed that the ostensibly uniform and unperturbed surface of philosophical discourse
in the Soviet Union was merely a front concealing a variety of debates on virtually every aspect of the official doctrine. It also revealed a striking lack of coherence in this seemingly solid edifice—right before the moment it crumbled into pieces.
Likewise, his book on Dostoevsky demonstrated that the writer often set his mysticism and artistic intuition aside to engage in quite formal, syllogistic reasoning on various philosophical questions. He was not, contrary to what many have said, a
man of faith and insight alone, but regularly called upon the understanding both to question and to buttress his own convictions as well as those of his characters.
Jim passed his healthy scepticism, independence of opinion, and curiosity that looks behind appearances on to his numerous grateful students. He will be missed and remembered by those whose lives and minds he touched around the world. His memory was honored
at a recent meeting of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in Washington. In Russia, two major philosophical journals are preparing publications about his life and work and another commemorative publication is underway
in a U.S. Slavic Studies journal.
Jim is survived by Marilyn Morrison Scanlan, his wife of 68 years, his half-brothers Daniel and Thomas, and several nieces and nephews.
- Justin D'Arms, Professor and Chair Department of Philosophy, Ohio State University
The Philosophy Department at the University of Connecticut is saddened to report the death of Emeritus Professor Jerome A. Shaffer. He died, at age 87, on November 17, 2016, after a very brief illness.
Jerry was born on April 2, 1929, in Brooklyn NY. He attended Cornell University, where he studied philosophy with Norman Malcolm and Max Black, graduating in 1950. While at Cornell, he met Ludwig Wittgenstein in a now famous session Malcolm held for Cornell
graduate students and undergraduate majors. After graduation from Cornell, Jerry entered the graduate program at Princeton, where he completed his Ph.D. in only two years. He then spent a year at Magdalen College, Oxford, on a Fulbright scholarship.
While at Oxford, he studied with Elizabeth Anscombe, J. O. Urmson, and Gilbert Ryle.
After a brief stint in the army, Jerry accepted a position at Swarthmore College, where he taught from 1955 to 1967. During that time, he instructed and inspired a number of students who went on to distinguished careers in philosophy, among them Peter
Unger, Gil Harman, David Lewis, and Allan Gibbard. He moved to UConn in 1967 in large part to be able to teach graduate students. UConn had recently decided to inaugurate a graduate program in philosophy, and Jerry and C. D. Rollins were hired to
augment its already distinguished faculty. The expansion and subsequent flourishing of both the graduate program and the department owe a great deal to Jerry, who, despite his aversion to administration, was cajoled and cudgeled into serving as department
head from 1976 to his retirement in 1994. Under his leadership the department achieved an amazing atmosphere of helpful cordiality and good spirit—often months went by without a department meeting, and the occasional meetings were remarkably uncontentious.
Jerry’s own contributions to philosophy centered on the philosophy of mind and included numerous widely reprinted articles and three books, one of which, his seminal monograph Philosophy of Mind, was translated into Japanese and Portuguese.
But Jerry’s interests and expertise in philosophy extended well beyond the philosophy of mind, as evidenced by his widely used textbook Reality, Knowledge, and Value. Over the course of his career, he frequently taught courses and seminars
in early modern philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, and a variety of less standard courses, for example, one on the philosophy of love. His diversity was also manifested by his anthology of readings on violence and the wide range of Ph.D.
dissertations he supervised, including one on Buddhism and another on the problem of evil.
Jerry’s service to the profession was also exemplary. For several years he organized the APA summer seminars for teachers of philosophy, and these gained praise from all participants, instructors and students alike. His many honors include a senior fellowship
from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.
Following his retirement from UConn, Jerry obtained a degree in family counseling and had a long and successful career in family and marital counseling. He was also an avid and excellent bridge player, an experienced scuba diver, an intrepid motorcyclist,
and a great friend to a great many diverse people. He is survived by a brother, his wife, two children, five grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter. He will be missed by many.
- Scott Lehmann and John Troyer, The University of Connecticut
Professor Liu Shu-hsien was born in Shanghai in 1934. He received his philosophical training at the National Taiwan University. Upon graduation, he taught at Tunghai University. In 1964, he furthered his doctoral studies in the United States under the
supervision of the renowned philosopher and theologian Professor H. N. Weiman. Having obtained his doctorate from Southern Illinois University in 1966, he started his academic career at his alma mater and was promoted to professor in 1974. In 1981,
he resigned from Southern Illinois University and became Chair Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong until his retirement in 1999. After retirement, he moved to Taipei, served as the Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese
Literature and Philosophy of Academia Sinica, and continued teaching for universities until he passed away in 2016.
He had served as a member and board member of professional societies, including the American Philosophical Association and International Societies for Chinese Philosophy. In research, Professor Liu had been academically active. He published almost thirty
books and hundreds of journal papers that won him wide international acclaim as a specialist in Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy. He has also been considered the representative of the third generation of Contemporary Neo-Confucianism
for his lifelong effort to reinterpret Confucian humanism. Zhongguo Renmindaxue Chubanshe published ten volumes of his representative works in 2020.
- Chung-yi Cheng, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Malcolm Barry Estes Smith died on August 15, 2016, at home in Northampton, Massachusetts. Barry came to Smith College, where he would spend his career, in 1967 from Cornell University. He completed the Ph.D. in 1969 with a dissertation entitled “A Critical
Study of the Emotive Theory of Ethics.” Anyone who knew Barry Smith and his philosophical work—he was a staunch ethical intuitionist—is very sure that any study he would do of the emotive theory (or anything like it) would indeed be critical.
A tenacious philosopher of strong, and strongly held, views, Barry's interest in his subjects was always more than academic. Over the years he staked out a variety of positions in ethics and the philosophy of law which he regarded, and I suspect all
of his readers and colleagues would agree, as of import to our individual and community lives.
For the most part Barry taught courses in ethics and legal theory at Smith (and occasionally at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he mentored several graduate students). He was also fond of teaching the survey courses in the history of
philosophy. His students remember him as demanding—a teacher of high standards—but also fair. He especially enjoyed team-teaching and the opportunity it gave for friendly debate in the classroom.
Like any good philosopher (but perhaps more than most), Barry was a study in contrasts. Born in the South (Houston, 1939), he spent most of his life in New England. He was an undergraduate at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), but there he studied not
war, but English and philosophy. He saw several years of active duty with the army in the mid-1960s, including service in Viet Nam, and was honorably discharged at the rank of Captain. Perhaps in reaction to army life, he at one time wore his hair
longer than anyone else in the philosophy department, and in his early years at Smith College his uniform was a white leather jacket with fringe. He became quite conservative in his political views, but on the other hand, his answering machine at
one point greeted callers with his own version of the opening stanza of “The St. James Infirmary Blues.” A fine guitarist, he was equally talented with another stringed instrument, the tennis racquet. Perhaps the most telling contrast in his life
was between his deep love for the law—which led him, in mid-career, to law school at Berkeley followed by a half-time legal practice in Northampton—and his equally deep-seated conviction that we are under no moral obligation to obey that same law.
The motley nature of these characteristics—perhaps evidence of a libertarian streak—made Barry a fascinating and endearing colleague, one moreover who never let political or philosophical differences interfere with friendship.
Barry produced, under the name M. B. E. Smith, a string of challenging philosophical articles of admirably high quality. These pieces were published in a variety of well-regarded philosophical and legal journals. His widely cited essay “Is There a Prima
Facie Obligation to Obey the Law?” first appeared in the Yale Law Journal in 1975 and continues to be included in anthologies in law and philosophy. Barry's penchant for engaging colleagues in provocative discussion is echoed in the titles
of some of his essays: “Should Lawyers listen to Philosophers about Legal Ethics?” (Law and Philosophy, 1990: an intriguing question, given his own dual career, but his answer was a resolute No); “Do Appellate Courts Regularly Cheat?” (Here
he replied, roughly: “yes, and rightly so”) and—a favorite—“Can a Lawyer Be Happy?” (Criminal Justice Ethics, 2000). Barry retired from Smith College after 35 years in 2002.
As a kind of capstone to a lifetime of thought about moral theory, Barry published in 2010 an essay he had worked on for many years: “Does Humanity Share a Common Moral Faculty?” (Journal of Moral Philosophy). His argument for “commonalism”—a view
which he attributed to such diverse thinkers as Aquinas, Hume and W. D. Ross, among others—supports the conclusion that “normative theory’s task is not to revise, but rather to discern and explain the shared moral conception that we all apply in our
ordinary moral lives. . . . Far better than relativism, scepticism or elitism, commonalism explains how reflective persons of good will, but of different languages and cultures, can intelligibly debate with one another over moral and political issues,
and how they often find substantial ground for agreement. Commonalism also offers a secure moral foundation for human rights and democracy: if all humanity shares a moral conception and so the capacity for attaining moral knowledge, there plainly
can be no good moral reason for reserving political advantages and opportunities to only a portion of it.” On this important issue Barry was a convinced egalitarian.
Admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1985, Barry continued his solo practice in Northampton until 2011. A man of admirable community commitment who performed copious pro bono legal work, he was proud to have “a good reputation up at the county
jail.” There are not many philosophers of whom that sort of thing could be said. He also did more than his share of community service on boards and panels, both locally and in the wider philosophical profession.
To return to his question “Can a Lawyer Be Happy?” Barry was responding to a skeptical book of that title by William H. Simon. To judge by his own life and work, the answer is a clear “yes.” Barry often credited his wife, Patricia Sweetser, his sons,
Malcolm and Eric, and the rest of his family for much of his own happiness, of which he also said it was more than he deserved. Reminded, when his own death was imminent, of Kant’s “practical postulate of immortality,” Barry was typically philosophical.
As a confirmed but open-minded agnostic, he said he did not know if there is an afterlife, but (ever the defense attorney), he added that if he were to face judgment, he thought he could plead that he had lived a good life. His family, friends, and
colleagues would surely want to file amicus briefs on his behalf: he did indeed lead a good life, and he shared it generously with the rest of us.
- John M. Connolly, Sophia Smith Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Smith College
Bill Stine was born to a Lutheran minister in Allentown, PA, on March 29,
1936. He attended Haverford College and won a Fulbright Scholarship to Göttingen University and a Rockefeller Brothers Theological Fellowship to Harvard Divinity School. But apparently philosophy was Bill’s calling, for he earned a Ph.D. from the
Harvard philosophy department in 1969.
While at Harvard Bill met and married Gail Caldwell, a fellow graduate student, and both took positions at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan; Bill had previously taught at Williams College. Sadly, Gail died young (the Wayne State department
annually holds a Gail Stine Memorial Lecture).
Bill later married Marcy Chanteaux, now cellist emeritus in the Detroit Symphony, who survives him. Bill and Marcy loved opera and frequently visited the opera capitals of Europe. A high point was visiting the Wagner opera mecca, Bayreuth, to hear seven
Wagner operas in 2010.
Bill’s philosophical interests were primarily early modern philosophy, especially Kant, and Dewey’s pragmatism. He published, among other papers, “Dewey’s Theory of Knowledge” in The Monist (1973), “Transcendental Arguments” in Metaphilosophy (1972), and “Self-Consciousness in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason” in Philosophical Studies (1975).
Mostly Bill gave yeoman service to Wayne State. He served as chair of the philosophy department, directed the undergraduate honors program, chaired the humanities council, was occasional academic representative to the board of governors, and was elected
to academic senate. He directed two doctoral dissertations and served on many doctoral committees.
Bill was old school, both in dress and demeanor. He wore a bow tie every day. His lectures used long, formal, perfectly grammatical sentences. He would not have been out of place in a nineteenth century philosophy department. But he served both undergraduates
and graduates well and was a devoted friend to many (including the present writer).
- Robert Yanal, Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University
I write with great sadness to inform you that professor of philosophy James “Jim” Stramel passed away on Thursday, March 17, from complications caused by leukemia. He was fifty-six. This is a huge loss for Santa Monica College, as Jim was known—by colleagues
and students alike—as “one-of-a-kind” and “impossible to replace.” He began teaching philosophy at SMC as a part-time faculty member in August 1992 and was hired as a full-time faculty member in August 1999.
Jim was born in Kansas on April 5, 1960. He was raised by his mother, Dorothy Miller. He often joked about the fact that he was from Kansas and his mother’s name was Dorothy.
“I was so proud of him—for a man raised without his father, Jim did pretty darn well,” Dorothy said. “Even at three years old, he knew he was going someplace, he was just amazing.” A year and a half ago, Jim’s mother—then recently widowed—moved to Southern
California to live with Jim in his newly purchased house, something he thought he would never have. She recalls how he would get down on his hands and knees to tend to the beautiful yard he designed. “There wasn’t a weed in this place!” she said.
His mother and colleagues remember Jim as a great teacher and someone who cared deeply about his students. Jim attended the University of Kansas and later obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Southern California. His area of specialization
was ethics, and his dissertation was titled Gay Virtue: The Ethics of Disclosure.
He was a proponent of virtue ethics, which originated with Aristotle. He was an atheist, but he argued tirelessly that ethics does not require religion. He believed that humans have the capacities necessary to live well together, especially through the
use of critical thinking and care for others.
“He taught these things with skill, good humor, and great success,” remembers philosophy professor Amber Katherine. She co-taught a class with Jim on the philosophy behind Star Trek, which was publicized in a Los Angeles Times article. “He
taught by example, striving to live by the highest ethical ideals.”
Political science professor Richard Tahvildaran-Jesswein remembers visiting Jim in the hospital a week before he passed away. Jim was concerned about missing his classes and not being able to serve on the department’s faculty hiring committee. He shared
with Richard that he never knew someone could love him as much as his boyfriend, Mark, and that he felt “blessed.” Richard also recalls how Jim made sure the department benefitted from his green thumb, often bringing trees and plants for the department.
Jim served as faculty advisor to the student-run philosophy club many times. He served on the Academic Senate, chairing the Professional Ethics Committee for several years and contributing vastly to the development of SMC’s ethics statement.
Jim is survived by his mother, Dorothy Miller; and siblings, Richard, Jeffery, Janet, and Phyllis. At this time, there is no memorial or celebration of life planned. We will keep you informed of any future arrangements.
My deepest and heartfelt sympathies go out to Jim’s family, his colleagues, students, and friends. I know that Santa Monica College will never forget Jim, and that his contributions will forever be a part of what is best about this college and the world.
Note: The photos of Jim include his friends and colleagues Amber Katherine and Richard Tahvildaran-Jesswein.
- Kathryn E. Jeffery, Superintendent/President, Santa Monica College
On March 3, 2016, Joseph Norio Uemura “shufflel'd off this mortall coile.” As with Hamlet,
this event must give us pause.
His remarkable life had two major aspects. The first is recorded in words and visual images in his autobiography published under the title The Insatiable Search for Truth [IST] (edited by Steve LeBeau, Autobiography, Inc., Saint Paul, Minnesota,
2015). His account of the experience of the Japanese-Americans who suffered so much and so unjustly in the twentieth century sears the conscience and the consciousness of all who are truthfully following the events related to the 2016 presidential
election process. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Roosevelt called for the evacuation of all Japanese people from the West Coast. Maye Mitsuye Oye (who became Joe’s wife in 1949) and her family were sent to Tule Lake, an internment
camp in northern California. Although both Joe and Maye were born in Oregon, often they were not treated as full and equal citizens of the United States. Joe’s father was a Methodist minister first on the West Coast and then in Colorado where the
entire Uemura family became a central part of the Japanese-American spiritual community. Joe recalls “our Kristallnacht”—the smashing of most of the stained glass windows of his father’s church—the Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church in Denver,
which took place shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In the midst of disturbing recent political events, I asked Joe whether it has ever been this bad. He said, “It has always been this bad.” After graduating from University of Denver, Joe
studied theology at Iliff School of Theology and became an ordained minister of the Methodist Church.
In 2000 Maye died from complications related to a fall. At a meeting of the library committee of the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church on September 11, 2001, he met Nancy Whiteside, whom he married in that same church three years later. Joe himself
performed several marriages, including some of his students and even his daughter, Charissa, who married Kristin Turnblom in 2013 when same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota. The beloved community expanded over several decades as his children
matured. His son, Wesley, became a professor of Japanese history; he married Makiko Sasaki from Japan and then adopted Melina Mei, who was born in China.
The second aspect spawned his career as a professor of philosophy and a mentor to dozens of us who were fortunate to be his students. Although he had earned a master’s degree and completed the coursework for a doctorate in theology, he received a fellowship
from Iliff that would pay tuition at any major graduate school, allowing him to switch to philosophy, the subject matter he really preferred. He began his graduate work at Colombia University in the early 1950s when the influence of John Dewey was
still strong and John Herman Randall Jr. was a major force in the department. At that time Naturalism was popular at Columbia, but it was the ancient Greeks who became central to Joe, who preferred to call himself a “Greek Naturalist.” Randall helped
him reconsider the way Plato had been interpreted and set him on the Platonic path he never left. In his book Reflections on the Mind of Plato: Six Dialogues (Agora Publications, 2004), Joe summarized his approach to Plato who, he insisted,
was not a Platonist: “I have made four principles as obvious as I can: (1) putting aside ‘Platonism,’ (2) attending to the ‘Method’ of the subject of the dialogue itself, not some spurious ‘Socratic method,’ (3) attending to the argument of the dialogue
itself, and (4) allowing the Platonic ‘conclusion’ to speak for itself. So, what indeed was Plato if he was not a Platonist? He was first and foremost a searcher after the ‘natural integrity’ of all things, an ontologist, and a philosopher par excellence.”
His teaching career at Westminster College, Morningside College, and Hamline University extended from 1953 to 1993. In his final years at Hamline, he was appointed to the Hanna Chair of Philosophy. In retrospect, he said that he had probably picked the
right time to retire because of the widespread trend in colleges to, as he put it, become vocational schools rather than focusing on the “useless liberal arts.” He also realized that he was “losing the war in his fight to preserve the classical ideal
of philosophy.” Contrary to his gentle demeanor and the disarming laugh that accompanied his most cutting remarks, Joe never hid his true opinion. “The trend toward diversity and multicultural perspectives is very important and laudable, for I as
much as anyone understand the right of each person to be respected regardless of gender or ethnicity. However, I don’t think the resulting ideas of this movement happen to be philosophy” (IST, 158). That is the same tough-minded kind of critique that
prevailed in his classrooms and in the hundreds of letters and conversations with his former students that took place after their graduation. He continued to meet us at the APA (which he attended almost every year from the time he began teaching).
We embraced those annual exchanges even though we knew his evaluation of our intellectual and professional choices and decisions might be devastating.
It would be difficult to find a philosophy professor anywhere with as many former students who have continued their education by doing graduate work in philosophy. In the appendix to The Insatiable Search for Truth, more than 100 such students
are listed; several of them have subsequently earned a Ph.D. in philosophy and have held tenured positions. When asked about the importance of publishing, Joe used to say that he planned to “publish posthumously.” At first I took that as a joke, but
then I began to realize that his real legacy is to be found in the souls of his former students, his friends, and his true colleagues. Socrates never published a word, but the influence of his “soul-tending” has remained for almost twenty-five centuries.
- Albert A. Anderson, Babson College
Vivian Weil taught philosophy at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) for 42 years (1972–2014). From its inception in 1976, Vivian was involved actively in Illinois Tech’s Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions (CSEP), and she
was Director of CSEP for twenty seven years (1987–2014). The decision to create CSEP 40 years ago responded to a growing sense, at the time, among engineers and scientists of being presented increasingly in research, teaching, and work with ethical
issues their education and prior experiences did not equip them to address. For this reason, during the early years of CSEP those who shaped its agenda of activities and projects agreed on two basic objectives: (1) to create useful tools for deliberation
about ethical issues in different professions, with special emphasis upon engineering, technology, and science; and (2) to develop educational venues in which students (both undergraduate and graduate), teachers, and practicing members of various
professions (especially in technological and scientific areas) could use these tools to explore ethical issues in ways that are well informed, thoughtful, open minded, and open ended. CSEP’s success in accomplishing these objectives is now acknowledged
throughout the world. CSEP has pioneered and developed educational innovations which became adopted widely, conducted many sponsored research projects that resulted in high quality publications on important topics in practical and professional ethics,
and organized numerous conferences, workshops, and public lectures. It has, in addition, collected, curated, and is now digitizing the world’s largest archive of professional conduct codes and guidelines, the CSEP/Illinois Tech Ethics Code Collection.
Vivian Weil’s leadership was by far the most important factor contributing to CSEP’s record of achievement. Most, if not all, CSEP projects are collaborations of CSEP staff with, in many cases, Illinois Tech faculty and students, and, in many other cases,
researchers, scholars, and practicing professionals from outside of Illinois Tech. Vivian organized, encouraged, and took part in such projects unfailingly with a combination of keen intelligence, enthusiasm, and a truly exceptional affinity for productive
collaboration. Her most influential contribution was to develop and to model such collaboration across disciplinary boundaries many had considered impassable, for which Vivian received warm appreciation and strong recognition from her fellow educators.
In this regard, for example, Julio R. Tema, Associate Director of the Benjamin Franklin Scholars Integrated Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania, who, as a graduate student, took part in a collaborative project of Vivian’s with nanotechnology
researchers, credits the experience as having “changed his career trajectory and his intellectual life.” He writes: “Though I felt philosophy was somewhat empty without real world involvement, I had not been exposed to much hands-on philosophy. Vivian
changed all that and for this I will be forever grateful.” During her career Vivian was chair of the executive committee of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, a governing member of the National Institute of Engineering Ethics,
a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the Sterling Olmstead Award of the American Society of Engineering Education.
An outstanding student from her early years, Vivian graduated as class valedictorian from the academically distinguished Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. She then entered the University of Chicago, which her former Walnut Hills fellow student,
and future lifelong partner in marriage, Irwin Weil, was attending. Vivian received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy from the University of Chicago and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Like many academically talented women of her
generation, throughout the 1950s and early 1960s Vivian subordinated her strong interest in continued study of philosophy in graduate school to caring for and raising her children (Martin, Alice, and Daniel). In the mid 1960s, however, Vivian resumed
graduate study as a student in the newly created philosophy Ph.D. program of the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC), and received her Ph.D. from UIC in 1972, writing a doctoral thesis on diverse aspects of action theory.
During her early years on the Illinois Tech faculty, Vivian wrote papers and published articles in action theory. With the founding of CSEP in 1976, however, her academic focus shifted entirely in a new direction upon which it remained for the rest of
her career. Practical and professional ethics, especially related to engineering, technology, and science, aligned closely with Illinois Tech’s fundamental mission. It provided also an opportunity for Vivian to draw upon philosophy as an important
conceptual resource to address issues of major social importance, thereby connecting with her abidingly strong sense of moral and social idealism. (Vivian once told me this sense took hold initially through participating as a teenager in the youth
group to which she belonged of the Isaac Mayer Wise Reform Jewish Temple in Cincinnati.) Furthermore, as exemplified time and time again during her years as director of CSEP, it also gave full scope to her instinctive pleasure and joy in facilitating
and taking part in productive collegial academic collaboration.
Summarizing concisely Vivian Weil’s accomplishments and contributions, though not easy, can be done. No words, however, at least none I’m capable of expressing, can convey with adequate fullness and depth of feeling how much those of us who knew and worked
with Vivian admired, respected, learned from, liked, and loved her. We were blessed to have had Vivian as our colleague.
- Robert Ladenson, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology
Professor Jiyuan Yu, born in Zhuji, Zhejiang, China, on July 5, 1964, passed away November 3, 2016, in Buffalo, New York, after a lengthy struggle with cancer. He was 52. Yu had been a member of the Philosophy Department of the University at Buffalo (SUNY)
since 1997, and director of the UB Confucius Institute since 2013. He had an international reputation for his work in ancient Greek philosophy, classical Chinese philosophy, and comparative philosophy. Yu is survived by his wife Yajie Zhang, son Norman
Yu, mother Youqing Zhao, and three brothers.
Entering academics early, Yu was admitted to the highly competitive Shandong University in 1979 at the age of 15. According to Yu, his high school instructors decided he should study philosophy, though at the time he knew little of the field. While at
Shandong, however, he discovered his calling, winning an award during his senior year for an essay on Plato. From 1983 to 1986 he worked towards a master’s degree at Renmin University in China, studying with the scholar of Greek philosophy MIAO Litian.
From 1986 to 1989 he stayed on at the RUC Department of Western Philosophy, serving as both graduate student and professor. Yu continued his studies abroad at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in Italy before receiving his doctorate from University
of Guelph in Canada in 1994. From 1994 to 1997 he conducted post-doctoral research at Oxford University in the UK as a member of Wolfson College and the Institute for Chinese Studies.
During his time at UB, Yu rose to the rank of full professor and was awarded both SUNY’s Exceptional Scholar Award and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. Yu remained with the UB philosophy department until his passing, drawn by the
intellectual freedom afforded by his position and UB’s collaborative atmosphere, resulting in many fruitful joint projects with SUNY faculty. Yu’s inclination towards collaboration is perhaps best evidenced by his role as UB’s Confucius Studies director,
where he was greatly successful in achieving the institute’s aim of building a cultural bridge between China and the Western New York Region. He also served as president of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy and held a visiting post
as Changjiang Professor at Shandong University in Jinan, China.
Throughout his academic life, Yu was an indefatigable scholar, publishing 10 books and 74 articles. While his early-career work focused mainly on ancient Greek philosophy, his later work attempted to juxtapose texts from the ancient Greek and classical
Chinese traditions, with the goal of gaining new insights from comparative study. His scholarship frequently triangulated insights from Greek and Chinese texts with contemporary philosophy as practiced in the English-speaking world, and combined a
deep familiarity with technical aspects of classical texts with an emphasis on the richness of the philosophy they contained. Yu’s books written in English include The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue (2009); The Structure of Being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (2003); The Blackwell Dictionary of Philosophy (co-authored with Nick Bunnin, 2004); and A Dictionary of Western Philosophy (co-authored with Nick Bunnin, 2001). His books in Chinese include Aristotle’s Ethics《亚里士多德伦理学》(2011);
Plato’s Republic《〈理想国〉讲演录》(2009); and Plato and Aristotle《柏拉图》,《亚里士多德》(co-authored with Shizhang Tian, 1992). Yu also worked with MIAO Litian on a Chinese translation of the complete works of Aristotle, providing one of the first Chinese
translations of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics《工具论》(1991); he also translated Gadamer’s Dialogue and Dialectic《伽达默尔论柏拉图》(1991). His prodigious output and creativity will no doubt prove of lasting importance
in discussions of Ancient Greek, Chinese, and Comparative philosophy.
In addition to his prolific research achievements, Yu was an inspiring and popular instructor at UB, drawing students regardless of discipline with his uplifting attitude and effortless ability to make philosophical topics compelling and relevant to their
daily lives. Yu’s courses often emphasized thinking critically about human flourishing, providing a format in which he could guide students on a path of self-discovery through works of philosophy. His love for ancient philosophy inspired two decades
of students at UB, and a number of his former Ph.D. students continue his work in the research and teaching of Greek and Chinese philosophy at universities around the world. At the time of his death, he was working on a project that would bring together
Daoism, Stoicism, and disease, focusing on the practical appeal of both philosophies for dealing with trauma. “What is important,” Yu would tell his students in summary of the ancient ideal, “is not to live, but to live well, and to live well means
to live happily.”
Professor Yu will be missed by all those who have had the pleasure of his company. A memorial service will be held at the University at Buffalo at a later date.
- Neil E. Williams, University at Buffalo
- John Beverley, University at Buffalo
Joseph Jay Zeman, a logician and specialist in the thought of Charles S. Pierce, passed away on September 8, 2016, after a struggle with Cortico-Basal Degeneration. He is survived by his wife, Norma Beckwith-Zeman, siblings, Douglas Zeman and Judith Sarna,
several children and stepchildren (Carolyn Zeman, Jay Michael Zeman, Edwin Ronsani, Cynthia Ronsani, Amy Ronsani), and several grandchildren and step-grandchildren.
Zeman was born on July 15, 1934, in Chicago and attended the Jesuit school of St. Ignatius High School. He was later educated at the University of Illinois, Xavier University, Loyola University, and the University of Chicago. In addition to his education
in philosophy, he earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering and studied classics while at Xavier. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1964, completing a dissertation on C. S. Pierce under the direction of Lars Svenonius.
Upon completion of the Ph.D., Zeman joined the U.S. Army, working on digital computer system analysis and design from 1964 through 1966. After a brief period teaching at the University of Maryland, he joined the University of Florida as an assistant professor
in 1966, where his teaching and research encompassed symbolic logic, modal and quantum logic, moral philosophy, pragmatism, semiotics, and philosophy and psychotherapy. He was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 1970 and promoted to professor
in 1973. He remained at Florida until his retirement in 1994, a career of nearly 30 years, twice serving as acting chair of the department. During his retirement he married his second wife, Norma Beckwith, in 1999, and remained active in research
up through the mid-2000s, including a presentation at the International Conference on Conceptual Structures in 2004.
Zeman's major interests throughout his career were on the ideas of Charles S. Peirce and formal logic. His book Modal Logic: The Lewis-Modal Systems was published by Oxford’s Clarendon Press in 1973. A review of the book by the eminent logician
M. J. Creswell praised it for providing semantic models for the older modal systems S1o and S1 and concluded that the book “certainly has a place on the shelf of anyone with a more than cursory interest in modal logic” (Journal of Symbolic Logic 42: 581, 1977). Zeman was a contributing editor for the multivolume Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition (Indiana University Press, 1993) and published many papers in the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society,
the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, and the Journal of Symbolic Logic.
Some of Zeman's unpublished work is available online at philpapers.org, including a paper on Pierce’s theory of signs and a paper investigating Gestalt Therapy techniques in relation to the pragmatist
thought of both Peirce and John Dewey. Zeman in fact was trained in such therapeutic techniques in 1975 and was, from 1983, on the staff of the Gainesville Gestalt Center.
One topic of enduring interest was the idea of “existential graphs” proposed and developed to a degree by Peirce; such graphs provided a system of notation intended to provide a more illuminating method of capturing deductive reasoning. Zeman developed
a software application (“the Graphs”) for working with this system on digital computers; this can be found online at existentialgraphs.com. His work on existential graphs has been recognized
by the international “Conceptual Structures” community, a group of scholars influenced by Peircean logic and focused on cognitive science and semantic network analyses (see conceptualstructures.org).
Members of that community are currently working on plans to archive Zeman’s work and ensure that it lives on, making it available online for generations of future researchers.
- On behalf of the Department of Philosophy, University of Florida
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