Dale Jacquette (1953-2016)
Dale Jacquette, Senior Professorial Chair in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bern (Switzerland), died this past Sunday. Prior to moving to Bern in 2008, he was professor of philosophy at Penn State University. He also held visiting appointments or was affiliated with the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, and the University of Venice.
Jacquette earned his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College in 1975 and his master’s (1981) and doctorate (1983) from Brown University. His research spanned many areas, including intentionality, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, Wittgenstein, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, and the history of philosophy (see the list of publications here to get a sense of his unusual breadth). One of his current projects was on the ontology of music.
(via Claire Katz)
Update: Thanks to several readers who sent in Professor Jacquette’s birth year.
I was so saddened to hear of Dale’s passing. According to Google his birth date was April 19, 1953.
I just saw Dale and his wife Tina in Bern in May. He had organized a wonderful conference on the ontology of music at the Zentrum Paul Klee and invited me to give a lecture recital. As an artist I was struck by the level of synergy between performers, musicologists and philosophers.
Ever since I was his student in a logic class at PSU way back when, he’s long been someone I’ve looked up to for his great mind, good-natured wit and kind-heartedness, not to mention sheer modesty. So many of us were hoping to get to spend more time in his company.
Very sad news. Dale was a great guy and an outstanding philosopher. I knew him at PSU when I was a student, and in more recent times I had the opportunity to be his host at a conference in Rome. He was always very generous with his time. My deepest condolences to his wife, family, and friends.
He is no longer with us, but his extensive and extraordinary achievements will live on.
Indeed
Dale was a colleague, comrade and friend. Too soon.
Very sad news. Dale was a wonderful human being. I knew him as colleague and friend. He loved all of the right things in life, including philosophy. And was loved by those who knew him. Much too soon.
Shocked and saddened. Dale had a profound impact on my own research and thinking, especially in light of his innovative work on Meinongian ontology. He was one of the most important philosophers of our time in my opinion, and he contributed much work of great significance in diverse areas. R.I.P. too soon.
I met personally Dale for the first time when he moved to Switzerland. We had many interests in common, in particular Boole, Schopenhauer and the Square of Opposition.
He took part to our meetings on the square of opposition in Corsica 2010, Lebanon 2012, Vatican 2014:
http://www.square-of-opposition.org
and we edited together a book on this topic: Around and Beyond the Square of Opposition
http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-0348-0379-3
He gave also a tutorial on Boole at the 5th world school on universal logic in Istanbul last year
http://www.uni-log.org/ULS5
Dale has published papers and books on many different topics, inclusive cannabis:
Cannabis – Philosophy for Everyone: What Were We Just Talking About?
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405199679.html
He was very open-minded.
When I asked him why he was moving to Switzerland he told me that his dept at Penn State was dominated by continental philosophers.
Himself was neither analytic nor continental and agreed with Kevin Mulligan claiming that the important difference is not between analytic and continental philosophy but between good and bad philosophy.
And what was nice with Dale is that he was always traveling with his wife.
Here you can see some pictures of them in SQUARE 2012 in Beirut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slareVgyRjw&noredirect=1
Dale was a high school classmate of mine, from Sheboygan (Wisconsin) South High School class of 1971. We celebrated our 45th Class Reunion on the previous day, prior to Dale’s passing. May he rest in peace.
A nice piece by Dale on his Cannabis and Philosophy volume, including a bit of autobiography and his subtle humor:
http://www.philosophersmag.com/index.php/tpm-mag-articles/11-essays/137-philosophers-stoned
Dale’s untimely passing is so very sad. We knew one another briefly in graduate school and even then it was clear that his was the best of minds – with both depth and expanse.
I was totally shocked to read of this only today. I was going to contact Dale to see if he’d had a chance to peruse two of my books I’d sent him, “God and Eternity” and “World and Possibility.” Dale and I were in debate in high school together and chaperoned the YMCA model legislature. Later in 1974 when he came to Madison, Wisconsin as a Rhodes finalist he stayed at my place. I wasn’t in touch with him again until 2009, albeit briefly.
Dale always had an excellent sense of humor and wonderful yen for the intrinsic value of curiosity. Had his ethical advice for journalists been followed since he published it it’s plausible to think this country wouldn’t be suffering from endemic nonsense in its civic deliberations.
Looking through Professor Jacquette’s Symbolic Logic text—which is tattered and torn from my having used it so much in the classes I taught in the early 2000s—and thinking of our interactions at conferences and when he produced a paper for my South Park and Philosophy book. He was a great balance of guru and gregariousness.
Sad news indeed. Am reading his very interesting book on Frege, published posthumously. 63 seems young. Does anyone know what happened?