Laurence Thomas, professor emeritus of philosophy at Syracuse University, died this past December.

The following obituary is by David Benatar (University of Cape Town).

Laurence Mordekhai Thomas
(1949-2025)

Laurence Thomas, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University, died on 27 December 2025. He was 76.

His life focused on his work: he was a passionate, productive philosophical writer, and a popular professor. He was also a man of contrasts. He was effervescent and enthusiastic. However, he was also a man of great interiority, and very private. This challenges the obituarist who wishes both to convey a sense of the person and to respect his privacy.

Laurence was born on 1 August 1949 and grew up, an only-child, in Baltimore, Maryland. Both his parents died by his mid-teens. Thereafter, he was reared by an aunt—an “ole fashioned Jamaican woman” who, he said, “never allowed me to wallow in the valley of despair”, and to whom he later dedicated his first book, Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character (Temple, 1989).

He received his BA in Philosophy from the University of Maryland in 1971. At the University of Pittsburgh, he received an MA in 1973 and a PhD in 1976. His doctoral supervisor was Kurt Baier, for whose 1987 festschrift in Synthese, Laurence was later the guest editor.

Before joining Syracuse in 1989, he held positions at Notre Dame (1977-1978), the University of Maryland (1978-1980), the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1980-1986), and Oberlin (1986-1989). In 1978-1979, he was Andrew Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard. While his primary Syracuse appointment was in Philosophy, he was also affiliated with the Political Science Department and the Judaic Studies program.

Professor Thomas’ specialization was in moral, political, and social philosophy, with a strong thread of moral psychology. The hallmarks of his writing were exquisite sensitivity to human psychology and behaviour, thoroughgoing decency, and accessibility.

His second book, Vessels of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust (Temple, 1993), is a prime example. It is a nuanced examination of the similarities and differences between the subtitular atrocities. Eschewing invidious judgements about which was worse, he probed the nature of these respective evils.

He did much of his writing in Paris, to which he would regularly decamp. He enjoyed that culture, developed close friendships there, and learned French.

He had an abiding philosophical interest in human relationships, especially familial relationships and friendship. His third monograph was entitled The Family and the Political Self (Cambridge, 2006).

His appreciation of familial relationships may have been occasioned partly by the early death of his parents and the absence of siblings. His attunement to the nuances of such relationships is even more remarkable for these reasons.

While he neither married nor had children, he was a father figure, as well as a friend, champion, and trusted confidant, especially to his doctoral students. They have said how difficult it is to express how much he meant to, and did for, them. It is a testament to his influence on their lives that two of them gave their sons the second name “Laurence” in his honour.

Professor Thomas was also a popular teacher of undergraduate students. The enrolment in his introductory ethics course mushroomed. Even in a class of 400 students, he learned many of their names, referenced comments they had made in previous classes, and engaged in Socratic exchanges.

Some of his teaching methods were unorthodox, blending theatrics, humour, and music, with philosophy. A former teaching assistant remarks that while this led some to question the academic rigour of the teaching, Professor Thomas “simply loved taking complex themes and making them accessible to those who otherwise might have been overwhelmed”. His teaching was profiled in the New York Times. In 1993 he was Syracuse University’s Scholar-Teacher of the year.

One friend described Laurence as a “student-magnet”, noting that after Laurence had given a distinguished guest lecture at his university, “a group of students followed him everywhere he went on campus, peppering him with questions, which he answered graciously and tactfully.” Laurence’s lively personality and wit were also manifest in his conversation and repartee with colleagues during the same visit. It is unsurprising that Laurence was invited to speak at many institutions.

Laurence was immensely generous—with his time, money, and in spirit. One former student recalls that the time and energy that he “dedicated to his students was simply incredible”.

Laurence paid for refreshments at his graduate seminars, and books for his graduate students’ research. When returning from trips to France, he would bring boxes of Parisian chocolates to give to secretarial staff, friends, and occasionally the parents of students.

Laurence put inordinate effort into letters of recommendation. He affirmed people, and acknowledged them, and was attuned to the good in people even when they might not have noticed it themselves. He had a great generosity of spirit.

While he went well beyond professorial duties, he was meticulous about propriety, and the perception thereof. Although extensively accessible to students, he preferred meeting students in public places, rather than in his office. Even those closest to him never entered his apartment.

Laurence wrote about character, but he also was a character. He was eccentric, even by the eccentric standards of philosophers.

A former department Chair, who recruited Laurence and four others to Maryland, arranged a welcome for them at his home. He also invited the University President, who accepted the invitation and arrived at the event. However, none of the new appointees were present. The Chair was getting increasingly stressed. The doorbell then rang. The five arrived, “dressed to the nines” and led by Laurence, attired in a tuxedo and top hat, and carrying a cane!

In addition to the aforementioned monographs, Laurence co-authored a “debate” book with Michael Levin, Human Rights and Sexual Orientation (Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), and over eighty academic papers. He edited Blackwell’s Contemporary Debates in Social Philosophy. He had begun work on, but was not well enough to complete, a fourth monograph, The Fragmented Self: Technology and the Loss of Humanity.

Laurence, influenced by his Aristotelian sympathies, made frequent reference to flourishing. When starting a conversation, he would ask “Are you flourishing, sir?” He would sign off emails with the injunction “Flourish!”

Sadly, Laurence did not flourish to the very end. His death was preceded by a long decline. At his funeral, both a former student and the rabbi of Laurence’s synagogue spoke movingly about him. On an especially cold winter’s day, his casket was then accompanied to the grave where he was interred.

– David Benatar