death
TagMark Steiner (1942-2020)
Mark Steiner, emeritus professor of philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has died of complications related to COVID-19. (more…)
Gene Long (1935-2020)
Eugene “Gene” Thomas Long III, distinguished professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, has died. (more…)
Jens Halfwassen (1958-2020)
Jens Halfwassen, professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, died this past Saturday. (more…)
David Efird (1974-2020)
David Efird, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of York, died unexpectedly last Thursday. (more…)
Roger Scruton (1944-2020)
Roger Scruton, a philosopher who for many years taught at Birkbeck College, London, held various other academic appointments, wrote extensively for the public, and who was knighted in 2016 for “services to philosophy, teaching and public education”, has died. (more…)
Stephen F. Barker (1927-2019)
Stephen F. Barker, professor emeritus of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, has died. (more…)
Ken Taylor (1954-2019) (w/ updates)
Kenneth Taylor, the Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, has died. (more…)
Jaegwon Kim (1934-2019)
Jaegwon Kim, professor emeritus of philosophy at Brown University, has died. (more…)
James Griffin (1933-2019)
James Griffin, a philosopher who spent much of his career at Oxford University, died last Thursday. (more…)
Michael Detlefsen (1948-2019)
Michael (“Mic”) Detlefsen, the McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has died. (more…)
Rom Harré (1927-2019)
Rom Harré, a wide-ranging thinker whose academic career included over 30 years as part of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University, followed by over 20 as part of the psychology faculty at Georgetown University, and a great many visiting appointments around the world, has died.
Death and Progress in Philosophy
While outsiders appear reluctant to challenge leadership within a field when the star is alive, the loss of a luminary provides an opportunity for fields to evolve in new directions that advance the frontier of knowledge. (more…)
Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019)
Miguel León-Portilla, emeritus professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and “the world’s foremost authority on Náhuatl philology and philosophy,” has died. (more…)
Justin Zylstra (1987-2019) / Memorial Prize
Justin Zylstra, a research fellow in philosophy at the University of Vermont who received his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in 2016, died last month of cancer. An effort is underway to establish a memorial prize in metaphysics in his name. (more…)
Myles Burnyeat (1939-2019)
Myles Burnyeat, emeritus fellow at Oxford University’s All Souls College and emeritus professor of philosophy at Cambridge University’s Robinson College, has died. (more…)
André Gallois (1945-2019) (updated)
André Norman Gallois, emeritus professor of philosophy at Syracuse University, died earlier this month. (more…)
John N. Williams (1952-2019)
John N. Williams, a philosopher who spent much of his career working in Singapore, and who had just last year taken up a position as professor of philosophy at Nazarbayev University, has died. (more…)
Barry Stroud (1935-2019) (updated)
Barry Stroud, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, died last week. (more…)
Bryan Magee (1930-2019)
Bryan Magee, one of the most successful popularizers of philosophy in recent times, has died. (more…)
Agnes Heller (1929-2019)
Agnes Heller, a prolific Hungarian philosopher who as a child lost much of her family in the Holocaust and as a professor at the University of Budapest lost her job because she refused to testify that her mentor, György Lukács, committed political “crimes”, has died. (more…)
Daniel Callahan (1930-2019)
Daniel Callahan, co-founder and longtime director of the Hastings Center, the first-ever bioethics research institute, has died. (more…)
John Gardner (1965-2019)
“Uncontroversial ideas need not less but more critical scrutiny, since they generally get such an easy ride.” Those are the words of John Gardner, Professor of Law and Philosophy and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University, who died last week at age 54. (more…)
Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias (1918-2019)
Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias, professor emeritus at the University of San Marcos, by some accounts Peru’s “leading philosopher” and one of the most important Latin American philosophers of the 20th Century, died earlier this week.
Gertrude Ezorsky (1926-2019)
Gertrude Ezorsky, professor emerita of philosophy at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, died this past April. The following is an obituary written by Nanette Funk and Andrew Wengraf. It describes Professor Ezorsky’s notable career and character, as well as the remarkable hurdles she had to overcome in her career. (more…)..
Joan Callahan (1946-2019)
Joan Callahan, professor emerita of philosophy at the University of Kentucky, has died. (more…)
Ruth Anna Putnam (1927-2019)
Ruth Anna Putnam, professor emerita of philosophy at Wellesley College, died this past Saturday. (more…)
Kwame Gyekye (1939-2019)
Kwame Gyekye, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Ghana, has died. (more…)
David N. Mowry (1941-2019): “What does one say about the teacher who saved your life?” (guest post by Jack Weinstein)
David N. Mowry, professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York (SUNY) Plattsburgh, has died. (more…)