MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 24--SEE UPDATE
A leading 20th-century moral philosopher, Professor Baier passed away yesterday. He taught originally in Australia and then for many years at the University of Pittsburgh. I will link to memorial notices as they appear.
UPDATE: Allen Hazen (Melbourne) forwarded this informative obituary by Charles Pigden (Otago) that was circulated on an Australasian philosophy list-serve:
We regret to announce the death on Sunday in Dunedin at the age of 93 of Kurt Baier, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Different websites claim him as an Austrian, an Australian and American philosopher but the truth is that he was born in Austria, began as a philosopher in Australia and finished his career in America before retiring to New Zealand, the native country of his wife Annette. Professor Baier was born in Vienna in 1917 where he began to study law at the university. But he had to abandon the law and flee to Britain after the Anschluss because of his partly Jewish descent. Like several other refugees who went on to distinguish themselves in Australian academic life, he was interned as a 'enemy alien' and transported to Australia in the hell-ship Dunera. There was a striking contrast between the brutality of the guards on the Dunera (where beatings with rifle-butts were common) and the friendliness of the guards at the internment camp in Hay, New South Wales (where one of them asked Kurt to look after his rifle). Kurt went on to take a BA (1944) and an MA (1947) at the University of Melbourne where he taught for several years. He was sent on paid leave to study at Oxford where he gained his D.Phil under the direction of the slightly younger Stephen Toulmin (1952). His D.Phil thesis metamorphosed into his first and most important book The Moral Point of View (1958). He taught for a while at the ANU in Canberrra and in 1958 met and married Annette Stoop who had just taken up a post at the University of Sydney. In the 1960s he was appointed to the chair of Philosophy at the University of Pittburgh which he built up into one of the foremost philosophy departments in the world. He served as President of the Eastern Division of the APA (as did Annette), gave the Paul Carus Lectures in Philosophy (as did Annette) and was invited to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (as was Annette), making them perhaps the only husband and wife duo to achieve this trio of distinctions. In 2001 Kurt was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Jurisprudence from the Karl Franzen University of Graz, at a ceremony hosted by the University of Otago at which he gave a speech which contrived to be both witty and moving. Perhaps his greatest achievement was to help put practical reason back at the centre of moral philosophy. His funeral is in Dunedin on Thursday.
UPDATE: A memorial from the University of Pittsburgh (written by Baier's former colleague J.B. Schneewind, who taught with him at Pittsburgh [and who is now emeritus at Johns Hopkins]).
ANOTHER: An informative and elegant eulogy by Alan Musgrave (Otago). (Thanks to Lisa Shapiro for the pointer.)
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