Remembrances of Nicholas Rescher

In Dutch there is a saying “He fell with his nose in the butter.” It means that he came into an unexpectedly very good situation. When I came to study in Pittsburgh, I realized pretty soon that I had fallen with my nose in the butter. The department was becoming a philosophical powerhouse. The core faculty was Nicholas Rescher and Adolf Grünbaum, and together they recruited spectacular new faculty to join them.Nicholas Rescher was one of my teachers. In the summer after my first year, I took a directed reading course with him, on quantified modal logic. At the same time, he hired me as a research assistant. This was for research on the medieval modal logic of Arab logician Al-Qazwini Al-Katibi. Not a household name, I guess. But it was certainly burned into my memory. I gained enormous respect for Professor Rescher's scholarship, not only in Arabic studies and its surrounding history and as a logician, but also as a teacher who knew how to encourage his students.Nick Rescher and Adolf Grünbaum inspired me to switch to Philosophy as an undergrad and took a gamble in bringing me to graduate school at Pitt. As an undergrad I took logic from Nick, and a wonderful wide-ranging course on intellectual history, where I first met Ibn Khaldun. I think Nick translated it himself. Readings were distributed in mimeographed form. At Pitt he taught a course on Leibniz's logic from Couturat, and a course on Aristotle where he defended a new reading of de Interpretation Ch. 9. He always encouraged me and was generous with his time. He helped me polish papers and advised my dissertation. I was lucky to have known him.[On interviewing for an assistant professorship in 1976] I explained my dissertation project for 5 minutes, and Nick asked the first question. He said, “So if I understand you correctly, you think the hypothetical use of ‘true’ is more fundamental than the categorical use?” This was a far better and deeper description of what I was doing than I had come up with in two years of working on it. I immediately thought: Imagine what it would be like to have colleagues like this to chat with about what one is working on. A year later, after I was hired and he and I had adjoining offices, he stuck his head in my door and sked me if I would like to look at his current book manuscript on possible worlds. He said he was breaking from orthodoxy and using ‘wierdie worlds.’ (I found out he meant inconsistent and incomplete ones). The jokey, self-deprecating tone was characteristic of the playfulness with which he always approached hard technical problems. I was inspired by his ideas and wrote q couple of drafts extending them to areas he had not addressed. He suggested that we—he the Distinguished University Professor and me as the most junior assistant prof—co-author a longer book. The result of that generous gesture was The Logic of Inconsistency, my first such publication.Nick was always an old-school gentleman: urbane, cultivated and never apparently mindful of his own eminence. He also displayed a playful, occasionally off-center sense of humor. When the philosophy department moved from Schenley Hall to the Cathedral of Learning, we learned that the whole floor we had occupied was going to be gutted and redone. We had a massive party, during which Nick, tall and strong, walked the length of the long corridor, holding over his head a graduate student whose boots were periodically dipped and re-dipped in red paint, resulting in footprints all along the ceiling. Nick said he'd always wanted to do that.I went to The University of Pittsburgh as a graduate student in Philosophy in the Fall of 1971 from an undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto. The opening day get-together was hosted by Nuel Belnap. When I arrived the first thing I noticed was an attractive young woman in a T-shirt that said, “Quine is fine but Rescher is fresher.” This was Nick's wife. The other thing I noted was the fact that the other first-year students were addressing attending senior professors by their first name, ˜Nuel,” “Alan,” even “Wilfrid”!—that and the short pants that Nuel was wearing. At the University of Toronto professors did not wear short pants. For the most part, they wore jackets, shirts and ties. (Bas Van Fraassen, my logic teacher at U of T, a bit of a rebel in those days, wore a jacket and open-necked shirt to lectures, though not, if recollection serves, short pants.) This informality both shocked and exhilarated me: graduate students and senior professors, equals all, committed to the search for philosophical understanding in T-shirts and short pants! This was what the American Academy meant to me and formed the basis for a life-long admiration for it.I wanted in, and I did my best to play the part. The one thing that I was initially unable to do, however, was call senior professors by their first name. But in time I came around: Professor Nuel Belnap was “Nuel,” Professor Alan Ross Anderson, Chair of Department at that time, was “Alan” and Professor Wilfrid Sellars was “Wilfrid.” When I became the graduate assistant of Professor Rescher I screwed my courage to the sticking place and decided to try it out one day when I arrived at the office: “Hi Nick,” I said, “what's on for today?” “Professor Rescher” he replied, “You call me ‘Professor Rescher.’ Once you get your Ph.D., you can call me ‘Nick.’” Sensible advice, which I followed even in my own days as a professor at Dalhousie. (Though, of course, I set the bar lower: it was “Tom” once you got your undergrad.)One of the perks that you got as Nick's graduate assistant was a chance to house-sit for around 6 weeks in the summer when he went off to England. My turn came around and he made me the offer. I accepted. It was a wonderful time, full of sunshine and the pleasures of a Full Professor's house. At this time, he also shared some reminiscences with me about his own days as a young man, including a rather unexpected induction into the United States Marine Corp. It was at the time of the Korean War and young men were being drafted into the army. Apparently the USMC was short on inductees so when Nick's papers came back to him at the induction center, it bore a “USMC” stamp. He was just out of Princeton and an attentive Sargeant in the Intelligence arm (appropriately!) selected Nick for their department. That was his good luck. Still, I reflected, he had to get through the Marines boot camp. Not a piece of cake I understand.I too had to get through boot camp, a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. Not a piece of cake either. In my first term, if memory serves, I had a course in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics with Alan Ross Anderson, a course on Carnap's 1952 tome on the logical theory of probability with Nick, a course on Dennett and Intentionality with Annette Baier and last, but not least, among trials, a German translation-exam set on a passage from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason marked by Adolf Grünbaum. (I failed the latter, “badly” was the notation.) Later, I took strength from the reflection that if Nick could survive the USMC I could survive a Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh. And so it proved.Nick was always generous with me and his other students. For example, he put me as co-author on a publication in the Review of Metaphysics on pragmatism and truth we had worked on during my tenure as his Graduate Assistant. I had a deep affection for Nick in those days and much appreciated this and other kindnesses. Despite being out of contact with him until recently, I have always retained those feelings. His passing is a great loss to me and to the American Academy.When I went to Pitt as a graduate student I only got in because Pitt then had a very low ranking. I had a mediocre undergraduate career and had found philosophy only in my senior year, so my application file was unimpressive. However, in that very September when I arrived at Pitt, Rescher and Grunbaum were right then starting the rocket launch of Pitt to the top ranks.So, I lucked into a place with a cadre of brilliant graduate students and soon with a world leading faculty. When I first arrived, however, it was basically just Rescher and Grunbaum. Rescher was a wonderfully helpful adviser to me. He was also warm and welcoming, in a way that affected me deeply. Soon, for example, he had several of us to his home for a Thanksgiving dinner. And, amazingly, he got me my first job without my even applying. It was a different time. One day he just said: “Ernie, do you want a job? I think you're ready. You need to go to Western Ontario tomorrow and start lecturing.” And that's what happened.He also guided me to and through my dissertation, and even before that had already advised me to send things for publication. (Are you surprised?!) I followed his advice, which resulted in some early publications, including the second published attempt to solve the Gettier problem.I was inspired by Rescher, by his commitment to disciplined work and by his openness to an impressive span of issues, ideas, methodologies, and traditions. I also cherished his support and encouragement, starting with my neophyte days and continuing throughout my later years. I will feel grateful to him as long as I live.In 2017, I came across a Turkish translation of Mantıku't-Tayr written in verse among the Islamic manuscripts in the Leipzig University Library. According to the colophon, this manuscript was an autograph. Upon wondering how the manuscript had gotten to Leipzig, the road led me to Oskar Rescher (Osman Reşer, Stuttgart, 1883–Istanbul, 1972), whose name I knew, and after a time, which led me to Nicholas Rescher.Apart from being a scholar and philosopher, his guidance with my studies on Oskar Rescher, his interest in the new things I had learned about Oskar, his generosity in providing materials that contributed to my studies, and even how he read and shared his views on my works were of incalculable value to me. Nicholas decided to learn Arabic because his father's cousin, Oskar Rescher, had been an Arabist. Nick dedicated his book Studies in the History of Arabic Logic, published in 1963, to Oskar Rescher, perhaps as a manifestation of his admiration.I began my task of routinely informing Nicholas about my work. His answers made it obvious that he had read every message of mine with interest. When I look at the correspondence today, I can see my excitement. I'd replied to many of his emails either on the same day or within a short time.He had been looking forward to the biography of Oskar Rescher that Thoralf Hansein and I had prepared together. I especially wanted him to read the article because we had narrated some sections of his emails and quoted other areas. We needed to confirm our quotes and the views we'd conveyed from him. On January 27, 2021, I sent him the draft of Rescher's biography and told him that we would be very pleased if he would read it and let us know his opinions. I informed him on March 3, 2021, that we were dedicating this study to him.In my email where I gave a series of good tidings, I saved the biggest news for last. I had found and bought Oskar's final possessions. These included approximately 300 postcards, some letters, a few books, a library inventory, notebooks, and some official documents. Something had caught my attention. The postcards he'd sent to his parents must have been collected by him, because these were also among his possessions. There were also cards from Nick and his father, Erwin. The earliest document bearing Nick's signature was a postcard Nick had sent to Uncle Rescher in 1944 when he was only 16 years old, in which he wished for the war to end as soon as the card arrived.My relationship with Nicholas Rescher goes back many decades. Like many others in philosophy, I appreciated his founding of American Philosophical Quarterly and later the History of Philosophy Quarterly and Public Affairs Quarterly. And I learned much from his editorial treatment of a long, complicated article I sent to APQ in the early 1970s when I was just a few years beyond the PhD. It was on “Freedom, Responsibility, and Compulsion,” quite complicated, and certainly needed his editorial patience with revisions.I later saw Nick personally at a conference at Brown (in the 80s) and kept in touch with him from then on. In 2018 (as Development Committee Chair for the American Philosophical Association), I worked with him in relation to his founding of what became the Nicholas Rescher Lectureship in Metaphysics. I had hoped he would attend the inaugural lecture (which I believe will be planned soon). The high-level papers this APA prize lecture should inspire over the years will in any case serve as a reminder of Nick's support of the profession of philosophy and of the APA as an enduring philosophical institution that sponsors annual international conferences and much that to philosophy too and far too for at least, to in any way that can do them in He always to me at once and on in every of He was a of his of philosophical I have from his in philosophy of and and philosophical but his far more and known and were in his in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh into a both in philosophy and in the history and philosophy of as a and He was a of and good a but always to ideas of and an on In his I have an enduring pragmatism that is and without being These an for great in the history of philosophy and a of their work. He knew many their works and I believe that some of such as of his As I have always read him, he as a a on a of philosophical He from sense but also saw in and even enduring that to go far beyond the of much that can be in or through In his many there is a that is without being to philosophical without and without being He gave us a and of work with incalculable ideas to be the course of some years or Nick Rescher and I published two and with a book before his of our work together was at his and to understand on of and on to with and a of in and a to on his and a I at the for Philosophy of all of our was by way of We of ideas in email both and together with manuscript and generosity and for colleagues that come up in of certainly at the of how I him. As a he was always attentive to ideas, or There were he would not go to I'd like to think he any philosophical work that hard work. He was in several of the His came back very And Nick was very when I would start to think that he had a or an was after would be with the that he had that I had will the the and the of working with who Nick's you would with me. it had much to be He was an at ideas on to in a way that was and to students and His working for Nick, way back in At that time, there were two of us full time and with up his research and Not long after I the other took and never to the to to a I was to the task of Nick's into and reading I have how many we did together over the years we worked together but we about a year in to lectures, and that time, we became more like than of my was our to the For Nick and this was a long both knew most of the and there every day during the the around Nick and I would and as we could up on what our were up to and a great Not only did Nick I home for my but he would also I head home after our to the of the It was the like this that made Nick so to work just a great philosophy he was also a great and He was dedicated to passing on as much as not only about philosophy but about His were always and he could be found every the with students and be it where to the best in or the and He was always and and would up he was also a who that you never too to learn a new In his later he began which he was quite And you would think that with as much as he wrote he have time for much but he was an of book with his about before was his and he was without became you could see the two of them out and When you saw them it was to see the and they had for and to his so many I can Nick was one of the most and I have to all of so and so in our at the University of Pittsburgh, that it was to a time without him. He never to It was hard to that his was from in He had first the great of philosophy that we only read was I once asked him. he And we could see him and then he was In an he is with us in his That will I want to and Nick's never his and My first with him from the Fall of it. I had just arrived in Pittsburgh to up my in the for Philosophy of There was an door with my name on it. to mine were those of in my and had a in philosophy of and time and I was to it. I was door to mine said Rescher” and perhaps I had read some of his work as a student and realized that I would him. When the I had that he'd off a like me. But he He and gave me his full attention. This the time we I was soon in him my at the massive of the new in philosophy of and time. just think I know I from such a to a was so wonderful that I can it over years one know to in in my The most have been in or so when he and Adolf me to the in the or Philosophy of to me that I was to be the I was then years as Chair of my Department of and had for more was but it soon became that I was not being to be but being told that I would be to be the most of my that time, Nick was a but He would in the in the on one or other it was only to up a of He would then into the of the to chat with I could see that my early of the was He wanted to and support my time as I in the One was the in which Nick made just such to and You can read the at along with of Nick in was such a of for us it is hard to believe he is The so His was to the first of in the I would at how he could do what so few of us read a so that it was like an his he to a full and of without a he would out a from his and a or there in the of my with Nick to the for Philosophy of which I Nick was the of the with Adolf Grünbaum, and the after in He about the for Philosophy of which he had directed from to and about the University of Pittsburgh and its that we for about how to support the of Philosophy in the at Pitt, and how to that the (in the leading of the its Nick was at (I that with great and knew how to put his and for the he gave the first at the in the Fall and in the It was an to see in his and then early such of and of year after The an of from to to the place of at these on Nick's were the I the will what of Nick The first after when the was at to rather than lectures, I asked Nick as he would like to the He at the a I come from a of to than Nick was not a young that was not the at In he wanted the to be in only of he was that he have to the if the first weeks of in led to a in and the he had interest in in and in

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.