Uncle Chuck: 1922 - 2005

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My uncle/cousin, Charles Sherover, passed away Sunday, October 23, at the age of 83. Although he was my first cousin once removed, I knew him as "Uncle Chuck".

During World War II, Charles worked in military intelligence, decoding Japanese messages.

Charles later became a distinguished philosopher, teaching at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He wrote extensively on the subjects of time and democracy. He gave Václav Havel advice on how to foster democracy in the Czech Republic. His favorite philosopher was Kant, whose "Critique of Pure Reason" he translated into English. He also translated Rousseau's "Social Contract". I presume he felt that previous translations were inadequate.

Although his health was clearly declining, his death was sudden. When we find out the cause of death, probably a heart attack or stroke, I will add a comment here.

Charles was an intellectual whose life revolved around books rather than people, but he also lived for his cats. He said that he had recovered from a previous life-threatening illness only because he felt that his cats needed him.

Uncle Chuck was very good to me when I was growing up. I enjoyed his visits, and I enjoyed visiting him in New York. Over the years, we had many lively discussions of philosophy, history, and politics.

When I get the official obituary I will post it here.

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From the New York Times

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Philosophical Rift: A Tale of Two Approaches

By RICHARD BERNSTEIN (NYT)
December 29, 1987

Charles Sherover, who teaches philosophy at Hunter College, speaks in a sort of paradox about certain other philosophers. All too often, he says, those who were accepted into the ranks of the philosophers in America were not what he calls "philosophically inclined."

"You're much more likely to find philosophically inclined people outside of philosophy," Professor Sherover said, "because if you are philosophically inclined, you've probably been excluded."

Dr. Sherover's paradox, vehemently rejected by his targets, well reflects an argument taking place among American philosophers, sowing discord within the ranks of the 6,000 or so members of the American Philosophical Association, a group that rarely makes headlines but is, presumably, engaged in the task of examining the very foundations of Western thought.

Some philosophers like Professor Sherover, already organized into a group whose members call themselves pluralists, met in Cambridge, MA, last month and formed a new organization, The Society of Philosophers in America, to combat what they believe is the control over the field exercised by what they see as a highly technical subspeciality, the Anglo-American analytical school.

Bogged Down in Logic

Underlying the pluralists' activities is the belief that philosophy, bogged down in a stress on logic, language, and empirical data, has lost its vocation of addressing the big questions asked by perplexed mankind: what is being? Is reality what our senses perceive? Does the universe have purpose?

Instead, the pluralists maintain, philosophy has come to mimic the sciences, striving to attain new clarity over what the big questions mean, with the result that philosophy has departed from the informed speculation that gave it its appeal over the centuries.

The analysts themselves not only disagree with this conclusion, but some dismiss the way the pluralists pose the problem. They deny, for example, that there is even such a thing these days as an analytic school, and they claim that their own work, even if sometimes highly technical, marks a continuation of more than 2,000 years of rigorous philosophical reflection.

The dispute among philosophers is not the sort of thing that heats up public emotions, although it echoes disputes in other fields. Economics is one example where higher and higher degrees of specialization have alienated members of the public and some specialists as well.

Philosophy, moreover, even if no longer followed as avidly by nonphilosophers as it was in centuries past, does provide the foundation of many other disciplines, establishing grounds for judging ethical principles and claims to know the truth.

In this sense, underlying the position of Dr. Sherover and his allies is their concern, rejected by their opponents, that philosophy has drifted from the center of intellectual life to a technical periphery, with the result that Western civilization has been impoverished.

"The problem arises when it comes down to saying that a certain way of doing philosophy is the only way, and if you don't do it that way you don't do it at all," John E. Smith, a professor at Yale and a Sherover ally, said of what he views as the analysts' domination of the field.

"Tillich," Professor Smith went on, referring to Paul Tillich, the theologian, "said that you can put up no tresspassing signs, but that doesn't stop people from trying to answer the great questions in any way they can." In short, Professor Smith is saying, if the philosophers fail to do philosophy, others, perhaps untrained in the major traditions, will. "People are going to look for answers whether the analysts like it or not."