Uncle Chuck: 1922 - 2005
Oct. 26th, 2005 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
patoadamMy 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.
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.
From the New York Times, part 3
Date: 2005-11-06 05:12 pm (UTC)What's more, Professor Marcus went on, the pluralists are beating a straw horse, because, while logical posivitism, with its stress on the meaning of words, may have had its day and still exerts its clarifying influence, the analytical approach itself has become far more multifaceted than before. The pluralists complain of dry, empty nitpicking, she said, but they cannot identify any of the nitpickers by name because they do not exist.
"I'll tell you what the issue is," she said. "There are some people whose notion about philosophy is that it is something that you do. There's some issue - knowledge, truth, the meaning of good - and they try to answer philosophical questions about it. Then there are a whole lot of other people who write about other philosophers, who interpret their work. A lot of the people who call themselves pluralists are interested in studying other people's work."
Professor Marcus's point is that the prestige departments - such as those at Berkeley, Harvard and Princeton -hired from the group that "does philosophy" leaving the resentful others on the sidelines, from where they have mounted a political counter attack.
Indeed, one result of the dispute is that philosophers group themselves behind their favored candidates for office in the American Philosophical Association, which is holding its annual meeting in New York this week. When caucasing and voting is not taking place, there is still time to discuss such weighty matters as epistemology in the age of neurosurgery and conceptions of causality.
The pluralists, by good organizing have, since 1980, gotten some of their candidates elected to the presidency of the association and this has led to some complaints about sheer numerical majorities dominating the profession rather than standards of scholarly excellence. The pluralists, however, are unrepentent.
"The feeling was," Professor Sherover said, "that analytical philosophy had taken control of philosophy and the only way to counter that was by a political counter-offensive."