Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Steven Hales's avatar
  2. sahpa's avatar

    Essays as coursework has never been just about engaging the argument itself. Authorship matters because it matters that the argument…

  3. André Hampshire's avatar

    If anything, this exchange illustrates the problem: judgments are being made on stylistic impressions (“this sounds like AI”) rather than…

  4. Ted Bach's avatar

    The existential threat is not to higher-ed as such but a particular (and now common) higher-ed business model: the one…

  5. Steven Hales's avatar
  6. Collin Lucken's avatar
  7. André Hampshire's avatar

    Sagar’s claim that LLMs pose an “existential threat” to universities rests on a set of conflations that do not survive…

In Memoriam: Paul Woodruff (1943-2023)

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 25–SOME VERY NICE REMEMBRANCES OF PAUL IN THE COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME

A longtime faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was only recently emeritus, Professor Woodruff was best-known for his work on Greek philosophy (especially Socrates, the Sophists and Thucydides), and the philosophy of theater.  There is an informative obituary here, and you can read about his final, forthcoming book here. (Thanks to Curtis Sparrer for the pointers.)

Professor Woodruff wrote about his illness, and about life, here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Woodruff or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

7 responses to “In Memoriam: Paul Woodruff (1943-2023)”

  1. Brian Leiter

    I was Paul's colleague at Texas for thirteen years. He was a wonderful human being, and a very fine, and very humanistic, scholar. Along with Alex Mourelatos, he was a mainstay of UT Austin's very successful program in ancient philosophy.

    While working on my Nietzsche book, I learned a lot from him about the Sophists and Thucydides, in particular. I had wanted him to write the book on Socrates in my Routledge Philosophers series, but alas that did not happen. As the linked obituary notes, Paul was also a devoted teacher, who genuinely cared about all his students, including the undergraduates.

    Reply
  2. Dhananjay Jagannathan

    I studied with Paul Woodruff as an undergraduate at UT Austin, first as part of the Plan II Honors Program, where I took the yearlong required philosophy course with him, and then in the Classics and Philosophy departments, studying Thucydides and Sophocles with him in Greek and Plato and the Sophists with him in philosophy seminars. He later supervised my senior thesis on Plato and encouraged me to pursue graduate study. His generosity was extraordinary, and I look back on brunches with him at Texas French Bread and Mother's Cafe and the Kerbey Lane Cafe, where we talked about work but also about life, the arts, and the natural world, with astonishment: here was a legendary scholar and teacher at the university, and here I was an undergraduate student with only the rudiments of understanding, just beginning to think about a career in the field. His kindness and respect remain models for me as I think about how I would like to be as a teacher and an advisor.

    As I went on in the profession, Paul remained a trusted advisor but also became a dear friend. It was my privilege to co-organize, along with another of Paul's former students Chris Raymond (Vassar) and Paul's colleague Jonathan Dancy, a conference in honor of Paul's 75th birthday, held at UT in February 2019. Former students, both graduate and undergraduate, as well as colleagues in the profession gave papers. But such was Paul's impact on the broader university, not only as a teacher and scholar but also as a long-time director of the Plan II Honors Program and then inaugural Dean of Undergraduate Studies, that we organized a further panel for a wide range of friends to speak about how Paul had shaped their lives at the university — including the late Steve Weinberg from Physics, Michael Gagarin from Classics, Kathleen Higgins from Philosophy, Richard Reddick from Education and current Dean of the Undergraduate College, and Alex Wettlaufer from French and Director of the Plan II program. We emphasized then that the conference was not a retirement event, as Paul was firmly committed to continuing his teaching, research, and advising, as in fact he did until shortly before his death.

    Paul's love of his wife Lucia, his daughters Rachel and Kate, and his grandchildren always shone forth, and Paul and Lucia's home in Tarrytown is suffused with this love, which also opened outward into warm hospitality, of which I was lucky, along with many others, to be the beneficiary. Among other things, I learned there what a humanistic academic and intellectual life (and not only a career) might be and how friendship might be its central mark. I expect, in the company of my memories of Paul, of other students of his, and also of his writings, to continue to be the beneficiary of my friendship with him.

    While we knew of the approaching inevitability of this moment, those of us who loved him will find this a terrible loss — so it feels to me.

    Reply
  3. Richard Marshall

    Paul Woodruff did a great interview which summarised many of his ideas here: https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/what-trump-forgot-reverence-empathy-leadership-education-and-philanthropy-etc

    He actually did it in two halves after the first attempt to do the interview got lost in the transfer from 3:AM to 3:16. He showed his class by being totally understanding about the catastrophe by sending me this message: ' Thanks. I have friends in London and usually come every year. I wish I knew when I could return.

    I too am glad this surfaced.

    All best wishes

    Looking forward to the drink

    Paul

    Paul Woodruff.

    “If you desire peace in the world, do not pray that everyone share your beliefs. Pray instead that all may be reverent.” From my book “Reverence."

    Sadly he never made it for the drink. In all his corrsepondance with me he walked the talk of his books.

    Reply
  4. Blinn Combs

    This is a real loss. Paul was not only a brilliant scholar but a thoroughly lovely man. I had the great honor of assisting one of Paul's Plan II philosophy courses–if memory serves it was Dhananjay's cohort. Paul was an utterly spellbinding lecturer. It's almost impossible to convey the effect. He'd start with some random observation about the mundane staging of a work, and slowly build up to really startling observations and analogies. Prior to discussing the Republic's passages on training warrior kings, Paul paint the figure of a young soldier, halfway across the world, loaded to the gills with deadly firepower, and all of the coercive power that entailed, in a place with which he had little familiarity or connection. There's little doubt some of that was straight autobiography, but connecting the image to fundamental issues of rule, war, peace, and social order in a way that highlighted a common theme uniting immediate contemporary struggles with a distant, ancient past without caricature or simple resolution was (is!) simply transcendent. This thoughtful resistance to easy oversimplification, easy objectification of one another, easy resolution to real life struggle–resistance to what Paul might call the hallmarks of irreverence–this resistance was central to Paul's scholarship, and by all appearances, life. His fine volume of excerpts from Thucydides was designed to breathe life into Plato's Republic precisely by highlighting the struggles that cast a long shadow over the social and intellectual lives of Socrates, Plato, and their contemporaries. Paul had a way of gently but powerfully conveying the sense that their struggle was ours, as well.

    Reply
  5. Edward Johnson

    MOMENT

    in memoriam Paul Woodruff

    When I showed up to grad school he,
    in his last year, helped mentor me
    in classical philosophy,

    under Vlastos, until I left,
    a couple months, and then pursued,
    when I came back, another line.

    But his translations I have used
    (Symposium, Thucydides),
    and books of his that I respect
    on loyalty and reverence.

    Though he is dead, and I’m still fine,
    his moment, now, instead of mine,
    and though they are my memories,
    I think of him, in these moments.

    Reply
  6. Mohan Matthen

    I am so sad to hear this. Paul was a wonderfully humane scholar, valued companion, and good friend. I haven't seen him for a long time, but when I knew him, I treasured him as one of the most acute and interesting scholars of Socrates around, and a person with the conversational skills to make you interested too. He had the unusual gift of combining refined philological scholarship with deep philosophical insight and sensitivity. It was always rewarding to talk with him, and fun as well. My memory (possibly inaccurate) is that the U of Texas was slow to value him–I remember plotting with others to lure him away–but when they did, they really did. (Dhananjay attests to that.) That was the Paul I remember–the kind of person you didn't necessarily appreciate fully at first meeting, but when you came to understand his virtues, you really felt what a great person and scholar he really was.

    Reply
  7. Howard J Curzer

    Paul was my dissertation director. From the time he taught my first grad philosophy class to the time he managed my dissertation defense, he was one of my exemplars for how to be a philosopher as well as philosophy professor. While I was a grad student, Paul gave a presentation to the UT Philosophy department about the moral quandaries of war – an unremarkable topic nowadays, but a rarity in the mid 1970’s. That presentation was an eye-opener to me. It convinced me that philosophy had something to say about real world issues. Later, I read his novella, THE PERSONAL SUCCESS OF FIRST-LIEUTENANT PETER ROSILLO which brought home to me that philosophers need not always be writing papers for academic journals. (I have no idea why I never realized these things before.) Finally, I might mention Paul’s teaching. I was his TA for a semester. He showed me that teaching could be done with flair. If I occasionally read poems or bring toys to my classes, it is because I saw Paul do such things in his classes. As I’ve struggled to teach grad students, myself, I’ve come to appreciate more and more how much Paul did for me. I am thankful for all of Paul’s teaching, mentoring, inspiration, and kindness in grad school and beyond.

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress