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In Memoriam: J.B. Schneewind (1930-2024)

Brian Leiter

Professor Schneewind, a leading historian of ethics, held tenured positions at the University of Pittsburgh, Hunter College and the City University of New York Graduate Center (where he was also Provost), and, from 1981 until his retirement in 2003, at Johns Hopkins University, where he was emeritus.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Schneewind, or from those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.  Professor Steven Gross, Chair of the Johns Hopkins department, shared this memorial notice:

The William H. Miller III Department of Philosophy mourns the passing of Jerry Schneewind, Professor of Philosophy, emeritus. Professor Schneewind was deeply admired both for his ground-breaking work in the history of ethics and for his service to the field. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and later Chair of its Board of Officers. In March 2000, the Department organized a conference in his honor on "Reading Autonomy".

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11 responses to “In Memoriam: J.B. Schneewind (1930-2024)”

  1. James Klagge

    I didn't know Schneewind at all well–mostly from him participating in conferences here at VT. But I wanted to share a small anecdote from him. He recounted in an email to me about a year ago:
    "My mother…had piano lessons with [Paul] Wittgenstein. She had won some sort of scholarship that paid for the lessons. I recall that she and my father took him out for a picnic lunch one weekend day. My mother packed an elaborate meal. She said that at about 10:00 AM he said it was time to eat. He then fell asleep and when he awoke declared it time to go home. I was taking clarinet lessons at the time. At some point he shook an empty sleeve at me and said something like: "I took clarinet once. Good thing I gave it up, ja?" He terrified my mother. He made her play Bach, though she wanted to play romantic music. I was a teen-ager and had not even begun college. We knew he came from a wealthy family. At the time, I had never heard of [Ludwig] Wittgenstein."

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  2. Paul Guyer

    You should read Jerry's comments about the first time he saw Ludwig at Cornell, in his APA Dewey lecture. Also very charming.

    Jerry was a great scholar and a wonderful human being. His books on Sidgwick and on the background to Kant's moral philosophy are landmarks unlikely to be surpassed any time soon. His contributions to the profession and to academia more generally (e.g., as Provost of Hunter College, CUNY), were extensive and exemplary. He had a great gift for friendship and was incredibly supportive: when my wife Pamela arrived at Pitt as a very young assistant professor, many years ago, and found a pit of sexism, he and his wife Elizabeth took her under their wing, and he was one of the people instrumental to hiring me a few years later. Although he then left for Hunter two years later, he always supported my work, and we all remained lifelong friends. He gave me valuable advice about my forthcoming book just a couple of years ago. He was absolutely devoted to his family, saddened after Elsie's unexpected death two years ago, but according to his daughters he died tpday cogent until the end and completely at peace.

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  3. Stephen Darwall

    I had the good fortune to be in the first seminar Jerry ever taught on Kant (and Hobbes and Hume) at Pitt, when I was a grad student, around 1970. At the time, I wasn’t really doing history, and he wasn’t really doing Kant. He was a model for me ever since, and I dedicated Modern Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to Kant to him along with Bill Frankena and David Falk. I sent him a copy and was relieved to receive an email from him in September saying he thought it wasn’t too bad.
    I have so many memories both from the days at Pitt and later; he was mostly beginning his administrative career, which took him to Hunter just after I left. As Paul says, he was a great supporter of women in the field, and he became dean of Pitt’s undergraduate college because of his concern for students. He was very important for the health, even the survival, of the APA during some difficulty periods.
    My next memories are from 1978-79, when I was in New York writing Impartial Reason and he was a provost at Hunter. He would read early modern moral philosophy on the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I remember a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner he invited he to at his home with Elsie and his family. He had a recipe for Turkey stuffing with dried fruit and chestnuts, which he was justly proud of (and which I have made ever since.) Happily for all of us, Jerry came back to Philosophy to go to Hopkins and to write the book on modern moral philosophy.
    One last memory: at an APA Eastern Division meeting after his return to Philosophy, he was telling me about his plans for a History of Ethics Society he was hoping to organize. “We could invite Alasdair MacIntyre to give the main talk (After Virtue had recently appeared) and have some analytic thug, like you or Nick Sturgeon comment.” Jerry had a lot to do with my not ending up an analytic thug.

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  4. David Rosenthal

    As a exceptionally generous and thoughtful professor during my undergraduate years at the University of Chicago and a few years after, Jerry Schneewind was pivotal in setting an example of what good work in philosophy can be and in giving me wise and persistent guidance. I will always be deeply in his debt.

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  5. Daniel Callcut

    Jerry was a brilliant teacher and scholar. One small snapshot from his life: every year the Schneewinds would have the international Philosophy grad students over for Thanksgiving. These wonderful feasts were a lovely way to welcome us into the family and into American life. There is an excellent volume of essays inspired by Jerry’s work called New Essays on the History of Autonomy edited by Natalie Brender and Larry Krasnoff.

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  6. James C. Klagge

    Yes. A full account of W's visit to Cornell: Pinch and Swedberg, “Wittgenstein’s Visit to Ithaca in 1949: On the Importance of Details”,Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 14, 1(2012):2-29. Reprinted in slightly
    abbreviated form as “Wittgenstein at Cornell”, pp. 971-92 in Vol. 2 of F.A. Flowers III and Ian Ground (eds.), Portraits of Wittgenstein. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

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  7. Steven Gross

    Johns Hopkins' memorial notice is now posted, here: https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/01/09/jerome-schneewind-obituary/

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  8. Cora Diamond

    Of many comments on papers of mine over the years, it is some comments of Jerry Schneewind’s that have most stuck in my mind, as not only helpful but humanly deep. He had noted not only that what I called loss of concepts had been accompanied by gains in human liberty, but that i had profited from exactly these shifts. He made me see the connections between the kind of life I had been able to lead and the shifts in consciousness that I had been inclined to deplore. His philosophical gifts included the capacity to make one see something in a radically different way.

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  9. Larry Krasnoff

    I knew I wanted to be a professor before I wanted to be a philosopher, but I knew I could be a philosopher because I saw the way Jerry Schneewind was a professor in philosophy. A professor is supposed to be a scholar, a teacher, and at least help with administration…to be good at all three of those while also finding time for home and family. We read so much these days about how hard it is to do and balance all of these things, how soul-sucking the demands of the academic job and life are. I can sympathize with the perspective, but I also think it cannot neglect the counter-example that was Jerry. He was great at every part of his job. He wrote two momumental books in the history of moral philosophy, he was a brilliant and beloved teacher, he had a distinguished career in administration as a chair, a dean, and a provost — and he did it all while devoted to having a beautiful home and a wonderful family. And he was happy, not in any sort of fake or impossibly aspirational way, but because he knew who he was and that he got to live a satisfying life, the one he wanted to live. Jerry thought being a professor was a great thing. And isn't it? Shouldn't we just stop there, at least some of the time?

    Because of Jerry, I got to be a professor too, and that has been a great thing. I had very little background in analytic philosophy when I came to Johns Hopkins, but Jerry was confident that the work I had done in European intellectual history was excellent preparation for doing philosophy as he understood it. And if others in the department were less sure, he unceremoniously told them to shove off, just as he had done so many times in the profession while committing himself to the kind of historical work that the analytic revolution in philosophy was determined to disparage. He knew who he was and what he wanted to write, and he knew that the result would show that first-rate history of philosophy just is first-rate philosophy, no matter what anyone ever said to the contrary. He always had my back, and he made plain that if I met his high standards for reading texts and for writing clearly, he trusted me with the freedom to pursue my intellctual interests in whatever direction they led. He wasn't really my mentor and he wasn't really my friend — he sensed immediately that I did not need or want those things from him — but he was the perfect thesis director for me. And in the end, he ultimately gave me so much more, in the example of the way he carried himself in his job and in his life.

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  10. Larry Krasnoff

    Jerry was really proud that you did not end up an analytic thug. And he would have very much enjoyed that you posted his particular turn of phrase here. Echt Schneewind!

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  11. Dale Jamieson

    Just to add to the wonderful and true things that have already been said, in 1983 Jerry and David Hoy ran an NEH summer seminar on Kantian Ethical Theory that was life-changing for many of the participants (including me). The faculty (in addition to Jerry and David) were the luminaries you would expect (Rawls, Nagel, O'Neill, Heinrich etc.), and the "students" included Americks, Baron, and too many others to name who have gone on to make wonderful careers. In addition to the amazing intellectual experience, what I most remember is how Jerry created an intellectual and human environment that welded us into a constructive community through that hot, sticky, Baltimore summer (which also included a field trip to the old Memorial Stadium, home of the Orioles).

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