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All about class.
*important caveat that said TT job was secured via an internal hire where two other grads of the same school…
Excellent questions! Re question 6, I have actually already invented a new punctuation mark. I can’t type it here, as…
29. Should competitive examination questions obey Betteridge’s Law?
It’s likely that Notre Dame will return to a policy of requiring GREs next year (this year they’re officially optional…
Would love to see what a successful answer (in the view of the All Souls’ examiners) looks like.
That list of questions has a beauty to it, I swear.
Professor Stern, well-known for his work on Kant and Hegel, died yesterday of the terminal illness he discussed in this interview we noted last fall. Professor Stern spent his academic career at the University of Sheffield. Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Stern or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work. Please feel free to post links to obituaries or memorial notices as well.
(Thanks to Matt Kramer for the pointer.)
This is such very sad, if not unexpected, news. There was a conference celebrating and engaging with Bob's work in Sheffield in May. We all new that his prognosis was grim. It was a wonderful occasion, and Bob was in fine form and able to appreciate the love and respect that was in the room.
I've known Bob and his work for years. So much of it is genuinely important, especially his book on Løgstrup. Bob did more to bring this important Danish philosopher into the mainstream than anyone. He got me involved in Løgstrup studies, and it did marvels for my own philosophical trajectory. (Løgstrup is a star of my recent THE HEART AND ITS ATTITUDES.)
Bob's learning was vast and his philosophical insight acute. Really one of the best Kant and Hegel scholars around, but also of Kieregaard, Luther, Levinas, and so many others.
I spent a lot of time with Bob over the years at various conferences and during a semester when he visited Yale. We certainly had our disagreements–Bob was dogged in debate, but always entirely reasonable and humble. I learned and will still learn so very much from him.
And no one was a nicer, gentler, and kinder human being. I miss him terribly already.
Ditto Steve Darwall's remarks. Bob was a lovely person as well as an outstanding Kant/Hegel scholar. He demonstrated such grace when he learned of his diagnosis; his attitude towards his illness was an inspiration to me and I'm sure many others. This is a huge loss for philosophy and for the Kant/Hegel/Kierkegaard etc. world in particular.
Sally Sedgwick
Bob was both a great philosopher and a great person. I’ve learned a lot from his way of doing history of philosophy. And he was always constructive and never polemical in discussions.
We got to know each other better when we organised a conference in Frankfurt in 2014 and edited the resulting volume. We remained in contact since then. I regret that we didn’t really collaborate much the first time I visited Sheffield in 2008 (I was working on Peirce with Chris Hookway, another great Sheffield philosopher).
It was sad to discover that he was ill and it is even more sad to realise that I won’t have the possibility to talk philosophy with him any more.
I met Bob several times. His interest in Løgstrup meant that he was a frequent visitor to Aarhus University here in Denmark. But even before he discovered Løgstrup he had been invited to speak at the Idealism Circle in Aarhus, a local reading group consisting of students and lecturers from Aarhus University, which was systematically going through the main writings of the German Idealists and related thinkers, from Kant over Fichte, Schelling and Hegel to Shopenhauer and Kierkegaard. I was part of the Circle’s organizing commitee, and Bob was one of the frist persons we decided to invite. He remained a longstanding friend and supporter of the Circle’s activities until his death
When my former supervisor, Hans Fink, who worked closely together with Bob on Løgstrup’s ethical thinking, retired in 2014, he asked both Bob and me to contribute to a small conference in Aarhus on moral obligation. Bob talked about Løgstrup. I delivered a talk where I provided a friendly critique of Bob’s interpretation of Kant’s concept of moral duty, which to my mind was too subjectivist in its phenomenological implications. Bob took my criticism gracefully, but (of course) didn’t change his mind one bit.
I am very sorry to hear of Bob's death. We were colleagues for 10 years in the 90s. We were friendly without being friends. (I was busy with three young kids and running the Hang Seng Center for cog sci at the time.) But he was an exemplary colleague, and very generous and open minded in his approach to philosophy — participating in all of the faculty book-reading groups, as I recall.
Here is a touching obituary from Stephen Houlgate of the Hegel Society of Great Britain: https://hegel-society.org.uk/news/robert-stern-1962-2024/
About 25 years ago, Bob Stern was my PhD supervisor – starting with my first essay which was due September 11, 2001. He brought out the best in everyone mixing razor sharp insights with infectious humour. Many happy memories of supervision meetings, reading groups (on Hegel and on Peirce), playing guitar at his 40th birthday party and learning how to manage my new garden (he was a keen gardener amongst many other talents) while discussing Hegel's philosophy. He was editor of the European Journal of Philosophy at the time and helped me put together the launch of the Journal of Moral Philosophy, and always wisdom on tap re: professional service. Bob was one of a kind and I'm enormously fortunate to have been able to learn so much from him. I could not have had a better supervisor, mentor and friend.
I met Bob for the first time in 2010 at the conference on Løgstrup's ethics in Sheffield, where I had to present a paper. At that time I was still in charge of the Løgstrup Archive in Aarhus before my retirement in 2011. The Sheffield conference was followed up by one in Aarhus in 2011. Afterwards Bob and Hans Fink published the contributions of both conferences as 'What is Ethically Demanded?' (UNDP, 2017).
In the wake of these conferences Bob began to prepare his book on Løgstrup's ethics. In this connection he visited Aarhus several times to study the sources and talk with Løgstrup scholars. Here I had the privilege to discuss Løgstrup with him and get to know him as the learned and generous person he was. As is well-known his preparations resulted In the excellent publication 'The Radical Demand in Løgstrup's Ethics' (OUP, 2019), which offers a comprehensive account and discussion of Løgstrup's conception of the ethical demand.
To give the anglophone world access to the main sources of Løgstrup's ethics Bob initiated the (re-)translation of four of his books into English and engaged OUP to publish them. I became involved in the translation of two of them and this gave me the opportunity to renew my collaboration with Bob. We had intensive discussions about the translation of some key terms, but thanks to Bob's judgment and flexibility we always found a solution that satisfied both of us.
Having finished the translations Bob and I kept in touch per mail, especially after the interview with him on this website. I was impressed by the open and realistic way he talked there about his terminal disease, and I found some comfort in learning that he was not afraid of death, because he was grateful about the life he had got. We continued mailing about both personal and philosophical issues until shortly after Whitsuntide, where Bob wrote that he had been pleased with the just held symposium about his work, but now looked forward to some peaceful days.
In the inscription of the copy of his Løgstrup book he gave me Bob writes: "I am glad that Løgstrup has brought us together!". The same applies a fortiori to me! My sorrow at his dead is accompanied by a great gratitude about his friendship and his invaluable effort to make Løgstrup's ethics known to the anglophone public.
I am very saddened to learn that Bob has died, no more than 62 years old. He was a good friend and an eminent scholar who had so much more to give. I first met him in 2009 at a seminar organized by The European Journal of Philosophy of which he was then the editor. The seminar was a follow-up to a lecture by Alasdair MacIntyre entitled: ‘Danish Ethical Demands and French Common Goods’. The first half was about The Ethical Demand by K.E. Løgstrup, a new edition of which had recently been published by Notre Dame University Press, edited by MacIntyre and me. Apart from the two of us, Bob was the only person in the room who had read at least part of the book, about which he raised many good questions. After the seminar he suggested that he and I should work together to organize seminars on Løgstrup’s work both in Sheffield and in Aarhus. I had been a pupil of Løgstrup’s back in the 1960s, and I eagerly accepted his proposal. The seminars took place in 2010 and 2011, and the papers given then formed the basis for an anthology that we edited together: What is Ethically Demanded? K.E. Løgstrup’s Philosophy of the Moral Life, published in 2017 by Notre Dame.
I was struck by the amount of energy Bob put into the whole process, and even more by the seriousness and depth of his own encounter with Løgstrup. He took a course in Danish and was very soon reading widely on his own in the vast literature in the Scandinavian languages. He also set up a useful homepage https://ethicaldemand.wordpress.com/. The main result of his efforts, however, was his great book The Radical Demand in Løgstrup’s Ethics, published 2019 by Oxford University Press. This is the first monograph on Løgstrup in the English language, and it offers a very clear and concise commentary on his work while relating it to later developments mainly in Anglophone ethics. There are points where my emphasis would be different, but it is a masterly work. He then collaborated with Bjørn Rabjerg in editing a series of four books by Løgstrup, published by OUP 2020-23, among them a new and more scholarly critical edition of The Ethical Demand. In the preface to his own book Bob suggests themes for subsequent work on Løgstrup. It is a great pity that he didn’t get the chance to follow up on this.
It was always a pleasure to be together with Bob. My wife and I visited him and Crosby in Sheffield on one of my many visits there, and he came several times to Aarhus, once in order to deliver the annual Løgstrup Lecture. I am in no doubt, had he lived just a few more years, he would have been awarded an honorary degree at Aarhus University. He is dearly missed in Denmark.
I did not have the pleasure of meeting Robert Stern. I am merely one of his grateful readers and a beneficiary of his pleasant lecture style. Among Professor Stern's contributions to philosophy is making the German idealistic tradition as non-intimidating as possible for students. He will be missed.
A recent meeting of the Hegel Society of Great Britain was given over to themes in Bob Stern’s writings. I was very pleased to be there not least because its many excellent papers gave me access to parts of Bob’s work I had not managed to follow in more recent years. His distinctively warm but firm personality was evocatively captured by the speakers who reminisced about their time with him.
The conference was opened by Joe Saunders (Durham), one of a number of very distinguished former students of Bob, who provided us with a wonderful and compelling account of the interconnections between Bob’s various intricately maintained philosophical commitments (from Kant and Hegel – metaphysics and ethics – transcendental arguments to Løgstrup). Fortunately that lecture was recorded and you can watch it here:
A recent meeting of the Hegel Society of Great Britain was given over to themes in Bob Stern’s writings. I was very pleased to be there not least because its many excellent papers gave me access to parts of Bob’s work I had not managed to follow in more recent years. His distinctively warm but firm personality was evocatively captured by the speakers who reminisced about their time with him.
The conference was opened by Joe Saunders (Durham), one of a number of very distinguished former students of Bob, who provided us with a wonderful and compelling account of the interconnections between Bob’s various intricately maintained philosophical commitments (from Kant and Hegel – metaphysics and ethics – transcendental arguments to Løgstrup). Fortunately that lecture was recorded and you can watch it here:
An 'In Memoriam' page for Bob, collating links to a number of resources relating to his life and work (including some of his interviews, talks from conferences held in his honour, obituaries, and memorial notices), has been set up by Bob's former colleagues and friends at Sheffield. You can find it at the link: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hpdh/research/philosophy/robert-stern-1962-2024
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