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  1. Paul Russell's avatar

    The ‘School of Law’ at the University of Miami has posted this notice (which is a bit more substantial): https://news.miami.edu/law/stories/2026/03/renowned-philosopher-and-legal-scholar-susan-haack-passes-away.html…

  2. Espen Hammer's avatar

    A towering figure of the post-World War II era in European philosophy and social/political theory. An unflinching proponent of enlightenment…

  3. s. wallerstein's avatar
  4. AG Tanyi's avatar
  5. Brian Leiter's avatar
  6. Charles Pigden's avatar

    The thing about In Memoriam tributes is that the dead person can’t appreciate them. I am happy to say that…

  7. AG Tanyi's avatar

In Memoriam: Susan Haack (1945-2026)

Brian Leiter

Professor Haack was a well-known contributor to epistemology and philosophy of logic, who started her academic career at the University of Warwick, and spent the bulk of her career (since 1990) at the University of Miami, where she taught in both the philosophy department and law school. There is a brief memorial notice from Miami here. Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Haack or for those who wish to comment on the significance of her work.

(Thanks to Bob Talisse for the pointer.)

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5 responses to “In Memoriam: Susan Haack (1945-2026)”

  1. Tom Llewellyn

    Sorry to hear this. Her book on logic remains one of the best of its kind.

    Reply
  2. Miroslav Imbrisevic

    Haack gave a clear-headed assessment of the state of philosophy in 2017
    [https://www-degruyterbrill-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/document/doi/10.1515/sats-2019-7001/html]: ‘Yes, something is rotten in the state of philosophy.’ (…) Some of the problems are the result of changes in the management of universities affecting the whole academy: the burgeoning bureaucracy, the ever-increasing stress on “productivity,” the ever-spreading culture of grants-and-research-projects, the ever-growing reliance on hopelessly flawed surrogate measures of the quality of intellectual work, the obsession with “prestige,” and so on. And some of the problems are the result of changes in academic publishing: the ever-more-extensive reach of enormous, predatory presses that treat authors as fungible content-providers whose rights in their
    work they can gobble up and sell on, the ever-increasing intrusiveness of copy-editors dedicated to ensuring that everyone write the same deadly, deadpan
    academic prose, the endless demands of a time- and energy-wasting peer-review
    process by now not only relentlessly conventional but also, sometimes, outright
    corrupt, and so forth. Other problems, however, are more specific to our discipline: our decades of over-production of Ph.D.s, for example, the pressure we
    put on graduate students to publish while they’re still wet behind the ears, the
    completely artificial importance we give to “contacts” and skill in grantsmanship’.

    Reply
  3. Aphrodite Alexandrakis

    It is very sad to hear that Susan Haack does not exist anymore in this world. However, her name and great work will remain in the history of philosophy.
    I first met Susan when she came to be interviewed for a faculty position by the philosophy department. At that time, early 1980’s, I was a philosophy graduate student at the University of Miami.
    Since no one from the all male faculty department offered Susan to take her around to see the area, I took her in my old car to the beach which, at that time was quiet, clean, and beautiful. She was a quiet young woman but a civilized one.

    As it is known, her work will for ever be in among the great philosophers.

    I regret that my hard work at the university and the caring for my young family at that time, did not allow me to get to know Susan closer.

    May her special spirit, wit and great mind, be always remembered.

    Reply
  4. Charles Pigden

    The thing about In Memoriam tributes is that the dead person can’t appreciate them. I am happy to say that I got my tribute in ante-mortem with this fan-letter from 2014. (I did not know Susan Haack personally though there were at most two degrees of separation.)

    Dear Professor Haack,
    I was checking out the Miami Philosophy website as I had a message to send to Michael Slote when I came across your email address. I thought I would take the opportunity to to send you a fan letter. I read Deviant Logics and Philosophy of Logics when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge in the late seventies (the latter shortly before taking my finals) and I thought then (as I think now) that they were *terrific* books. I’ve since read Defending Science and Confessions of a Passionate Moderate and I liked them too, though your first two books were the ones that meant the most to me. Since I subscribe to a version of Thumper’s principle (from Bambi) ‘If you’ve got something nice that you can honestly say, say it!’ I thought I would just say a somewhat belated ‘congratulations and thank you’. I was already bitten by the philosophy bug when I read them (like many another it was Russell that lured me into philosophy) but Deviant Logics and Philosophy of Logics certainly confirmed me in my passion for the subject.
    Regards
    Charles Pigden

    I think that Susan Haack was the very model of what a philosopher ought to be and I am sorry that she is dead. Still, a philosopher who made the most of her considerable talents

    Reply
  5. Paul Russell

    The ‘School of Law’ at the University of Miami has posted this notice (which is a bit more substantial):

    https://news.miami.edu/law/stories/2026/03/renowned-philosopher-and-legal-scholar-susan-haack-passes-away.html

    There is also this interview:
    https://philosophynow.org/issues/169/The_Post-Truth_Kerfuffle

    I did not work in Haack’s end of things but I always greatly admired what I read by her, as well as her considerable independence of mind and philosophical integrity. I am also in full agreement with her 2017 assessment of the current state of philosophy (as posted above).

    Reply

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