In memoriam Robert C. Solomon
Welcome from Mitchell Ginsberg.
I have added information below about a Memorial Conference to be held
in Austin, Texas, in February, 2008.
More to be added.... visit when inspired.
..... comments invited: see email, below .....
Please scroll down for details and a link to the organizers of that conference.
There may be some material coming out of this conference for publication.
More on that when and if I learn anything to announce on behalf of that project.
This web site is to give tribute to my friend of some fifty years, Robert Solomon, September 14, 1942 - January 2, 2007. It is too soon after his sudden death for me to express my thoughts and feelings adequately, and perhaps that will never happen, but I want to dedicate this page, possibly to be added to in time, to his memory. I feel that I have lost a dear brother.
To Kathy (Kathleen Higgins, his wife, companion, co-author, and Philosophy Department colleague at the University of Texas) and to Andy and Jon (his two brothers), I offer my sympathy and love.
From the time I first met Bob in the 1950s (knowing one another "virtually since childhood" as he put it in his Foreword to The Inner Palace) and was a welcome and appreciative guest in his home, getting to know his family as a young teenager and enjoying the stimulating and playful conversations that took place around the dinner table (not to mention many a Three Stooges movie), to the times of our late-night study and candid and searching conversations in high school (Cheltenham High School, outside of Philadelphia, from which we graduated in 1960), to our years at Penn (the University of Pennsylvania), we being roommates for half of that time, to the trip the two of us took together through Europe the summer after graduating from Penn (in 1963), to our graduate school together at the University of Michigan, studying Philosophy and Psychology, to our going off as "bright young men" (his words, again) becoming "enthusiastic teachers of philosophy, at Yale and Princeton, respectfully" (also his words), to our later years, including my Visiting Professorship in Buddhist Studies at the University of Texas that he arranged in the summer of 1973, to allow us to prepare a joint project he had in mind, to these subsequent thirty-some years of ongoing contact, communication, and personal visits, sending each other various of our journal articles and our published books (I, all 3 titles; he, several of his more than 40 texts), and above all, keeping in touch on a much more personal level, what I feel most is a deep loss and a kalaidescope of memories: mostly of his caring and magnanimous spirit, his deeply candid and searching mind, and his profound loyalty and committed friendship.
Of course his brilliance and his intense presence also stand out. From the time in high school when he first shared with me the details of the findings of medical professionals and introduced me to the rather technical vocabulary of cardiology describing those findings (Bob's wife Kathy has recently explained some of this as we can read now at various web sites), I appreciated the thirst for full life that he lived out consistently with great determination.
Our sharing on the intellectual level a persevering interest in the human mind and in the integration of thinking and the emotions (both of us writing on the logic or conceptual structure of emotions such as love from 1964 on -- for some links to his writings on this topic, see
On Schizophrenia),
in analytic philosophy, in the writings of Nietzsche (with Bob inviting me to contribute an article on Nietzschean Psychiatry to his collection in 1973), to our familiarity with phenomenology and Sartre, these are but welcome additions over a foundation of what I feel is a deep mutual respect and caring for one another that continued for some fifty years until the very end: his last communication to me in mid-December 2006, on hearing of the death of my mother, was to welcome me gently and sweetly to orphanhood. He wrote in that same email of not knowing how much longer he could keep up traveling about the globe, but that he would keep on trying. Indeed he did. It is a great loss I feel; it is for me too soon to put all of this together, so I will say this for now and leave the rest to come into form.
Perhaps iconic for me is his respect for the Theravada Buddhist monk (Soma Maha Thera, 1898-1960) who spoke of preferring to wear out than to rust out. The loss of such a friend as Bob is a strong reminder of the importance of appreciating every breath we have in this lifetime, as he first taught me in our high school days and late-night endless conversations. I sense he will live on through the memories of the many he touched.
Disagreeing with Sartre from No Exit (Huis Clos), I would say here not that hell is other people (l'enfer, c'est les autres) but in Bob's case, as can be seen in the comments by many of his former students and others who have known him professionally and personally, heaven is other people (le paradis, c'est les autres).
And to say farewell in the French language that Bob so loved, adieu, mon ami, mon frere spirituel, mon copain, mon pote!
One small connection from 1973 (in a period in our lives when we shared an intense involvement with the teachings and vision of Nietzsche) was mentioned on the page
Teachings, where I wrote:
Friedrich Nietzsche, although not a psychotherapist, did write much that suggests a particular model of interaction as therapeutic. I have written on what this model would be, based on an extensive reading of the texts of Nietzsche, especially an extended essay entitled "Nietzschean Psychiatry" that was first published in 1973 in Robert C. Solomon, editor, Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Bob graciously provided a warm Foreword to The Inner Palace. For various brief comments and opinions about this work, including one by Bob (taken from his Foreword), please see Reviews of The Inner Palace.
Please come back soon and visit
my Home Page
and linked pages, as I will updating and adding to them as time permits.
Links to web sites honoring Bob from students, friends, and colleagues from around the world
Robert C. Solomon
Memorial Conference (February 15-16, 2008, in Austin, Texas).
The January 4, 2007 announcement of his death by fellow Philosophy professor Farhang Erfani of the University of Texas
University of Texas announcement of January 9, 2007 about gathering honoring Professor Solomon
Wikipedia article on Robert Solomon
ephilosopher links for Robert C. Solomon sites
In Memoriam (Institute for Corporate Ethics)
Guestbook with remembrances by friends, students, and colleagues, page 1, with links to many further entries
Professor Solomon as Professor Solomon lecturing on existentialism (in the film Waking Life)
email:
jinavamsa@yahoo.com
C 2008
