John Lachs, professor emeritus of philosophy at Vanderbilt College, has died.
Professor Lachs labored on questions regarding human nature, varied matters in ethical philosophy, American philosophy, the worth of philosophy, and a variety of different points. He’s the creator of a number of books, together with: Meddling: On the Advantage of Leaving Others Alone (2014), Freedom and Limits (2014), A Neighborhood of People (2003), In Love with Life: Reflections on the Pleasure of Dwelling and Why We Hate to Die (1998), and The Relevance of Philosophy to Life (1995), amongst others. Along with his scholarly writing he additionally took up questions concerning the self-discipline of philosophy a long time in the past which can be nonetheless dwell points right this moment, for instance, in “Can Philosophers Still Produce Public Intellectuals” and “What Constitutes a Pluralistic Philosophy Department?” You’ll be able to be taught extra about his writings here and here.
Professor Lachs joined the Vanderbilt philosophy school in 1967. He earned his PhD from Yale College and his MA and BA from McGill College.
The next obituary is by Michael Brodrick, a former scholar of Lachs’.
John Lachs: Reflections on a Life Properly Lived
by Michael Brodrick
John Lachs, the Hungarian-born American thinker, creator of In Love with Life, The Relevance of Philosophy to Life, and Intermediate Man, handed away on November 14th, 2023 at his residence in Nashville, Tennessee. Born on July 17, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, Lachs was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Vanderbilt College.
Lachs was 10 years outdated on December 29, 1944, the day the Soviet Purple Military encircled Budapest. When town fell, a years-long occupation ensued. Lachs and his dad and mom handed undetected throughout two patrolled borders whereas fleeing Hungary. These hardships have been formative. Lachs later described them as “alternatives” to develop his “latent reflective tendencies.” They referred to as to thoughts “the evanescence of life and the uncontrollability of fortune,” awakening inside him a want to “learn about God, the which means of life, and the precise comportment in direction of demise.”
In his decades-long profession as a philosophy professor, Lachs made the case for the relevance of philosophy to life. The rise of the fashionable college wrought a change in the way in which philosophy was practiced. Philosophy narrowed its horizons. Its largely summary and theoretical preoccupations bore little resemblance to the traditional quest for the nice life. Lachs’s goal was not merely an effort to theorize about philosophy differently. Lachs embodied the philosophical concepts he championed within the classroom, in writing, and in management positions throughout the career.
Lachs first studied philosophy at McGill College. A senior seminar taught by T. G. Henderson launched him to the writings of Spanish-born American thinker George Santayana. Lachs would finally turn out to be one of many foremost authorities on Santayana and a founding member of the Society for Development of American Philosophy.
Lachs earned his PhD from Yale the place he studied with the legendary Wilfred Sellars, Paul Weiss, and Model Blanshard. Sellars and Blanshard co-directed his dissertation. Blanshard, Lachs recalled, was “all encouragement and appreciation,” whereas Sellars was “all important chew.” Lachs took each approaches to coronary heart, deploying them with equal facility in his personal educating.
Lachs started his distinguished profession on the Faculty of William and Mary. He later moved to Vanderbilt College, the place he remained for greater than 50 years. Throughout his time at Vanderbilt, Lachs taught over 10,000 college students in his well-known ethics course and was first reader on some 72 doctoral dissertations. Lachs’s generosity and respect for people and their selections made him an outstanding mentor of graduate college students. “My tendency,” he defined, “is to allow them to write on what they want and derive instruction from how I recommend that they trim their luxuriant growths.”
Lachs penned some 21 books and greater than 150 articles. Every of those contributes to a classy skilled discourse, whereas on the identical time asking a easy query: How can philosophy enhance our lives? Lachs recalled studying from Santayana that “the last word difficulty in philosophy and in on a regular basis life is the well being of 1’s soul.” For Lachs, the skilled actions of the professor went hand in glove with the non-public quest for which means, goal, and achievement.
Lachs’s perception within the private and social worth of philosophy prompted him to put in writing certainly one of his most celebrated books, In Love with Life: Reflections on the Pleasure of Dwelling and Why We Hate to Die. In it, Lachs affords philosophy to most of the people, exhibiting partially how reflection will help us deal with life’s challenges, together with concern, ache, and struggling. An necessary caveat is that, for Lachs, philosophy is greater than only a comfort for all times’s ills: it’s an inherently pleasant exercise by which we learn to dwell our greatest lives.
Observing the overwhelming response to In Love with Life, Lachs wrote that it confirmed him “the magnitude of the necessity individuals expertise for philosophical reflections on what they do and what befalls them.” Lachs would proceed to advance the undertaking of assembly that want as chair of the American Philosophical Affiliation’s Centennial Committee.
Lachs lived the pragmatism of William James, C.S. Peirce, and John Dewey, embodying the target of enhancing the human situation. Whether or not he was getting ready a graduate scholar for skilled success, bringing philosophy to the area people, publishing on the most recent issues in biomedical ethics, or listening attentively whereas a buddy confided in him, Lachs’s default posture, as he described it, was “energetic assault upon the world.” His purpose was all the time to make life higher.
On a regular basis life, for Lachs, provided innumerable events for pleasure. There was the pleasure of scratching one’s head, of sitting within the solar, of frolicking in a freshly raked pile of leaves. There was the fantastic thing about the redbud bushes once they bloomed in spring. There was Mozart’s music, pleasant dialog, and holding fingers along with your sweetheart. Lachs’s phrase for moments of that kind was “self-justifying.”
Whereas Lachs thought-about himself an optimist, he made some extent of including that optimism, for people, is feasible solely within the quick time period. “Ache and eventual loss,” he wrote, “seem to me inevitable parts of the human situation.” In relation to these parts, Lachs lived the philosophy of the Stoics. “On the level the place we run out of ameliorative methods,” he conceded, “swish acceptance of no matter destiny might throw our manner makes for interior peace and higher life.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, upon the demise of his buddy Thoreau, noticed that his buddy couldn’t be contained throughout the bounds of any position or career, for Thoreau “[aimed] at a way more complete calling, the artwork of residing properly.” Lachs heard and responded to the identical calling. He articulated, taught, and demonstrated the artwork of residing properly to the best diploma. His life enriched this world immeasurably. His passing leaves a void equally immeasurable. Could our reminiscences of him remind us of the nice issues life holds and assist us rejoice in them.
A 2017 interview with Professor Lachs:
