In Memoriam JAY F. ROSENBERG 1942-2008

Jay Rosenberg's Department website is HERE.
Jay Rosenberg's personal website is HERE.
A News and Observer article on Jay Rosenberg is HERE.

Some memories:

James O'Shea

Since I’ve always looked up to Jay as a philosopher, as a teacher, and as a friend, my heart was recently warmed to read in the preface to his new book on Wilfrid Sellars that he entirely approved of his education in the classic works of the history of philosophy at Reed College in Portland. When I was applying to graduate schools in philosophy, I was completely ignorant of twentieth century analytic philosophy, having likewise studied only the history of philosophy as an undergraduate. Fortunately for me, however, my advisor at that time turned out to be a longtime friend of Jay’s, the Hegel scholar Terry Pinkard. Pinkard set me straight: “You should apply to Chapel Hill,” he said, “and if you’re lucky you might end up working with Jay Rosenberg.” I was lucky!

My first sight of the imposing figure of Jay was on the first day of his Kant seminar. After the seminar he told me that he really wouldn’t recommend the Kant course for a first year graduate student. But before I could start trying to talk my way into the course, he said: ‘But sure, all right: if it’s Kant you want, it’s Kant you’ll get!’ I’m still trying to get Kant, of course, and at Chapel Hill I attended Jay’s course for each of four years trying to get Kant – and trying to get Sellars, and Strawson, and of course Rosenberg, too – and every other philosopher who figures in that wonderful whirlwind that was Jay’s famous Kant course. That course was anything but ‘A Relaxed Introduction’ to Kant’s First Critique! It was an intellectually taxing but thrilling introduction to how philosophy is done at its best, with Jay ripping into Kant’s innards and trying to pull out some perennial truths. If, in the end, the course did succeed in giving one ‘access to Kant’, it did so only if it also gave one access to an entire spirit of relentless and historically informed philosophical analysis. It has now, of course, become an excellent book on Kant, entitled Accessing Kant: A Relaxed Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason. For me, however, there is one sense in which the book will always be a bit ‘relaxed’ in comparison with the exciting intensity of Jay himself sitting at the head of the table, the centuries flying back and forth, the insights going steadily forward.

Protoseminars with Jay at Chapel Hill are infamous. We all busted our tails and drank our way through that intellectual hazing. Twenty-two years on and I still have all my little three-page typed papers from Protoseminar, covered with Jay’s voluminous handwritten comments: “You sure don’t seem to like what Dennett’s saying, but I’ll be damned if I’ve been given any reason at all in this offering to feel the same way!” I won’t go on. But at least former students of Jay’s can know, in retrospect, that the raps on our proto-knuckles (o.k., the hammerings on our proto-knuckles) were mild in comparison with the clubs Bill Alston has received from Jay in ‘Alston’s latest defense of the Given’. More importantly, however, the depth and volume of philosophical comments Jay produced on students’ papers is something I’ve never seen matched by anyone else, ever, period Those wonderfully detailed comments, barbs and all, taught me how to do philosophy, and I know there are many other students of Jay’s who feel the same way. Just over year ago, I was fortunate to be able to send Jay draft after draft of some work I was doing on Sellars; and once again, back came comments as deep and as carefully considered as anyone could hope for – along with some welcome raps on the knuckles. Jay’s conscientiousness in providing unbelievably helpful comments for students and colleagues has provided me with an impossible ideal to live up to in my relationships with my own students and colleagues.

(How did he find the time and energy to do it? Jay’s brain could certainly multi-task. One day in Chapel Hill I dropped off a paper at Jay and Gina’s house, and there was Jay, grading papers – and laughing at Pro Wrestling on the TV at the same time!)

After the Kant course I took Jay’s seminars on ontology, on Moore and Russell, and others I can’t even remember now. And then there was his Sellars seminar. As I remember, Bill Lycan and I were the only ones in that seminar that year. How times have changed! Sellars has become a hot topic once again, and in case there are any doubts about how to read Sellars correctly, we now have Jay’s collected papers on Sellars to keep the record straight.

Perhaps my favorite memories of Jay, however, are from more recent times, in Ireland, in Berlin, and in Slovenia. Jay made two trips to Dublin in recent years, the second one with Gina, and I’ll never forget those visits. I remember picking Jay up at the airport, and in my enthusiasm to point out Trinity College as we passed it by (to get to the bigger and better university, University College Dublin!), I suddenly had to slam on the brakes and came within an inch of rear-ending the car in front. I turned to a pale-faced Jay, saying ‘Sorry about that. ’ And Jay said: ‘No, no, that’s perfectly fine. Those events I have no problem with – events of nearly rear-ending cars are just fine.’ Then I remember driving through the Irish countryside a bit, and asking Jay if he was enjoying the scenery. ‘Yes, it’s very nice. In general, I have an antagonistic, combative relationship toward nature. I like it – but I like it like this: with a window firmly placed between me and it.’

The best memory of all for me, however, was the trip Jay made that year with my wife and me to a pub on the Liffey. “O’Shea’s Merchant”, the pub happened to be called. It’s an old-timers’ pub, one of the real gems left among the renovated ‘Super-pubs’ now threatening to take over Dublin. We sat up at the bar and chatted with the barman for what seemed like hours, as afternoon turned into evening. As time passed I remember Jay at one point remarking to the barman that the reason he was tottering a bit back and forth on his seat was not due to the pints of Guinness, but rather to “the sheer shifting complexity of forces required to keep this beautiful figure balanced on this spindly little bar stool.” After a while we glanced around and noticed that an empty pub had become ‘black with people’ (as they say in Dublin), and a small traditional folk band had begun to play. What I’ll always remember is that Jay knew every word to every song, from popular Irish sing-alongs to obscure Celtic folk ballads. I should have anticipated as much, since I knew about Jay’s longtime interest in folk music and dance. What I’ll never forget, however, was the steadily building amazement of the barman: ‘You won’t know this one – even I don’t know that one; no one knows that one!’ Jay did, of course, and that earned us more than one free round of Guinness. (Several people have subsequently told me that after this trip Jay would sometimes say, ‘You know how they talk about people singing in pubs in Ireland? Well, they really do sing in pubs in Ireland!’)

On the second trip – Jay having told me that he read Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in its entirety in preparation – I remember our walking around Dublin and talking about Sellars…and then walking around more of Dublin, and talking more about Sellars….How lucky I was to have been able to do that with Jay Rosenberg. Again, however, it is another non-philosophical scene from that trip that remains most forceful in my memory: the image of Jay and Gina dancing up and down the aisles at the Point Theatre in Dublin, dancing to the unforgettable sounds of ABBA in a matinee showing of Mamma Mia! Jay was as an inspiring teacher, a deep, systematic philosopher, and a wonderful friend. But he was also, without doubt, someone who knew how to have fun.

***

Eric Rubenstein:

Jay was a force. A force of nature. An intellectual force. A force to be reckoned with. He could make you laugh. Make you cry. And make you curse too.

Being around Jay- in the classroom, in his office, even over email, made one feel as if one were truly part of the discipline of philosophy. He liked to speak of Philosophy as an ongoing dialogue, one began 2500 years ago. One felt a part of that dialogue in listening to Jay. His grasp of the history, of the deepest of philosophical problems, of the lay of the land, the big picture, and the accompanying details, was exciting. Exhilarating. Inspirational.

In the classroom we'd see Jay himself drawn into the excitement. His lectures would often start a bit slowly. He'd flip a couple of pages in his notes, speaking slowly and directly. Like an engine warming up. As he proceeded you could see him drawn into the problems, the issues, the dialogue. He'd become more and more animated. Excited. Loud. Even prone to climbing a bit onto the seminar table if he was particularly agitated or excited by a philosophical issue or question! (And we know he could get agitated. Pity the poor Pepsi cans that were punctured by his pocket-knife during talks he disagreed with.)

But in his excitement, his enthusiasm, one could almost see him as channeling Kant, Plato, Sellars, or any other philosopher. The words poured out of him. The philosophical problem at hand was poked, proded, examined, pondered, and most deeply, engaged with. Seeing Jay in action was truly to see someone who wasn't just a teacher, not just a writer, but as he would say, someone who had answered his calling.

Part of what made philosophy so exciting in Jay's hands was his view of the history of philosopohy as the ongoing dialogue with philosophers long gone. Dead contemporaries he'd call them. That was how Kant, or Aristotle, or Hume became alive in his hands.

Perhaps, unwittingly, Jay has given us a way to lessen the blow of our loss of him. The philosophical discussion with Jay can continue. I pick up his books and hear him. Excited. Curious. LOUD. He can still be with us.

***

Matthew Chrisman

The first time I interacted with Jay was by email when I was considering applying to UNC's philosophy graduate program. I then met Jay in Tuebingen, Germany, where he was spending some time collaborating with Toni Koch at the same time as I was studying there for a year before beginning graduate school at UNC. We discovered that we were emailing each other from rooms on the same hall. So we went to lunch at a nearby Italian pizzeria. .

Jay was one of the instructors in the first-year proto-seminar the year I started graduate school. This class was intense. The students in the class would routinely drink heavily after we got our weekly papers back, even though the pain of having one's half-ass, last-minute, faux-philosophical thoughts ripped to shreds was hard to dull with alcohol. Jay would routinely write comments as long as the paper he was commenting on. I like to think that by this process, I developed a philosophical super-ego which excises half-ass, last-minute, faux-philosophical thoughts before they even rise to consciousness let alone get submitted to someone else to read. Perhaps not quite, but, for better or worse, Jay is now internalized in the way I do philosophy and for that I remember him fondly. Much later, I read his excellent book The Practice of Philosophy: A Handbook for Beginners. It was almost as if it was a crib-sheet for proto-seminar; I wondered why we hadn't been required to read the book before starting the class. I suppose Jay's gruff and grin wouldn't have ended up as part of my philosophical super-ego in the same way, and that would have been a shame.

As many of his former students have pointed out, Jay didn't suffer fools, including ourselves, lightly. Perhaps this takes to a pedagogical extreme the way lack of criticism almost seems to imply lack of respect in philosophical circles. However – and I wouldn't have much liked Jay if this weren't true – he always seemed open to reassessments of his students' abilities. This is the mark of a good teacher. He didn't see himself as a mere gate-keeper to the profession of philosophy but as someone who had the ability to create philosophers out of the mess of naive cleverness and factual knowledge that gets admitted as first-year graduate students.

If Jay was a good teacher, he was an excellent thinker. I've read all of his books except for The Impoverished Students' Guide to Cookery, Drinkery and Housekeepery and Thinking Clearly About Death. (Maybe it's now time to read the latter; somehow I survived my student days without the former.) I won't try to summarize Jay's distinctive and systematic take on the relationship between mind, language, and world, except to say that I often find his books to be more philosophically engaged with his contemporaries and inspirationally explicit about the big-picture issues than the great philosophers from whom he himself drew inspiration – Kant, Peirce, and Sellars. For this, his oeuvre is to be admired and should be studied even more than it is.

For anyone who doesn't know Jay's books, it's worth mentioning that he was fond of writing opinionated and irreverent prefaces to his books. He always warned the reader that this is what they are in order to give the reader a chance to skip them; however, I doubt that many people do. Prefaces are clearly the most entertaining parts of philosophy books, and Jay's were the prototype. In a way, these could serve as a brief albeit spotty intellectual autobiography, which I'd encourage even those uninterested in his philosophy to read. I sometimes go back and have a look at these prefaces just for fun. I hope that one day I will write a book, not least because I want to write a preface like Jay.

So, with this note I'd like to salute Jay Rosenberg: a gulp of a crisp German Pils and an Aufwiedersehen! I'm sure Thinking Clearly About Death tells us why it's irrational to think that we'll actually see Jay again. But his lasting intellectual and pedagogical presence will surely continue to be felt in the systematic carefully developed philosophical world-view that readers of his books encounter and the half-ass, last-minute, faux-philosophical thoughts that his former students do not have.

***

Ted Parent:

What first comes to mind is that no one had an eye for detail like Jay. He could comb through a text with such painstaking care and alacrity, it was striking. I have certainly never seen anything like it before or since.

But what I’ll remember most is my proto-seminar that has, for better or worse, now become legendary. The seminar was co-taught by Jay and Don Garrett, though predictably the seminar soon became dominated by Jay. It was essentially philosophical boot camp, with Jay as the drill sergeant. We learned that it is not enough to be smart and have an argument. Nor is it enough to be smart and have a good argument. The argument must also be articulated with utter clarity and precision, so that any potential confusion is stopped before it starts.

As others will attest, Jay's comments on the weekly papers were notorious. Once, he stopped commenting on my paper halfway through, remarking “your understanding of the issue is so ridiculous that anything further you have to say would be nothing more than a waste of my time.” Yet the thing is, he was always right. And it was good that he’d call folks on their b.s., within a discipline that is increasingly tolerant of gappy proposals and “filling logical space.”

I cannot speak for the others – but for myself, Jay’s feedback rebuilt my brain. I came here as a rather cocky 24 year-old who, though able to sense the philosophical terrain, was fairly inarticulate, relative to Jay's standards. Once I realized this, I was able to take Jay's gruff criticism in full appreciation. Even then, I think many of us knew that Jay's “spirited” attacks were motivated by a genuine concern for philosophy and for the education of future philosophers. Few philosophers, I have found, have had as much passion for these ideals.

Some, even in the analytic tradition, might see Jay's standards of rigor as unrealistic. But Jay showed us that it is possible to reach these standards – and accordingly, that it is possible for the discipline of philosophy to become a better discipline than in the past.

As far as my early philosophical development is concerned, I am thankful to no one as much as Jay Rosenberg. Here's to you my beastly pedagogue – bless you if it is in my power to do so (to borrow a quote from you).

***

Mary MacLeod:

I loved Jay because he was without guile. The motives driving his choices seemed manifest to the observer: his intense desire for clarity and wisdom, his wish to please and amuse, the pleasure he took in the delights of the moment, his impatience with stupidity -- unhidden, there to be seen and understood, to be accepted or not accepted. And because he was transparent, I felt assured that he was a good man, because nothing I could see was evil; all too human in some respects, superhuman in others, he seemed innocent as the day he was born.