Sidney Morgenbesser, the John Dewey Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia (who also taught at Princeton, Brandeis and Hebrew University), died last weekend at the age of 82.
In the synagogue paying respects on Sunday were Leon Wieseltier (Literary Editor of The New Republic), Victor Navasky (publisher of the Nation magazine), and others, remembering a person once likened to “a cross between Spinoza and Groucho Marx:”
Gary Shapiro has a graceful obituary in today’s New York Sun:
Morgenbesser had an early grasp of both secular and Talmudic knowledge, having earned degrees at Jewish Theological Seminary and the City University of New York before earning a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in 1956.
[David Shatz of Yeshiva University] said he was not sure if there was a general theory to describe Morgenbesser as philosopher, teacher, friend, humorist, Jew, baseball fan, and moral champion.
He praised Morgenbesser for keeping his lower East Side accent despite teaching uptown. Morgenbesser, he said, once chastised a faculty member for hiding his Jewishness: “Oh, I see your model is ‘Incognito, ergo sum.'”
Mr. Shatz said Morgenbesser once said Jewish logic went: “If P, so why not Q?” and described Gentile ethics as entailing “ought implies can,” while in Jewish ethics “can implies don’t.”
[NYU] mathematics professor Sylvain Cappell told the Knickerbocker of Morgenbesser’s explanation of why Jewish intellectuals have so much trouble writing up their ideas: “Their mothers tell them ‘Eat, eat. Talk later.’ They rebel into ‘Talk, talk, I’ll write later.'”
There are even more nice anecdotes in Shapiro’s story. (Hat tip: NextBook).