In Memoriam

With sadness, the Philosophy Department at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada) acknowledges the passing on September 19, at home in the company of his family, of Dr. Steven A. M. Burns, a much-loved colleague who taught at Dalhousie and the affiliated University of King’s College for many years. Steven joined the Dalhousie Philosophy Department in 1969, not long before defending his D. Phil. dissertation entitled “Self-Deception” under the supervision of Peter Winch at Birkbeck College, University of London. He was one of a wave of new hires who shaped the Department for over three decades. 

He later liked to joke that he offered classes on people whose names began with ‘W’—Wagner, Weil, Winch, Wittgenstein—but he also taught, among other topics, Ancient Philosophy, Marxist Theory, and—one of his most popular classes—Philosophy of Art.

He played a key role in developing the Department’s highly successful PhD program, and he supervised thirty-four graduate students, including two PhDs. He served as the Department’s Graduate Program Coordinator for thirteen years and also as Chair of the Department from 1988 to 1992. In 2006 he was given the Dalhousie Faculty of Graduate Studies Distinguished Service Award.

During the 1990s he was instrumental in establishing the Contemporary Studies Program at the University of King’s College, serving as the program’s Director from 2001 to 2003. After his retirement from Dalhousie in 2006, he continued to teach in CSP until 2013.

His publications range over a wide field of topics, from translations of Winch and Weininger and essays on Wittgenstein, Hume and Plato, to papers on environmental ethics, the history of Canadian philosophy, Canadian literature (Alice Munro, Leonard Cohen, Robertson Davies), aesthetics, philosophy and film, and understanding jokes. (Wittgenstein reportedly remarked that “a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes.” Steven proved this by writing one.)

He was the founder of the Atlantic Canada Wittgenstein Reading Group and a champion of Canadian bilingualism and of Canadian philosophy, both in his writing and in his long-time involvement with the Canadian Philosophical Association/ Association canadienne de philosophie (as Associate Secretary, Secretary and program Chair), and the Atlantic Region Philosophers’ Association (ARPA), at whose 2022 meetings he was celebrated in two special sessions devoted to his work and interests. Some of the essays from those sessions will soon appear in a special issue of Dialogue, together with Steven’s responses.

Steven was loved by everyone who knew him, and his colleagues, students and friends in the Department and beyond will miss him greatly. We extend our sympathies to his family, his partner Janet Ross, their children, Emma, Maggie and Ross, and their partners and children. A memorial concert, featuring some of Steven’s favourite music performed by the Blue Engine String Quartet, will be held at St. George’s Round Church in Halifax on October 20 in the afternoon (exact time to be confirmed). Donations in Steven’s memory can be made to the Steven Burns Undergraduate Essay Prize in the History of Philosophy, care of the Philosophy Department.

Jonathan Francis Bennett died peacefully, at his home on Bowen Island, on Sunday, March 31, 2024, at the age of 94. He was predeceased by his wife, Gillian, and his grandson, Lucas.  Jonathan Bennett was an academic philosopher, a teacher, a writer, a translator and a mentor. He taught at Haverford College, Cambridge University, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia and finally at Syracuse University. 

After retiring from Syracuse University in 1996, Jonathan and his wife, Gillian Bennett, moved to Bowen Island, British Columbia so that they could be close to their children, Sara and Guy, and to their grandchildren. They greatly enjoyed their six grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Jonathan stayed busy with large landscaping projects and with his website, Early Modern Texts for which he carefully created versions of some classics of early modern philosophy, and a few from the 19th century, with a view to making the language easier to read while leaving intact the main arguments, doctrines, and lines of thought.

The family is grateful that Jonathan was able to die through Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying Program (MAID), which was not available to Gillian in 2014. You can read here about Gillian’s end of life story. The family is proud of both Jonathan and Gillian for sticking their landings.

Peter Kim Schotch, age 76, died on December 22, 2022 at his home in Brookside Nova Scotia. Peter was born on July 26^th, 1946, in Montreal, Quebec. He attended the University of Waterloo, getting a BA and finally a PhD in Philosophy writing a dissertation in modal logic in 1973 under the supervision of J.S. Minas. (Interestingly, his external examiner was C. West Churchman). In 1972 he was hired by the Philosophy Department at Dalhousie University and only fully retired in 2019. At the end of his time at Dalhousie he had reached the rank of full professor and was the Munro Chair of Metaphysics. 

Despite being a logician or perhaps because of it, Peter liked teaching existentialism, philosophy of literature, and philosophy of art. He was also a dedicated union-supporter, serving on the Dalhousie Faculty Association’s bargaining team for the second, third, fifth and sixth collective agreements and sharing duties as Chief Negotiator for the 1984-87 agreement. He also shared the position of DFA president in 1997-98. 

P. K. Schotch contributed important innovations to multiple areas of logic. Most notably, in the areas of modal logic and paraconsistency. He, along with his long-time collaborator Ray Jennings of Simon Fraser University, developed polyadic semantics for modal logic---a generalization of the standard relational or Kripke semantics for modal logic (see here). That development led to what came to be known as the preservationist approach to  paraconsistency or the Canadian school of paraconsistency. The development and a survey of these ideas can be found in the book On Preserving. These novel contributions to logic also led to the national logic prize for Canada being named the 'Schotch-Jennings Logic Prize' (see here). A list of some of his work can be found here. His introduction to logic can be found here and what he referred to as his "greatest hits" here. He also published on deontic logic particularly about the nature of rules. 

He is survived by his wife Suzanne Townsend, as well as his former wife Brigitte and their daughter Heidi, his son-in-law Stephen Riley, his stepson Ames Esler, and the numerous students he mentored over the years. He is predeceased by his second wife, Cara.

Please visit Peter's memorial webpage here to leave a message in his memory. There will be some lectures in his honour as part of the annual World Logic Day (Jan 14th) zoom talks in Alberta and British Columbia.