Just found out that John Lachs, my undergrad advisor and the best professor I ever had, died a couple weeks ago. He was incredibly generous with his time and an absolute legend at Vanderbilt. A long life well lived!
John Lachs (1934-2023)
John Lachs, professor emeritus of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, has died. Professor Lachs worked on questions concerning human nature, various topics in moral philosophy, American philosophy, the value of philosophy, and a range of other issues. He is the author of several books, including: Meddling: On the Virtue of Leaving Others Alone (2014), Freedom and Limits (2014), A Community of Individuals (2003), In Love with Life: Reflections on the Joy of Living and Why We Hate to Die (1998), and The Relevance of Philosophy to Life (1995), among others. In addition to his scholarly writing he also took up questions about the discipline of philosophy decades ago that are still live issues today, for example, in “Can Philosophers Still Produce Public Intellectuals” and “What Constitutes a Pluralistic Philosophy Department?” You can learn more about his writings here and here. Professor Lachs joined the Vanderbilt philosophy faculty in 1967. He earned his PhD from Yale University and his MA and BA from McGill University. The following obituary is by Michael Brodrick, a former student of Lachs’. John Lachs: Reflections on a Life Well Lived by Michael Brodrick John Lachs, the Hungarian-born American philosopher, author of In Love with Life, The Relevance of Philosophy to Life, and Intermediate Man, passed away on November 14th, 2023 at his home in Nashville, Tennessee. Born on July 17, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, Lachs was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Lachs was 10 years old on December 29, 1944, the day the Soviet Red Army encircled Budapest. When the city fell, a years-long occupation ensued. Lachs and his parents passed undetected across two patrolled borders while fleeing Hungary. Those hardships were formative. Lachs later described them as “opportunities” to develop his “latent reflective tendencies.” They called to mind “the evanescence of life and the uncontrollability of fortune,” awakening within him a desire to “know about God, the meaning of life, and the right comportment towards death.” In his decades-long career as a philosophy professor, Lachs made the case for the relevance of philosophy to life. The rise of the modern university wrought a change in the way philosophy was practiced. Philosophy narrowed its horizons. Its largely abstract and theoretical preoccupations bore little resemblance to the ancient quest for the..
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