Rogers Albritton, one of the mostadmired philosophers of his generation and a member of UCLA's faculty from 1973until his retirement in 1991, died Tuesday night, May 21. He was 78 years old.

"Rogers had the finestphilosophical mind I have ever encountered," said his UCLA philosophy colleagueGavin Lawrence. "He never rushed to a facile answer and was a wonderfulsounding board. When you discussed a philosophical issue with Rogers, you hadthe sense that he had walked down this road many times before, and knew itthoroughly, like walking through the countryside with a guide who knows everyinch of the landscape and can show you where every path leads."

"Rogers was an influential andinternationally renowned figure," said John Carriero, professor and chair ofphilosophy at UCLA. "He was widely admired by philosophers who didn't agree onmuch else. Doing philosophy with Rogers was thrilling and unforgettable.Through the sheer force of his philosophical presence, Rogers affected as manyphilosophers, and affected them as deeply, as any other thinker of hisgeneration. He had this impact on philosophers of strikingly different casts ofminds and philosophical persuasions."

Albritton's philosophicalinterests covered an unusually wide range of fields, including ancientphilosophy, philosophy of mind, free will, skepticism, metaphysics and the workof Ludwig Wittgenstein. For a university professor, Albritton was highlyunusual in that he published very rarely, just a few times in more than 35years.

"Albritton advocated noparticular philosophical doctrines; he just wandered through the world comingacross philosophical knots, untying them and moving on without leaving a manualon how he did it," said his colleague, UCLA philosophy professor David Kaplan."He also uncovered knots in places where philosophers had thought there werenone. His high position in philosophy is based on the sheer power of histhought." Kaplan noted that Socrates never published his ideas either.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Albrittonearned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1955 and taught philosophy atCornell before joining Harvard's faculty in 1956. He chaired Harvard'sphilosophy department from 1963 to 1970. He came to UCLA in 1972 on a one-yearexperimental basis, and remained there until his death, chairing UCLA'sphilosophy department from 1979 to 1981. He was president of the Pacific Division of the American PhilosophicalAssociation in 1984–85.

Albrittonattended St. John's College in Annapolis in 1940. He enlisted in the Army AirCorps, attaining the rank of sergeant. In 1945 he returned to St. John's andcompleted his bachelor's degree, writing his senior thesis defending lyricpoetry from logical positivism.

Albritton was legendary for hislove of discussing philosophy throughout the night and sometimes into themorning.

"We all use the word 'knowledge,'but as soon as a philosopher asks what knowledge is, we find ourselves in aterrible mess," Albritton said in a 1986 interview. "I think free will is likethat. Philosophers have tried to define what this freedom is, and they are allwrong. Some definitions are shallow; others are deeper, but when you examinethem closely, you find they don't make any clear sense. The idea that we canneatly define our terms and get on with it is a recipe for messing things up.Whenever a philosopher tries to define a term, another philosopher comes upwith a good reason why the definition is silly."

A former graduate student recalledan 11-hour discussion with Albritton, and said, "I can't think of any otherphilosopher, living or dead, I would rather bounce ideas off of; oneconversation with Rogers can illuminate a philosophical problem to such anextent that everything I've thought about it before seems irrelevant."

Carriero recalls the day he wasinterviewed for a faculty position at UCLA. "I gave a talk to the faculty inthe department at 3 p.m.," Carriero said. "Rogers and I had dinner, and talkeduntil well after midnight. The conversation was extraordinarily valuable to me.By 2 a.m. I was exhausted, but he could have gone on for another few hours,although at the time his emphysema required him to be hooked up to a portableoxygen tank that he carried with him as we talked."

"When I went out to dinner withRogers, I told my wife I won't be home before 4 a.m.," Lawrence said. "Wetalked many times through the night."

Albritton's colleagues andstudents praised his personal characteristics, as well as his subtle, agilemind. "Rogers was totally honest, full of integrity, very witty with awonderful sense of humor, modest, and generous with his time," Lawrence said."He used humor as a philosophical weapon to show mistakes in reasoning."

Kaplan said, "Everyconversation with Rogers was a voyage of discovery, and with his ever-presentwry wit, one couldn't imagine a more delightful dinner companion."

Albritton died of pneumonia atUCLA's Medical Center following years of suffering from emphysema. Hiscolleagues who visited him said they discussed philosophy with him in his finaldays.

"In the hospital, he was puzzledby a passage in Isaiah on the problem of evil," Carriero said. "I went home andread what (13th-century philosopher Thomas) Aquinas had to say about thepassage so that I could report back to him."

In the classroom, Albritton wasknown for actually doing philosophy in real time, grappling right in front of his students with philosophicaldebates that have resisted solutions for many centuries.

"The reasons these disputes neverend," he once said, "is that both sides are right about important things. I aminclined to think there is truth and nonsense on both sides, but the truth isvery hard to find."

The undergraduate and graduatecourses he taught at UCLA included history of Greek philosophy, philosophy ofmind, metaphysics, Wittgenstein and Descartes. He continued to teach into themid-1990s, even after he retired.

Albritton is survived by hissister, Heloise Frame, and her children Matthew, Margaret Lipton, James Jr.,Shannah Whitney, Martha Lynch, David, and Ruth Zinkievich.

In lieu of flowers, the familyrequests contributions to a memorial fund that is being established at UCLA(UCLA Foundation/Rogers Albritton Memorial Fund) with proceeds to benefit thephilosophy department's reading room: UCLA, College of Letters and ScienceDevelopment, 1332 Murphy Hall, Los Angeles, 90095–1413.

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