Robert C. Solomon

Robert C. Solomon
Born September 14, 1942
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Died January 2, 2007(2007-01-02) (aged 64)
Zurich, Switzerland
Alma mater University of Michigan
Era 20th / 21st-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Continental philosophy
Main interests

Robert C. Solomon (September 14, 1942 – January 2, 2007) was an American professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught for more than 30 years. Professor Solomon won many teaching honors, including the Standard Oil Outstanding Teaching Award in 1973; the University of Texas President's Associates Teaching Award (twice); a Fulbright Lecture Award; University Research and National Endowment for the Humanities Grants; and the Chad Oliver Plan II Teaching Award in 1998.

Professor Solomon authored and edited more than 45 books, including The Passions, About Love, Ethics and Excellence, A Short History of Philosophy with Professor Kathleen Higgins, A Better Way to Think about Business, The Joy of Philosophy, Spirituality for the Skeptic, Not Passion's Slave, and In Defense of Sentimentality. He also wrote about business ethics in Above the Bottom Line, It’s Good Business, Ethics and Excellence, New World of Business and A Better Way to Think about Business. He had designed and provided programs for corporations and organizations around the world and his books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.[1]

Career

Early life

Solomon was born in Detroit, Michigan, USA. His father was a lawyer, and his mother an artist. He was born with a hole in his heart and was not expected to live into adulthood. He earned his undergraduate degree in molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963 and his master's and doctoral degrees in philosophy and psychology from the University of Michigan in 1965 and 1967 respectively.

Teaching & research

He held visiting appointments at the University of Pennsylvania; the University of Auckland, New Zealand; Mount Holyoke College; Princeton University; the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Pittsburgh. From 1972 until his death, except for two years at the University of California at Riverside in the mid-1980s, he taught at University of Texas at Austin, serving as Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Business. He was a member of the University of Texas Academy of Distinguished Teachers, which is devoted to providing leadership in improving the quality and depth of undergraduate instruction. Solomon was also a member of the inaugural class of Academic Advisors at the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics.

His interests were in 19th-century German philosophy—especially Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche—and 20th-century continental philosophy—especially Jean-Paul Sartre and phenomenology, as well as ethics and the philosophy of emotions. Solomon published more than 40 books on philosophy, and was also a published songwriter. He made a cameo appearance in Richard Linklater's film Waking Life (2001), where he discussed the continuing relevance of existentialism in a postmodern world.

Solomon developed a cognitivist theory of the emotions, according to which emotions, like beliefs, were susceptible to rational appraisal and revision. Solomon was particularly interested in the idea of "love", arguing against the notion that romantic love is an inherent state of being, and maintaining that it is instead a construct of Western culture, popularized and propagated in such a way that it has achieved the status of a universal in the eyes of many. Love for Solomon is not a universal, static quality, but an emotion, subject to the same vicissitudes as other emotions like anger or sadness.

Solomon received numerous teaching awards at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a frequent lecturer in the highly regarded Plan II Honors Program. Solomon was known for his lectures on Søren Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre and other existentialist philosophers. Solomon described in one lecture a very personal experience he had while a medical student at the University of Michigan. He recounted how he stumbled as if by chance into a crowded lecture hall. He was rather unhappy in his medical studies at the time, and was perhaps seeking something different that day. He got precisely that. The professor, Frithjof Bergmann, was lecturing that day on something that Solomon had not yet been acquainted with. The professor spoke of how Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return asks the fundamental question: "If given the opportunity to live your life over and over again ad infinitum, forced to go through all of the pain and the grief of existence, would you be overcome with despair? Or would you fall to your knees in gratitude?"

Personal life

He was married to Kathleen Higgins, with whom he co-authored several of his books. She is a Professor of Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin. Solomon collapsed and died of pulmonary hypertension on January 2, 2007 while changing planes at Zurich airport.[2]

Selected publications

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Professor Robert C. Solomon, Ph.D.". The Teaching Company.
  2. ↑ "In Memoriam: Robert C. Solomon (1942-2007)"
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