Michael Green reports that Alan Gewirth, Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, died on Sunday. Last spring the university hosted a conference on the occasion of Alan’s 90th birthday– and I was astonished to learn that this sharp, vigorous, energetic participant in workshops I attended could possibly be 90. I was also very surprised to realize that he had had intellectual careers other than the one I knew him for, neo-Kantian rights-based political and moral philosophy– notably as a scholar of the medieval political theorist Marsilius (or Marsiglio) or Padua.

I didn’t have nearly as much of a chance as Michael did to talk with Alan; but I enjoyed and learned much from the conversations we had. According to his biography:

He received both his B.A. (1934) and Ph.D. (1947) from Columbia University. He has been a faculty member at Chicago since 1947 and has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Michigan, Johns Hopkins, and UC Santa Barbara. His books include Self-Fulfillment, The Community of Rights, Reason and Morality, Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications, and Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy. He has published over 100 articles on moral and political philosophy, on the epistemology of Descartes, and other topics. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. In recent years he has taught courses on philosophical foundations of human rights, and he is currently working on a book entitled Human Rights and Global Justice.

UPDATE: The University’s obituary is here.