Last week two thinkers who matter to me died.
Robert Hessen was an economic historian at Stanford and Hoover. I’ve used his works on capitalism and on corporate contractual rights in my Business Ethics course. Here is economist David Henderson’s fine summary and tribute: I also had the chance to meet Bob at his home in Palo Alto some years ago, during which we spent most of the time talking about old and new movies, which were one of his passions.
Dan Dennett was a philosopher at Tufts who specialized in philosophy of mind. For many years I’ve used his now-classic “Where Am I?” sci-fi thought experiment piece in my introduction to philosophy course when we cover philosophy of mind. I also met him briefly when he came to Indiana University to give a talk to the philosophy department in the 1980s.
I was a grad student then, and Indiana’s Philosophy department was then heavily focused on logic, epistemology, and analytic metaphysics. Across the quad Indiana had a strong and separate History and Philosophy of Science department, where I took several courses. Douglas Hofstadter was also at Indiana then, having been lured back from Michigan to head Indiana’s Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition. Intellectually exciting times. Coincidentally, Jimmy Wales, who was soon to co-found Wikipedia, was then at Indiana pursuing a Ph.D. in Business, and Elinor Ostrom, 2009 Nobelist in economics, was also at Indiana in the Political Science department.
One of the great joys of intellectual life is learning from smart people who know a lot more about something than you do. Thank you, Robert Hessen and Daniel Dennett.
I Called Bob Hessen after he endorsed Branden’s book: “ Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand”, and got to know him after moving to the Bay Area and visiting him at the Hoover Institute.
Thanks for the shout-out, Stephen, and thanks for your response to a commenter on my EconLog post on his work.