GEWIRTH, Alan 1912-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 28, 1912, in Union City, NJ; died of congestive heart failure as a complication from colon cancer, May 9, 2004, in Chicago, IL. Philosopher, educator, and author. Gewirth, a longtime professor at the University of Chicago, was best known for his Principle of Generic Consistency. Although his vocation would become philosophy and education, Gewirth's first love was for the violin, an instrument he mastered as a teenager, and which later led to his becoming concertmaster at Columbia University. As a college student, however, Gewirth earned a degree not in music but in philosophy from Columbia in 1934; he began graduate studies there and at Cornell before World War II interrupted his pursuits. Drafted into the army, he became education officer at Walter Reed Hospital, obtaining the rank of captain before being discharged. Returning to school, Gewirth completed his Ph.D. at Columbia in 1947. He then joined the University of Chicago faculty, eventually becoming Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus. As a philosopher, Gewirth believed that self-interest and the needs of the community were not necessarily mutually exclusive, and that human beings could overcome evil not so much through religion but rather through a universal system of ethics and optimism. These ideas were expressed in his Principle of Generic Consistency, a concept that proved influential in disciplines ranging from philosophy and law to economics. Gewirth's writings include Reason and Morality (1978), Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Application (1982), and Self-Fulfillment (1998); he also wrote the monograph Ethics (1974), and coauthored The Forward Movement of the Fourteenth Century (1961) and Social Justice (1962).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, May 17, 2004, section 4, p. 9.

Washington Post, May 18, 2004, p. B7.