Dallas Willard 1935 – 2013
We are deeply saddened by the news that Dallas Willard died today, losing his battle with cancer at age 77. Our sympathies go out to his family and friends. It is truly a great loss for the phenomenological community and he will be missed.
Dr. Willard was fundamental to the revival and recognition of the Munich and Göttingen phenomenologists, as well as the early work of Husserl. His translation of Adolf Reinach’s lecture ‘Über Phänomenologie’ (Concerning Phenomenology) introduced many scholars to the world of phenomenological realism and ontology, and the obscure but brilliant mind of Reinach. That translation is still widely read today, and is an excellent testament to Willard’s skill as a translator; he captured the passion, the wit, as well as the incredible insights Reinach had in that 1913 presentation to the Marburg Neo-Kantians. His translations of Husserl’s early work in the philosophy of math and logic, and his correspondence with Gottlob Frege, are extremely valuable and possess a degree of clarity that so few translations do. Dr. Willard made Husserl’s ideas approachable. And if you ever got the chance to hear Dr. Willard talk about Husserl at a conference, you were in for a real treat. Simply brilliant, enlightening and entertaining.
I first ‘met’ Willard by email about 15 years ago or so, when i was an undergrad working on Reinach. He was very kind and helpful, and a joy to speak to. I finally got to meet him in person for the first time in Steubenville, in 2011, at the Early Phenomenology conference hosted by Franciscan University. He didn’t have a lot of time to chat, a few minutes before running off to the airport, but he was just as friendly and warm as his emails, and he remembered our email correspondence and my work on Reinach. I have to say it meant a lot and the impression left by this brief conversation still sticks with me today.
I was asked to edit the conference proceedings volume for Quaestiones Disputatae, and I made sure that Dr. Willard’s paper was included – it would have been unthinkable to not have it as he was one of the keynote speakers and the paper was just incredible. It required very little editing on my end, but we did have a chance to speak by email a few times about its content and his ideas on Husserl’s realism and idealism.
In light of his death and my absolute need to pay some kind of tribute to him – for myself personally and for NASEP, I have requested permission from Quaestiones Disputatae editor Dr. Paul Symington, to create a PDF version of the article and post it here for everyone to read (see below) Enjoy and remember Dallas Willard.
Willard – “Realism Sustained? Interpreting Husserl’s Progression into Idealism”
— Kimberly
I believe that translation of Reinach was the first piece of phenomenology I ever read and, thanks to it, I was bitten by the phenomenological bug. I read a number of Willard’s articles as a grad student and also met him for the first time at the conference at Franciscan University. I will always appreciate the kind words he said to me privately after my presentation, which I value above all because of they came from him. RIP Dallas Willard.