University Times

Nicholas Rescher

In acknowledgement of his decades-long career at Pitt, Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, is donating his massive collection of materials on philosophy to Hillman Library.

In turn, the University is honoring Rescher for his lifetime of achievement and devotion to the University with the establishment of the Dr. Nicholas Rescher Fund for the Advancement of the Department of Philosophy, which will include a biennial award, the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Contributions to Systematic Philosophy. The prize, to be awarded for the first time this fall, will recognize an individual “for distinguished contributions to philosophical systematization” and include a gold medal, a $25,000 award and an invitation to deliver a lecture at the University.

The Rescher fund also will support initiatives such as faculty research and professional development, student scholarship and research, teaching awards, guest lectures and special departmental programs.

Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg said, “The collection will provide both students and more senior scholars with access to a special set of materials, including the writings and correspondence of some of the world’s most renowned philosophers. We have long been the direct beneficiaries of all that Professor Rescher has done to elevate the University through the excellence and impact of his work, and we now also are the beneficiaries of his generosity.”

Rescher is a renowned systematic philosopher and author of a system of pragmatic idealism that weaves together threads of thought from continental idealism and American pragmatism. Early in his career, during the late 1940s and early ’50s, Rescher collaborated extensively with philosophers from the Berlin School of scientific philosophy, a philosophical movement inspired by the work of Albert Einstein.

During his graduate study at Princeton University, Rescher was drawn to G.W. Leibniz, an inventor of and contributor to calculus. “Over many years I have built up a substantial collection of rare material relating to Leibniz’s work, including an original manuscript letter,” he said.

The core of Rescher’s gift to Hillman Library is his Leibniz collection and various materials that are related to the Berlin School, including works concerning philosophers Paul Oppenheim, Kurt Grelling, the late Pitt philosophy professor Carl Gustav Hempel and Olaf Helmer, as well as other philosophers such as Jürgen Habermas and Frank P. Ramsey.

Rush G. Miller, director of the University Library System, said, “Dr. Rescher’s papers include correspondence, administrative files, papers delivered at conferences and drafts of his own publications. His correspondence, amounting to more than 40,000 pages, includes letters to and from respected individuals in philosophy as well as people with other academic interests. Since it is a premier collection, I’m sure that it will attract significant scholarly attention.”

Rescher’s honors include the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship, the Belgian Cardinal Mercier Prize and the Thomas Aquinas Medal of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. An honorary member of Oxford’s Corpus Christi College, Rescher has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Canada, the Institut International de Philosophie, the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He has been awarded honorary degrees from seven universities on three continents.

Rescher is the author of more than 100 books in many areas of philosophy — with more than a dozen translated into other languages — and hundreds of journal articles. He has been editor for more than three decades of the American Philosophical Quarterly, which he founded, and has served as editor of both the History of Philosophy Quarterly and the Public Affairs Quarterly.

Rescher chaired Pitt’s philosophy department in 1980-81. Currently, he is co-chair of the Center for Philosophy of Science.