Paul Benacerraf

Paul Benacerraf, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, died on Jan. 13, 2025. He was 93.

One thought on “Paul Benacerraf

  1. Flash Sheridan

    Paul was surprisingly kind to me, at the beginning and at the end of my career. When I was a mere non-doc post-doc, he answered a mistaken query of mine (in the sci.philosophy.tech Usenet newsgroup), about a philosophical parable which I erroneously thought was in his and Hilary Putnam’s classic anthology — with helpfulness and wit: “It would have been nice if you had read it in Benacerraf and Putnam, but the illiterate louts who edited that volume had not seen the piece when the second edition went to press.”
        After I retired near Princeton, I sent him a preprint of an article containing a footnote in which Frege and I were quite harsh about “What Numbers Could Not Be.” In his response, he pointed out that we both lived near each other; he subsequently invited us over for dinner, and my wife (a biochemist) found him as charming and entertaining as I did.
        I hope someone more qualified than I can cover his patronage of art and architecture. I can’t do justice to his art collection, but I will note that he still retained a Lego model of the famed Benacerraf House addition by Michael Graves, assembled by the family nanny.
        He faced his impending demise, from a recurrence of lung cancer which had been in remission for five years, quite philosophically; in his last message to me he seemed more concerned with the difficulty to his family than with himself. My wife and I will miss him.

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