Vale Hugh Silverman : in the Times of Philosophical Error
When I came to learn of the demise of Professor High
Silverman, I was so very shocked and sorrowed. Hugh was a close friend, and
remains so, and a mentor too; I worked him with him at Stony Brook (SUNY) and
on IAPL (International Association for Philosophy and Literature) over several
years, reinforcing the inter-disciplinary/comparative/cross-cultural alongside
a/theological and even 'non-philosophy' thrusts that American philosophy is
just beginning to be open to (and followed closely in Australia and New Zealand
and parts of Europe and Southern America). We last saw each other in Melbourne,
July 2008, during the joint ("3-some") conferences of AAP
(Australasian Association of Philosophy), IAPL, and ASACP (Australasian Society
for Asian and Comparative Philosophy);
it was a magnificent conference and we had philosophical time of worthynote.
Academic life for me will never be the same without the kind of leadership Hugh
provided via IAPL and in other ways for me (he opened up many a connection for
me and many others indeed, and published us generously in at least two books series
he edited); but most of all he introduced us – students, graduates and visiting
fellows - to the burgeoning enterprise of the interface between
Continental/European thinking and Asian/Comparative Philosophy with a
conscience gaze from the erstwhile pursuits of philosophical theology and
gender studies. The generosity that Hugh and his wife, Gerda as she is fondly
called by all, and who faithfully accompanied Hugh to all IAPLs, exuded was so
large, that on the freezing-cold eve of my first-ever New Year in America, they had me and my late wife, Renuka, over
for a fireside gathering with Stony Brook graduates and friends, whence we
watched the 'Big Apple' descent on Times Square, on a large screen. And he would only serve the best German beer,
brewed apparently by his Boston father (a Silverman tradition of sorts).
