Manfred S. Frings (1925-2008) -- Requiescat in pace

Manfred Frings, the world's leading Scheler scholar, is dead. Frings was the editor of Max Scheler's Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke), translated many of Scheler's works into English, and was singlehandedly responsible for introducing Scheler's phenomenology into the English-speaking world.

Born on 27 February 1925 in Cologne-Lindenthal, Germany, Frings was the third son of Gottfried and Maria Frings. He attended a Catholic elementary school, lived close to a Jewish community where he forged significant friendships shaping his later antipathy towards Nazism. Both his school and home were destroyed during the bombing of Cologne in WWII, and he remembered rescuing his mother from the ruins of their house. He was drafted into the German military near the end of the war, and was captured by American forces and sent to a POW camp near Rouen, France, where he made the first of many lifelong friendships with Americans.

Following the war, Frings attended the University of Cologne, where he studied philosophy, English and French. He earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1953. In 1958 his dream of emigrating to America was realized when he accepted an invitation to teach philosophy at the University of Detroit. In 1962 he accepted an appointment in philosophy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. From 1966 to his retirement in 1992, he taught at DePaul University in Chicago. He subsequently continued teaching part-time at the University of New Mexico. At various points throughout his career, he served as visiting professor and lecturer at the Universities of Cologne, Freiburg, Oxford, and Sorbonne.

Frings initiated the annual International Heidegger Conference at DePaul in 1966. He was one of six scholars chosen by Martin Heidegger to be the original editors of Heidegger’s Collected Works (Gesamtausgabe). He edited Heidegger’s 1942-1944 lectures on Parmenides and Heraclitus (volumes 54 and 55 of the Gesamtausgabe). Since 1970, he served as editor of the Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) of Max Scheler (1874-1928), a task completed with the publication of vol. 15 in 1997. He was President (then President Emeritus) of the international Max Scheler Society (Max-Scheler-Gesellschaft), as well as a founding father of the Max Scheler Society of North America.

The principal focus of Frings’s career was Scheler’s phenomenology of values, sociology of knowledge, ethics, political theory, and philosophy of time. Among Frings' major contributions are the recognition he brought to Scheler’s phenomenology as a credible alternative to Edmund Husserl’s, his clarification of the relationship between Scheler and Heidegger in his seminal Person und Dasein (1969), and his concept of absolute time in his LifeTime: Max Scheler’s Philosophy of Time (2003). He has published well over a hundred articles, and edited twenty-four books, including his notable The Mind of Max Scheler: The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works (1997, 2nd ed. 2001). His publications have been translated into Chinese, French, Japanese, and German. His work was recognized in a special audience with Pope John Paul II, himself an accomplished Scheler scholar, and by Martin Heidegger in personal meetings in Freiburg.

Frings is survived by his wife and long-time companion, Karin.

Select Bibliography

• Max Scheler: A Concise Introduction into the World of a Great Thinker (Pittsburgh, 1965; 2nd ed, Milwaukee, 1996).
• Person und Dasein: Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins (The Hague, 1969).
• “Max Scheler: Rarely Seen Complexities of Phenomenology,” Phenomenology in Perspective, ed. F. J. Smith (The Hague, 1970).
• Zur Phänomenologie der Lebensgemeinschaft: Ein Versuch mit Max Scheler (Meisenheim, 1971).
• Philosophy of Prediction and Capitalism (Dordrecht, 1987).
  “Scheler, Max,” Encyclopédie Philosophique Universelle, III, Les Ouvres Philosophiques (Paris, 1992).
• “The Background of Max Scheler’s 1927 Reading of Being and Time: A Critique of a Critique Through Ethics,” Philosophy Today 36 (1992): 99-113.
• “Max Scheler,” Encyclopedia Americana (Danbury, Connecticut, 1994).
• “Max Scheler,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed (1994).
• “Max Scheler,” Dictionaire d’éthique et de philosophie morale (Paris, 1996).
• “Max Scheler,” The Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Dordrecht, 1997).
• The Mind of Max Scheler: The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works (Milwaukee, 1997).

Goodbye, dear friend. You carry away a whole world with you. Requiescat in pace.

Theodore Plantinga - 1947-2008

I take note of the passing of the philosopher, Theodore Plantinga (not to be confused with Notre Dame's Reformed philosopher, Alvin Plantinga), not only because of his particular contributions to the field of Dilthey studies and historical philosophy from his perspective as a Reformed Christian, but because of his personal assistance to me in my days as a doctoral student in helping me formulate my dissertation topic in such a way that it brought together my interest then in the Dutch Reformed phenomenologist, Herman Dooyeweerd, with parallel strands in the German phenomenological tradition adjacent to that of Dietrich von Hildebrand and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) in Max Scheler and the critique he leveled against the classical ethical formalism of Immanuel Kant. The yield of this line of advice, years later, was my publication of Scheler's Critique Of Kant's Ethics, Continental Thought Series, V. 22 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1995).

I never got to know Plantinga well, although I did read several of his books and articles, through which I gained considerable appreciation for his perspective and depth of analysis.

Here, in part, is how his university memorial reads under News and Events, "In Memoriam Professor Theodore Plantinga" (Redeemer University, Ancaster, Ontario, July 5, 2008):

It is with deep sadness that Redeemer University College announces the death of Dr. Theodore Plantinga, Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department. Dr. Plantinga died peacefully at his home in Dundas on the evening of July 4, 2008 . Visitation will be held in St. James Anglican Church from 6:30 – 8:30 Tuesday evening (137 Melville, Dundas), and a memorial service will be held there on Wednesday at 1 pm.

Theo Plantinga was born in 1947 in Ee, Friesland , the Netherlands . His family emigrated to Canada when he was four, settling in Winnipeg , where he attended elementary and secondary schools. He went to university at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan , where he received a B.A. in philosophy in 1969. He subsequently completed a Masters degree, and a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Toronto (1975). His doctoral dissertation, published by the University of Toronto Press in 1980, was Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Dilthey.

During the next two years, Dr. Plantinga held a full-time position as lecturer in philosophy at Bishops University in Lennoxville, Quebec. Subsequently, he was a translator and managing editor for Paideia Press in St. Catharines, Ontario. He was appointed Executive Director of College Development for the Ontario Christian College Association, founded to explore the possibility of starting a Reformed Christian liberal arts and science college in Ontario.

Plantinga spent the next quarter century as the chair of Redeemer's philosophy department during the institution's founding years. He also translated numerous books by Dutch authors into English, including volumes by the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. He also became managing editor of the Dooyeweerd Centre at Redeemer in 2005.

The memorial concludes with these words: "He had a lively wit, a vibrant faith, a ready laugh, a listening ear and a particular fondness for the eccentric. He will be greatly missed as a friend, colleague, teacher and mentor. 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.'"

[Hat tip to C.B.]