It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our emeritus colleague Jack Stevenson, who passed away at the age of 92. He had joined the department in 1966, initially as a visiting professor from the University of Manitoba, then as a regular faculty member.
Born in Ottawa, Stevenson originally trained as a teacher, but after a brief career in the field, he enrolled at the University of Manitoba to study Philosophy and Psychology, graduating in 1959 with double honours, before moving on to Brown University for graduate work in Philosophy. Stevenson proved a highly successful teacher, including during an era in which the department struggled for enrollment. He managed to generate a mandatory course in ethics for all students in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. (Other legendary teachers in the department—
including Derek Allen, Frank Cunningham, and John Slater—tried their hand at it also.) He also published a textbook, Engineering Ethics: Practices and Principles (1987), likely the first of its kind, and won a teaching award from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations in 1988. Stevenson also published on philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the history of philosophy in Canada, which marked one of his enduring interests. He retired in 1998.
Professor Emeritus Ronnie De Sousa remembers joining the department at the same time as Stevenson. “Although he was associated with UTM (or ‘Erindale,’ as it was then known) and I was based downtown,” De Sousa says, “I very much appreciated his omnivorous curiosity and his brilliance. He would have something interesting to say about anything philosophical and much more.” Alongside Cunningham and Wayne Sumner, Stevenson and De Sousa formed part of a group they called the Vicious Circle, taking turns presenting and criticizing each other’s work in progress. Years later, De Sousa remembers, Stevenson, now a member of his tenure committee, was tasked with reporting the committee’s verdict, doing so “with tact and clarity and lots of good advice for my future career.” Since his own retirement, De Sousa says he “often hoped Jack would show up for talks or just to hang out, as his company was always delightful; but as I myself spent a lot of time away, we didn’t cross paths again. I miss him very much.”
Sumner, now also an emeritus faculty member, remembers that “Jack fit right in with that 1960s cadre of feisty, if not arrogant, junior faculty who aimed to remake, and modernize, the department.” When philosophy courses were abolished as required components of many of the most popular Arts and Science honours programs, the department feared a sharp decline in enrolment, Sumner recalled. Part of a countermeasure to this dreaded outcome was making Philosophy courses appealing in and of themselves, in hopes, as Sumner put it, of thereby seducing some students “into signing up for one of our programs.” Another was to devise courses that other faculties might want to require their own students to take: “Thus was born the ethics course for engineering students that Jack devised and then taught for many years. Having had a go once at teaching it myself, I can testify that keeping engineers interested in ethical issues wasn’t a straightforward assignment. But Jack was an outstanding teacher and made the gig look easy,” Sumner says. Stevenson was also a “loyal, dedicated, and accomplished colleague who offered much to this department. We were lucky to have him,” Sumner adds.
Arthur Ripstein, the Department of Philosophy’s current acting chair, agrees. “I was Jack’s colleague for a dozen years,” he writes, “but I had heard of him long before. Like him, I was a University of Manitoba Philosophy undergraduate, and so some of my teachers had taught him; others had been his students, and still others always talked about what a wonderful person and excellent philosopher he was. So when I arrived at Toronto in 1987, I of course made a point of getting to know him. He was an excellent philosophical interlocutor, always fair-minded and generous, but never indulgent of underdeveloped arguments. He was also just a lot of fun to be around.”
Arthur Schafer, a professor of Philosophy at the University of Manitoba, had Stevenson as a teacher when he was an undergraduate in the early 1960s. He remembers: “As an undergrad I did a couple of courses with him. As you would expect, he was a bright, lively, energetic teacher. One aspect of his teaching that sticks with me is the tremendous respect with which he treated his students. I recall discussing issues with him, when I was a second-year undergrad student, and coming away from the discussion surprised (and a bit alarmed) that he treated my (rather naïve and shallow) philosophical ideas much more seriously than they deserved.”
Our friend and colleague is survived by his wife Shelagh, his daughter Melanie Stevenson, and his granddaughters Emma and Eleanor.
His funeral will be held on Saturday, September 21, 2024, at 1 PM at the Church of the Redeemer, 162 Bloor Street West (corner of Bloor and Avenue). A reception will follow. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations to either the Fort York Food Bank or the Common Table (the poverty alleviation program at the Church of the Redeemer).
