Irwin Chester Lieb

Background

Irwin Lieb was born on the 9th of November, 1925 in Newark, New Jersey, United States, the son of Moses Lewis and Gussie (Krytzer) Lieb.

Education

Irwin Lieb attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University from 1945 where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1947. He also studied at Cornell University where he received a Master of Arts degree in 1949 and obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Yale University in 1953.

Career

Irwin Lieb began his career as a U.S. Navy pilot during WWII from 1943 to 1945. He joined Yale University as an instructor and then assistant professor from 1953 to 1959. From 1959 to 1963 he was a professor of philosophy and department chair at Connecticut College.

In 1963 he joined the faculty of the philosophy department, the University of Texas, where he also served as department chair in 1968-72, associate dean of the Graduate School from 1973 to 1975, and Vice President and Dean of graduate studies in 1975-79.

In 1981 Lieb accepted a position of vice president and dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the University of Southern California serving there until 1986. He was also a professor of philosophy at the university until his death in 1992.

During his years at Yale, Lieb published several essays on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce and edited a collection of Peirce's "Letters to Lady Welby" in 1953. In 1961 he edited "Experience, Existence, and the Good: Essays in Honor of Paul Weiss". In addition to numerous essays, he also published two books, "The Four Faces of Man: A Philosophical Study of Practice, Reason, Art, and Religion" in 1971, and "Past, Present, and Future: A Philosophical Essay about Time" in 1991.

Achievements

• Irwin Lieb authored four books and innumerable scholarly papers. During his 18 years at the University of Texas Austin, Lieb directed 21 Ph.D. dissertations.
  
  Lieb received Morse fellowship from Yale University in 1956 and a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 1964.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Past, Present, and Future: A Philosophical Essay about Time 1991
  • The Four Faces of Man: A Philosophical Study of Practice, Reason, Art, and Religion 1971

Views

In his writings, Irwin Chester Lieb focused on the interactions of human beings with "every other sort of thing", and discussed four of what he took to be the most basic realities that had emerged from those interactions. He identified each of the four realities, which he termed Individuals, The Good, God, and Time, with one of the four faces of human life: the practical, the rational, the religious, and the artistic, respectively. As he did in his publications and lectures, Lieb entered into dialogue with the key figures of the history of philosophy, from Heraclitus to Kant, to Alfred North Whitehead, Peirce, and Josiah Royce.

Membership

Irwin Lieb was a member of the American Philosophy Association, Metaphysical Society, Philosophy Education Society, Southwestern Philosophical Society, American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Association of American Universities.

• Councilor

  Metaphysical Society , United States

  1968 - 1970

• Director

  Philosophy Education Society , United States

• President

  Southwestern Philosophical Society , United States

  1971

Connections

Irwin Chester Lieb was married to Martha Isabel Simonson but they divorced later. They had two children, Michael Adam and Gordon Nichols.

Father:

Moses Lewis Lieb

Mother:

Gussie (Krytzer) Lieb

ex-wife:

Martha Isabel Simonson

Son:

Michael Adam Lieb

Son:

Gordon Nichols Lieb