Allen, Reginald E. 1931-2007

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born March 13, 1931, in Philadelphia, PA; died of heart failure, April 12, 2007, in Hammond, IN. Educator and author. The retired Northwestern University professor was an authority on Plato, whose works he translated. Allen graduated from Haverford College in 1953, then completed a B.Phil. from the University of St. Andrews in 1957. The next year he earned his Ph.D. from Yale University. He spent his first few years in academia teaching at the University of Minnesota, and during the 1960s he was a professor of philosophy at Indiana University at Bloomington and Purdue University. Allen joined the University of Toronto faculty in 1969 in the same capacity, and was also a special lecturer in law from 1973 to 1978. He settled in Illinois at Northwestern University, where he was a professor of philosophy and the classics from 1978 until his 2003 retirement. Well versed in all the major Greek philosophers and fluent in that ancient language, Allen was most interested in the works of Plato. He was the author of such works as Plato's Parmenides (1983) and Plato: Early and Early Middle Dialogues (1985), and was the translator of Plato's The Symposium (1991) and Republic (2006). A meticulous translator, Allen spent two decades on the Republic, which quickly became considered the most accurate translation in English available. Among his other titles are Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle (1965; 2nd edition, 1984) and Socrates and Legal Obligation (1980).

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Chicago Tribune, April 19, 2007, Section 3, p. 8.