EDWARDS, Paul 1923-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born September 2, 1923, in Vienna, Austria; died of heart failure December 9, 2004, in New York, NY. Educator and author. Edwards was a former professor of philosophy who was well known as the editor of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. His Jewish family fled the Nazis in the 1930s and moved to Australia, where Edwards attended the University of Melbourne. He earned his B.A. there in 1944, followed by a master's degree in 1947. Moving to the United States in 1951, Edwards completed his doctorate at Columbia University. During the 1950s and early 1960s, he taught philosophy at New York University. He then joined Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1966, becoming a full professor in 1968. In 1986, Edwards moved again, this time to the New School, where he continued to teach into the 1990s. A skeptic of religion, which he once said caused more harm than good to society, Edwards had an open mind about philosophy. This is obvious in his work as editor of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published in eight volumes in 1967 and still in print. The encyclopedia includes almost 1,500 entries, covering philosophical ideas past and present, East and West. Edwards was also the coeditor of A Modern Introduction to Philosophy (1957; third edition, 1973) and editor of Heidegger on Death: A Critical Evaluation (1979), as well as the author of such books as The Logic of Moral Discourse (1955) and Reincarnation: A Critical Examination (1996). His last two books are Heidegger's Confusions (2004) and God and Philosophers, published posthumously.

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PERIODICALS

New York Times, December 16, 2004, p. C14.