Lewis White Beck

Lewis White Beck (September 26, 1913 – June 7, 1997) was an American philosopher and scholar of German philosophy. Beck was Burbank Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at the University of Rochester and served as the Philosophy Department chair there from 1949 to 1966. He translated several of Immanuel Kant's works, such as the Critique of Practical Reason, and was the author of Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (1965).

Biography
Born in Griffin, Georgia, Beck was the youngest of four children in a family raised by Erasmus W. Beck and Ann H. Beck. His siblings included: Evelyn H. Beck, Edwin H. Beck and Sarah A Beck. His father was employed as both an engineer and a sales representative.

Beck received his bachelor's degree Phi Beta Kappa from Emory University in 1934, his master's degree from Duke University in 1935, and his doctoral degree from Duke University in 1937. His dissertation was entitled: "Synopsis: A Study in the Theory of Knowledge.

Academic career
Before moving to Rochester, Beck was an international student and a Rosenwald Fund Fellow at the University of Berlin (1937–38; an interview about his experiences there appeared in The Atlanta Constitution, Sept. 18, 1938), an instructor at Emory University (1938–41), Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delaware (1941–48), and associate professor at Lehigh University (1946–48), eventually becoming professor (1948–49).

Beck joined the faculty at the University or Rochester in 1949 and served as Chairman of its Department of Philosophy from 1949-1966. He also served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School (1952-1956) as well as the Dean of the Graduate School (1956-1957) where he helped to raise international recognition for the PhD. program in Philosophy. During this time he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of Philosophy (1957).

In !962 he was appointed as the Burbank Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and subsequently Professor Emeritus in 1979. In 1962 he became the first recipient of the University's Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He was subsequently elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963 and the American Council of Learned Societies in 1964. From 1970-1975, Beck also served on the National Endowment for the Humanities Council. During this time he also served as a member of the board of directors for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1970-1978).

During the course of his long academic career, Beck also held appointments as a visiting lecturer at several leading academic research centers including: Columbia University (1950), George Washington University, the University of Minnesota (1953), the University of California at Berkeley (1973), Yale University (1974) and the Rochester Institute of Technology (1982-1983). In addition, he received honorary degrees from Hamilton College, Emory University and the University of Tubingen.

in addition to his teaching activities, Beck also served on the editorial board of several leading philosophical research journals including: the Journal of the History of Ideas and Kantian-Studien. Over the years he also served on the editorial board of the journal The Monist which also featured his work. In addition, in 1970 he served as editor of the Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress. In 1985 he also contributed to the formation of the North American Kantian Society.

Academic works
Beck is most noted for his research into the collective writings of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Included among his publications is a translation of Kant's extensive "Critique of Pure Reason" in 1949. He also achieved widespread national and international recognition within academic circles for his scholarship, commentary and encyclopedic knowledge of Kant's philosophical works.

In he course of his exhaustive commentaries, Beck shared several noteworthy insights into Kant's philosophical thoughts. While revisiting Kant's distinction between "analytic" and "synthetic" truths and his concept of the "synthetic a priori", Beck attempted to clarify Kant's reasoning by exploring whether synthetic judgements should be made analytic, as well as whether Kant incorrectly identified some "contingent judgements" as "necessary judgements". He further observed that Kant's utilization of the term "synthetic" appears to convey different meanings in Kant's writings on transcendental logic as compared to his writings on the theory of general logic. Beck observed further that this divergence in meaning accounts for the unfortunate confusion in the minds of many students who explore translations of Kant's works from the original german into english.

Beck also asserted that Kant's Critique of Practical Reason has been largely neglected by modern readers and sometimes supplanted in the minds of many scholars by the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. He claimed that a complete understanding of Kant's moral philosophy is most easily attained by reviewing Kant's "second critique" which puts forth an analysis of the concepts of both freedom and practical reason. In his A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (1961) Beck asserts that Kant's "second critique" serves to weave these divers strands into a unified pattern for his theory on moral authority in general.

In his Six Secular Philosophers (1966), Beck also endeavored to explore the general characteristics of a secular philosophy and whether such a philosophy can be formulated to accommodate religious beliefs and values. Beck observed that while an exact or precise conceptualization of a secular philosophy might be elusive, a secular philosophy is likely to require an appeal to an independence of thought. In Beck's view it should also incorporate certain aspects of religious thought as well. With this in mind, Beck identified several "families" of secular philosophers. In his first group Beck calls our attention to philosophers who placed limits on the scope, validity and content of religious belief by an appeal to scientific and philosophic endeavors. He identifies Baruch Spinoza, David Hume and Kant in this grouping. In his second grouping, Beck identified Frederich Nietzsche, William James and George Santayana, each of whom explored the relationship of religious values in general to other values in life. Beck asserted that Kant ultimately could not embrace Spinoza's embrace of substance or his appeal to monism. According to Beck, Kant agreed instead with Hume that a scientific interpretation of nature cannot serve by itself to confirm religious belief. According to Beck, Kant also parted ways with Hume, however, by insisting that a different rational basis for religious thought can be found in mankind's moral consciousness. Over the years, Beck was praised by his students for his charm and wit. Even after his formal retirement in 1979 he continued to meet with informal gatherings of aspiring young scholars in an effort to share his unique insights into Kant's works until 1996. He was often observed to joke that his prize for an award in teaching excellence was rejected as "nontaxable" by the Internal Revenue Service because it was more appropriately categorized as "unearned".

Honours
In addition to receiving fellowships from the Rosenwald Fund in 1937, the Guggenheim Foundation in 1957, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963, and the American Council of Learned Societies in 1964, Beck was the first recipient of the University Of Rochester's Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1962.

In addition, Beck was the recipient of several honorary degrees from several leading scholarly institutions including:Hamilton College, Emory University and the university of Tubingen.

In 2001 Beck was honored by several prominent scholars and the philosopher Predrag Cicovaki with the publication of Kant's Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck. The leading scholar of German philosophy Walter Kaufmann also paid special tribute to Beck's scholarship in his work Goethe, Kant and Hegel in 1980.

Death
Beck retired in 1979 and died in 1997 at age 83 in Rochester, New York.

Books

 * Philosophic Inquiry: An Introduction to Philosophy (1952)
 * A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (1961)
 * On History (1963)
 * Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (1965)
 * Six Secular Philosophers (1966)
 * 18th-Century Philosophy (1966) Editor: Lewis White Beck
 * Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors (1969)
 * Kant's Theory of Knowledge Editor: Lewis White Beck (1974)
 * The Actor and the Spectator (1975)
 * Essays on Kant and Hume (1978)
 * Mr. Boswell dines with Professor Kant (1979)
 * Essays by Lewis White Beck: Five Decades as a Philosopher (1998) Editor: Predrag Cicovaki

Archived works

 * The Lewis White Beck Papers collection was gifted to the University of Rochester for archival purposes by Professor Beck in 1960, 1965, 1969 and 1975. The manuscripts and notes contained within the collection are accessible to scholars and research students within the University of Rochester's Rare Books and Special Collections Library upon request.
 * The Lewis White Beck manuscripts of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy Collection at the University of Delaware contains various drafts, galley proofs, page proofs and the published edition of Professor Beck's translations and editing of Immanuel Kant's work as completed during his tenure at Delaware University from 1943-1948 and is open both to researchers and scholars.

Professional affiliations
Lewis White Beck was both an active member and a member emeritus of the American Philosophical Association. He served as President of the American Philosophical Association- Eastern Division in 1971 as well as the chairman of its board of officers (1974-1977). He also served as the president of the North East Society for 18th Century Studies in 1974.