# Lewis White Beck

Lewis White Beck (September 26, 1913 – June 7, 1997) was an American philosopher and scholar of German philosophy specializing in German idealism. 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, September 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 to 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 1970 he collaborated with the Kantian scholar Gottfried Martin at the University of Bonn to organize the first International Kant Congress to be hosted in the United States and helped to established an enduring close collaboration between Kantian scholars in both Germany and America.
In 1962 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 to 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.
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".

### Academic works
#### Immanuel Kant

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 addition, he has been cited in Kant-Studien as one of the first scholars in the Anglo-Saxon tradition to compile a comprehensive review of early German philosophy before Kant and clarifying Kant's work within such a historical context.
In the 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.

#### Secular philosophy

In his Six Secular Philosophers (1966, Rev. 1997), 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.

#### Additional interests

Beck's scholarly publications also reflect his interest in philosophical topics which are not prima facia directly related to the works of Immanuel Kant. In 1966 he published a detailed philosophical examination of the characteristics of mankind's conscious and unconscious motives entitled Conscious and Unconscious Motives. In 1968, he also collaborated with his colleague Robert L. Holmes at the University of Rochester in the book Philosophic Inquiry: An Introduction to Philosophy. Years later in 1971, he also presented his insights into the topic of searching for extraterrestrial life for the sixty-eighth annual Eastern Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in New York City in a paper which he entitled Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life.
In the later work, Beck traces the evolution of philosophical speculation concerning the presence of intelligent extraterrestrial life forms starting with the ancient writings of Lucretius, Plutarch and Aristotle, to the contributions made by Copernicus and culminating in the modern age within the works Darwin, Immanuel Kant, William Whewell and Marx. He argues that our ancestors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were plagued by a profound pessimism over the decline of the natural world due to mankind's sinfulness and consequently sought redemption by searching for the presence of "higher beings" within the universe. Similarly, in modern times, mankind's despair and technological shock is due in part to his pollution of the natural world and in part due to repeated failures of moral belief. He argues further that deeply seated religious, philosophical and existential beliefs are serving to perpetuate the comforting archetypal idea that mankind is not alone in the universe. Beck concludes on an optimistic note, however, by suggesting that while the quest for other or superior forms of life in the universe may not prove successful, it may yield beneficial consequences by assisting mankind in the actualization of better ways of life here on Earth.
Beck was also intrigued by the concept of "man as a creator". His analysis of the history of philosophy within the Western tradition, traces the dynamic interaction of Kant's idea of the "land of truth", in which man's creativity evolves within the context of his search for knowledge, with the creative idea of an "unknowable beyond", which was first cultivated by philosophers of the ancient world. In Beck's view, the Platonic idea of a creative yet hidden ultimate reality now functions as a more dominate paradigm in the form of a nervus probandi within our modern systems of thought and ethical values. He notes that three responses to such a paradigm shift have emerged. In the first, philosophers deny the existence of such a transcendent "unknowable beyond" by asserting that it is merely the product of human imagination which can be easily dismissed. As examples, Beck cites the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and various positivistic scholars. The second possible response has been adopted by scholars who accept that such a hidden reality exists and that it can be known through either philosophical reasoning, mystical insight or a combination of both. As examples, Beck points to the works of both Plato and Georg Hegel. Lastly, Beck observes yet a third response incorporates the assertion that such an "unknowable beyond" may exist but that mankind is "indefeasibly" ignorant of it. Beck argues that Thomas Acquinas, Blaise Pascal, Søren Kierkegaard, William James and Immanuel Kant all adopt variations on this theme In this view, man is a creator of order only within narrow limits and cannot acquire definitive knowledge of the "unknowable beyond." Nevertheless, such a realm is clearly of paramount existential importance. Therefore, instead of professing "knowledge" of its existence, mankind is advised to knowingly acknowledge his ignorance and affirm its existence purely as an act of faith. Beck himself seems partial to this view when he gently reminds his readers that:
    "It is not my place to tell you whether there is indefeasible ignorance of ultimate reality. I am ignorant of whether there is or is not. But you should think of these things because there are no things more important, though there are no questions more difficult or less answerable. But one's whole life may be changed if one changes his mind about these questions."

### 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. He was also an honorary member of the Kant Society in Germany.
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. He was survived by his wife Caroline as well as his two sons Brandon and Hamilton along with two grandsons.

## Selected publications

During his long academic career, Lewis White Beck published several books and numerous scholarly articles which include the following works.

### Books

* Philosophic Inquiry: An Introduction to Philosophy (1952)
* A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (1960)
* On History (1963)
* Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (1965)
* Six Secular Philosophers (1966) Rev. (1997)
* 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

### Translations

* Kant, Immanuel (1950). Lewis White Beck (ed.). Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science. New York: Bobbss Merrill Educational Publishing – via Internet Archive.
* Kant, Immanuel (1956). Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Lewis White Beck. New York: The Liberal Arts Press – via Internet Archive.
* Kant, Immanuel (1997). The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment. Translated by Lewis White Beck (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. – via Internet Archive.

## 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 to 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.