Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy, the latter of which came to comprise the main focus of his work at Princeton University in the 1960s.
Estudou nas universidades de Chicago e Yale, e amosou un forte interese pola historia da filosofía e a filosofía analítica contemporánea, esta última foi o principal foco do seu traballo na Universidade de Princeton na década de 1960.