Edward P. Mahoney: 1932–2009

The Journal of the History of Philosophy is saddened to report that Professor Edward P. Mahoney died on January 8, 2009. Professor Mahoney served on the Journal's Board of Directors from 1984 until the spring of 2008, when he retired due to illness. Ed also served on the Journal's Book Review Advisory Board since 1990. He was a tireless advocate of scholarly rigor.

Edward Mahoney was born in 1932 in New York City. Ed received his BA at Cathedral College, an MA in Philosophy at St. John's University and an MA in Political Science, and in 1966 a PhD in Philosophy at Columbia University. He wrote his dissertation, The Early Psychology of Augustino Nifo, under the direction of Paul Oskar Kristeller, the noted scholar of medieval and Renaissance thought. Ed went on to become an internationally recognized scholar of medieval and Renaissance philosophy in his own right. He had a particular interest in later medieval psychology, in late medieval and Renaissance receptions of Aristotle, and in historical accounts of "the great Chain of Being." Besides authoring numerous articles on later medieval, Renaissance and early modern philosophy, he edited Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning (1974) and Philosophy and the Humanities (1976). In 2000, Ed published a collection of his essays, Two Aristotelianisms of the Italian Renaissance: Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo. Some major essays not included in that volume are: "Metaphysical Foundations of the Hierarchy of Being According to Some Late-Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers," "Pseudo-Dionysius's Conception of Metaphysical Hierarchy and Its Influence on Medieval Philosophy," and "Aristotle and Some Late Medieval Renaissance Philosophers."

Ed was a member of the Duke Department of Philosophy for forty years, starting in 1965. He held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John S. Guggenheim Foundation and was a Fulbright Teaching Fellow at the University of Rome. He served as President of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy and also was a longtime member of the editorial board of the Journal of the History of Ideas. In 1986 Ed was ordained to the priesthood in the Raleigh Diocese and since then ministered to students and professors at the Newman Center in Chapel Hill. At Duke he was a lively undergraduate teacher and a forceful proponent of interdisciplinary medieval and Renaissance studies. He served as dissertation advisor for several graduate students who now have tenure track or tenured academic positions.

We shall remember Ed as a respected, insightful scholar and as a champion for the history of philosophy. He was a devoted colleague and friend who will be greatly missed.