Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, John Findlay Visiting Professor, Fall 1995

In Memoriam:  Professor Henry E. Allison 1937-2023

It is with great sadness that we report the death, on June 5th, of our former colleague, Henry E. Allison.  Henry held the Findlay Chair in BU’s Department of Philosophy back in 1995.  He then joined the Department as a permanent member in 1996 until retiring from BU in 2004.  Without question, he was one of the most influential Kant scholars of the last fifty years, writing on nearly all aspects of Kant’s philosophy.  Perhaps his most influential work was Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, first published in 1983 and then in revised form, in 2004.  Admired for its exceptional clarity, erudition and intelligence, this book is still considered a ground-breaking interpretation of Kant’s theoretical philosophy.  Henry was a rigorous and prolific historian of philosophy.  In addition to his many works on Kant, he published monographs on Lessing (1966), Hume (2010) and Spinoza (2022).  He was a Fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and was elected in 2023 to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Interests: Kant, Spinoza, German Idealism, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Philosophy