My great aunt, Ruth Barcan Marcus, died yesterday, at 90 years old. Ruth, or at least the story of her, meant a lot to me, growing up. She was a professional philosopher, which seemed so mysterious and impossible, especially as a lady of olden days. (She got her PhD from Yale in 1946, and was later a professor there, and then a professor emerita.)
One of her books, “Modalities,” sat, face front, on one of my grandmother’s bookshelves. I tried to read it once, and had absolutely no idea what I was looking at. Ruth was proof that there existed worlds of English-speaking people who thought about things beyond what I was being taught.
I later found out that she was an enemy of Jacques Derrida, and had officially protested his appointment to Cambridge, accusing him of “translating into the academic sphere tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the Dadaists or of the concrete poets.” SWOON!
Ruth had a collegiate accent - vaguely British - and always had this hilarious brusqueness about her that seemed totally at odds with the rest of my family. She was like a war hero — a feminist who had created her own life at a moment when such a thing was seemingly impossible. I am fairly certain that my life would have taken a different shape if I had not seen, from a young age, the way she created hers.
Anyway. Ruth was great. If you’re interested, you can read more about here HERE and HERE. And if you’re really interested, you can read her “Philosophical Autobiography” HERE.
