Obit: Boston College: Philosophy Prof. John Cleary

Obit: BC Philosophy Prof. John Cleary
cf. http://www.bc.edu/offices/pubaf/journalist/Cleary.html

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (4-14-09) - Irish native and BC Philosophy Prof. John Cleary, who spent his childhood on a farm without running water or electricity and his adulthood immersed in ancient philosophy, died on April 12 in his hometown of Dublin. He was 59.

Dr. Cleary battled liver cancer for the past few years and on April 9 had received a liver transplant, wrote Philosophy Department chairman Prof. Patrick Byrne in a letter to colleagues and students. But complications set in, said Byrne, and although a second procedure was performed Dr. Cleary did not recover from the surgery.

A funeral Mass for Dr. Cleary will be held on Thursday, April 16, in Portlaoise, Ireland.

"John enjoyed arguing and working out philosophical arguments for the pleasure of learning and, in a profession of institutionalized condescension towards the apprentice, he was rare in his genuine respect for his interlocutors of all ages and training," said Susan Bencomo, a friend and former student of Dr. Cleary who earned her master's degree from Boston College in 2004.

Dr. Cleary, who joined the University in 1982 — he also was on the philosophy faculty for the National University of Ireland, Maynooth — was best known as the founder and co-director of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (BACAP). In 1984, he received a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to revamp what was then called The Greater Boston Colloquium for Ancient Philosophy, founded in 1978 by Brandeis University Professor Robert Hahn — a loose coalition of three or four universities in the Boston area, which each sponsored a lecture or two by scholars who happened to be visiting the area from other parts of the United States.

The NEH grant, based on Dr. Cleary's proposal, provided funds for promoting undergraduate education in classics and ancient philosophy through lectures, seminars and class visits by leading international scholars in the field. The colloquium was retitled BACAP, and Dr.
Cleary was its director until 1988, although he continued to play an active administrative role afterwards.

Dr. Cleary published extensively on the relationship between philosophy, mathematics and physics in the works of Plato and Aristotle. In 1996, he received a $30,000 National Endowment for the Humanities University Teachers Fellowship to pursue research on the theology of the Greek philosopher Proclus.

Academia might seem an unlikely destination for someone who had grown up in a remote part of Mayo, on Ireland's western seaboard, but Dr.
Cleary's father saved enough money to send him to boarding school, said Bencomo. The experience introduced Dr. Cleary not only to the world of letters, she said, but sparked his awareness of inequality in Ireland: When he moved to Dublin to attend college, he lobbied for the electrification of his home region.

The eight years Dr. Cleary spent as a primary school teacher — before pursuing his master's degree at University College Dublin, and then a doctorate at Boston University — gave him an enduring sense of humility, even though he went on to study under the tutelage of accomplished scholars such as Karl Popper, Alasdair MacIntyre and Hans Georg Gadame, according to Bencomo.

"He never demanded that students follow him or agree with him. I think he embodied the true spirit of teaching, which is to cultivate a confident lover of learning, because his respect for students and peers alike was always as his equal."

Dr. Cleary's wife Breda died in 2005. He is survived by his parents John and Bridget, sisters Mary Bridget (Sister Paula) and Josephine, brothers George, Brendan and Michael. Condolences may be sent to: The Cleary Family, c/o Mrs. Josephine McDonagh, Hawthorn Avenue, Castlebar, Co. Mayo, Ireland.

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