David Stove - Life

Life

Born in Moree (a small country town in northern New South Wales), David Stove was the youngest of five children; his parents were Robert Stove, a schoolteacher (d. 1971), and Ida Stove, née Hill (d. 1946). Later, David lived (with his family) in Newcastle, New South Wales before moving south and studying philosophy at the University of Sydney from 1945 to 1948. During his childhood he had been associated with Presbyterianism, but in his teens he became an atheist and, as far as is known, never again espoused any religious belief (although he retained a lifelong interest in patristic theology, in which he was well read).

At university, like many Sydney intellectuals of his generation, Stove came under the influence of the realist Professor John Anderson. Whilst he did absorb Anderson's realism and impatience with metaphysics, he was later to shake off other elements of Anderson's teaching.

Early on in his undergraduate career Stove was part of a political/bohemian set at Sydney University (some of whom later became part of the "Sydney Push"). Stove flirted with Marxism at this stage, but, on his own admission, abandoned it when he discovered "what real intellectual work was". He eventually became a political conservative, and was later to clash with some of his former comrades.

In 1952 he obtained a lectureship at the University of New South Wales (in the Sydney suburb of Kensington) and, in 1960, became a lecturer at the University of Sydney, where he eventually became an associate professor. During the 1970s, his department became infamous for its battles between Marxists and conservatives, these struggles receiving national press coverage. Stove and David Armstrong both resisted what they regarded as attempts by Marxists to take over the department; and the result was that the department had to be split into two new departments. After this split, Stove continued to speak out (notably in the magazine Quadrant) about what he felt were abuses by Marxists and feminists in the university, and was warned that disciplinary proceedings against him would be taken by the university if he did not keep quiet. Former senator and cabinet minister Susan Ryan spoke similarly in the federal parliament against him. Disenchanted with what was happening in university life and in academic culture at large, he took early retirement in 1987.

Stove had moved out of the city centre to the edge of the Sydney basin at Mulgoa. He was devoted to gardening and preserving the wilderness, although he was sometimes critical of environmentalists. His other great loves in life were his family, Handel, Henry Purcell, old books, and cricket.

In 1959 he had married Jessie Leahy (1926–2001), who had grown up in Queensland before working in Sydney as a pathologist (and who resembled him on religious matters, being an unbeliever from a Presbyterian background). The couple had two children, Robert and Judith.

A lifelong enthusiastic smoker, David Stove developed debilitating oesophageal cancer in 1993. His wife suffered, also in 1993, a massive stroke (although she outlived him by seven years). After a painful struggle with the disease, he took his own life on 2 June 1994, aged 66, hanging himself at his home.