Biography
Joseph Margolis was the son of central European, Jewish immigrants. His father, a dentist, was a well-read man, greatly interested in literature, and proficient in four languages.
Before dedicating himself to philosophy, Margolis served in World War II as a paratrooper. He was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge, and lost his only brother, a twin, in the same engagement. He studied at Columbia University, earning both the M.A. (1950) and Ph.D (1953) in philosophy. Famous contemporaries at Columbia included the art theorist Arthur C. Danto and the philosopher Marx Wartofsky.
Margolis has taught at numerous universities in the United States and Canada, as well as lecturing throughout Europe, in Japan, New Zealand, and South Africa. Since 1991 he has held the Laura H. Carnell Chair of Philosophy at Temple University, Philadelphia. In 1973 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Margolis
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)