I just received this very sad news from a colleague.  Annette and her work inspired many of us.  Can anyone forget her Presidential address to the Eastern APA?

Best, Diana

 

Dear Hume Society Member,

 

The Hume Society notes with sadness the passing of renowned Hume scholar and long-time member of the Hume Society, Professor Annette Baier, in her native New Zealand. Please send remembrances of Professor Baier to be posted on the Society’s website to [log in to unmask]

 

Charles Pigden has kindly shared the memorial notice from the Otago

Department:

 

In Memoriam Annette Baier: 1929-2012

 

It is with deep regret that we announce the death of Annette Baier, in Dunedin Hospital on the 2nd of November, where she had been admitted following heart problems earlier in the week. She was 83. Annette C Baier (nee Stoop) was born in 1929 and studied Philosophy at Otago and at Oxford. She taught at St Andrews, Auckland and Sydney before emigrating to America with her husband Kurt Baier. She first taught at Carnegie Mellon, then at Pittsburgh, and it was at Pittsburgh that her career really took off. She became famous as a moral philosopher, a Hume scholar and a feminist, with books such as Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Morals (1985), A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume's Treatise (1991), Moral Prejudices (1995) and The Commons of the Mind (1997). She was also an inspiring and much loved teacher. She served as President of the Eastern Division of the APA (as did Kurt), gave the Paul Carus Lectures in Philosophy (as did Kurt), and was invited to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (as was Kurt), making them perhaps the only husband and wife duo to achieve this trio of distinctions. In 1995, the Baiers retired to New Zealand dividing their time between Queenstown and Dunedin. She published four more books during her retirement: Death and Character: Further Reflections on Hume (2008), The Cautious, Jealous Virtue: Hume on Justice (2010), Reflections on How We Live (2010) and The Pursuits of Philosophy (2011).

Friends of Annette will be pleased to know that she was active in philosophy right up to the last, attending and contributing to the Otago Departmental Seminar with her customary wit and acuity to within a few weeks of her death. She will be sorely missed.

 

 

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Diana Tietjens Meyers

Ignacio Ellacuría SJ Chair of Social Ethics and

Professor of Philosophy

Loyola University, Chicago

1032 W. Sheridan Road

Chicago IL 60660

Phone: 773-508-2295