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Saturday, April 11, 2020

Frank M. Oppenheim, SJ (1925-2020)

Frank M. Oppenheim, a prolific scholar whose deep knowledge of the life and thought of Josiah Royce was unsurpassed and whose personal warmth and self-effacing concern for others touched the lives of many, passed away on April 3 in Clarkston, Michigan.

Oppenheim was born in 1925 in Coldwater, Ohio. He attended Xavier, Loyola, and Saint Louis universities, before joining the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus in 1942. He was ordained in 1955.

Oppenheim wrote four books on Royce: Royce’s Journey Down Under (1985), Royce’s Mature Philosophy of Religion (1987), Royce’s Mature Ethics (1993), and Reverence for the Relations of Life: Re-imagining Pragmatism via Josiah Royce’s Interactions with Peirce, James, and Dewey (2004). He also authored scores of journal articles and, with Dawn Aberg and John Kaag, a 750-page Comprehensive Index of the Writings of Josiah Royce. He was a founding member of the Josiah Royce Society and its first president.

While the impact of Oppenheim’s work on Royce Studies and American philosophy more broadly can hardly be overstated, Oppenheim himself eschewed the role of the haughty academic don. Those who knew him will remember his unassuming warmth, gentle sense of humor and genuine concern for students and colleagues alike.

Over the decades, Oppenheim’s work defined a generation of Royce scholarship--- one that recovered Royce’s philosophy after a long period of neglect, that sought to elucidate the complex relations between Royce’s thought and biography and that delighted in debates over the fine points of Royce’s theories.

Yet behind the purely academic features of Oppenheim’s work, impactful as those features were, was an irreplaceable individual, Oppenheim, whose character and personality left an even deeper impression. Reading Oppenheim, one senses the philosopher behind the philosophy--- the humble questioner, the joyful seeker, the wise and avuncular mentor.

We can be thankful not only for the insights Oppenheim gave us as a thinker but also for the virtues he exemplified as a person. Those insights and virtues continue to inspire and sustain our community even as we mourn his passing.