I was born May 26, 1933, in Fullerton, Kentucky, and attended elementary school there. I went to McKell High School in South Shore, Kentucky (that's the funny little school Jesse Stuart wrote about in The Thread that Runs So True), graduating as  co-salutatorian of my class in 1951.{November, 2009...It's easy to make fun of  old McKell Hi. Its main problem was that anyone in our area with proper teaching credentials could double his/her salary by spending 20 cents per day to ride Greyhound, and teaching over in Portsmouth, Ohio. But McKell had a super English teacher in Lena Nevison; I'll never forget her!! Further, our school mascot was the bulldog. Thus, one lesson that we had beaten into our heads day after day, and that has meant so much over the years was, "Don't give up!! Don't give up!! No matter what happens, don't ever give up!!"}.

I then began college at the University of Kentucky in Lexington that summer, but found I couldn't afford it financially---in just one six-week term. So for two years, I worked during the day and went to night school at Ohio University's Portsmouth Branch. There I had the good fortune to be taught two courses in Philosophy by Idus Murphree, plus a number of courses in English Literature by Betty Hodgden.

In June of 1953, I enlisted in the U.S. Army. I took basic training (Sixteen weeks Infantry) at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, and was sent to Germany. I served in Germany--at Goeppingen, mostly, and also at Ulm---for more than two years.. I was a radio operator, some of the time, on an air control team. I rose to the rank of sergeant before being released in 1956. I then spent a spring quarter at Ohio State University, Columbus.

{November 20, 2009

The military story deserves more than that. For the past year or so, I have been fortunate enough to exchange Emails and pictures with some of the guys I served with in Germany,55 years ago (I was in Germary for 28 months, from Nov.,1953-Feb.,1956. We were first known as TACPs (for Tactical Air Control Parties). We began with a group of 14. Now, as I write these words, I can be sure of  only 3 left alive--I here in Texas, one in Georgia, and one in Maine. Earlier this year, one of the group died in Milwaukee, and we've lost track of another in Oklahoma. They were a great, REALLY GREAT, group of guys!

Oh, since Rosemary and I have no children, there is no one to ask "What did you do in the Army, Daddy?," but this picture provides a pretty good idea of my work:}

Did I hear someone say, "You call that 'work'??" Call it "good duty!" I was blessed... there is no other way to say it.}

On June 9, 1956, I married Rosemary Hack of Portsmouth, Ohio. She is a graduate of Portsmouth High School and has her B.S. from Ohio University, Athens. She is a registered Medical Technologist, currently working in Clinical Chemistry at the Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, Waco, Texas. When Rosemary and I married in 1956, she was working at Children's Hospital in Cincinnati--Dr. Sabin also worked there for several years--so she persuaded me to transfer to the University of Cincinnati.

Actually, since I had no money, I worked for eight months at Shillito's Department Store in Cincinnati, returning to classes full time in February, 1957. At that time, the chairman of the Philosophy Department there was Howard D. Roelofs. I finished my B.A., graduating with Honors in Philosophy in 1958; I was on the Dean's List throughout my Senior year. As a graduate student, I served as a Taft Teaching Fellow for my first two years and a graduate assistant my last two. As such, I taught discussion groups in Ethics the first two years, then two sections of Logic the other two, adding an Aesthetics course for the College of Design, Architecture and Art my last year. I took my M.A. in 1960, and my Ph.D. in 1962, writing my dissertation (on Kierkegaard) with Van Meter Ames (who had become chairman in 1959) and Joseph Margolis.

In 1962, I was appointed an assistant professor of philosophy at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. I was hired to teach Ethics and Aesthetics, and general courses.

In 1966, I was selected (one of 50 so honored of more than 400 applicants) to attend the first annual Summer Institute on Ethics and the Philosophy of Mind, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation, and held at Boulder, Colorado, on the campus of the University of Colorado.

{This photo was taken at a Summer Institute for Philosophy Teachers, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation.. John Rawls (Harvard) is on the far left of the second row. William Frankena (Michigan) is almost directly behind him, second from the left in row three. Kurt Baier (Pittsburgh) is second from the right in row two. The pudgy little guy seated on the floor, third from the right, is E. H. Duncan. I regret that I cannot remember the name of the photographer}. Elizabeth Anscombe (Oxford) was also there, and lectured, the full six weeks of the conference, but was not present for this photo.

. Much later, in 1976, I won an ACLS grant (one of four chosen) to read a paper and attend the Eighth International Congress for Aesthetics in Darmstadt, West Germany. On the same trip, I attended the Hume conference in Edinburgh, Scotland (several marvelous papers by major British philosophers!).

Perhaps it should be noted that my wife and I actually made our first visit to Scotland in the Summer of 1974, returning in '76, '78, '80 and '82. [It's hard to explain why there are some things you just don't forget. On the first full day of that first visit to Scotland--as I write this in late August, 2009, it's been 35 years--is that possible??...we took a walk over by the University, across the "Meadows," and up the hill on the other side, and we  suddenly saw a sign that read "to the Castle." Rosemary said since we were so close, we might as well go on up. I'll never forget the "rush" I felt as I took her hand, and we began the trek up the hill for our very first close look at Edinburgh Castle!!]

For those 5 early visits to Edinburgh, our landlord was the Rev. A. J. C. Macfarlane, who became one of the Queen's Own Chaplains. For the first 4 of the visits, we stayed in a lovely "Mews" apartment on Mortonhall Road in Edinburgh.We really came to love Scotland!!

In 1985, I gave a paper at the Thomas Reid Conference at Aberdeen, Scotland, and, in 1988, I read two papers in England, at the Eleventh International Congress for Aesthetics in Nottingham, and the International Congress for Value Inquiry in Arundel.

I have also been active in various professional organizations. I served for three years as Secretary/Treasurer of the Southwestern Philosophical Society, then Vice-President (and Program Chairman) in 1973, President in 1974--reading my Presidential Address in New Orleans that year . Of course, I am also a member of the American Philosophical Association (Central Division), The American Society for Aesthetics, The Baptist Association of Philosophy Teachers, The Hume Society, etc.

My publications list may be found elsewhere on this website. I should note, also, that I served as the Assistant Editor for Bibliography for the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism the last few years that journal published a bibliography, in which capacity I edited the annual bibliography for them. I served a term as an Editorial Consultant for the Journal of Aesthetic Education, and as a Contributing Editor for Leonardo (I published a column in that journal twice a year for ten years, 1974-1983). I continue to be listed as an "Honorary Editor" of Leonardo. I am sometimes called on to "referee" papers for Leonardo, and for the Journal of Church and State and the Journal of the History of Philosophy. For several years I contributed abstracts of books for the Bibliography of Philosophy (a Unesco publication). From 1981, I supplied materials from periodicals in philosophy to The Eighteenth Century--a Current Bibliography (I gave up this task in 1993). As a past president of the Southwestern Philosophical Society, I have recently (1994) been asked to serve on the editorial board of the Southwest Philosophy Review.

Special attention should perhaps be given to the fact that my work is continuing. My 1976 book on Kierkegaard {I forgot to mention, but with 14 years work, and an additional chapter on Theology by my friend and former student, Dan Walker, my dissertation on Kierkegaard became my first book!}was reprinted by Hendrickson Publishers in Massachusetts.

A paper I did on Kierkegaard has been published in German for a book of materials relevant to his work. I was also asked to contribute (in 1980) to a special double issue of Paunch on the work of the late S. C. Pepper (My paper, "The Philosophy of Stephen C. Pepper: An Appraisal" is now available on the Web). Again, in early May of 1982, I was asked to speak (and given a small honorarium) at the State University of New York, Buffalo, at a conference on Pepper's work, the results of which were published in a special double issue of the Journal of Mind and Behavior. But my consuming passion for about the past twenty-five years has been the Scottish philosophy of "Common Sense." Thus in 1974, I spent a Summer Sabbatical in Scotland, and published some of the results (with my colleague Robert M. Baird) in the Journal of the History of Ideas.

In 1979, I used an eight-month sabbatical to begin work on lectures the Scottish Philosopher Thomas Reid gave in 1780 on "Natural Theology;" these were transcribed, and, with an Introduction (plus a paper on Reid by a graduate student, William R. Eakin) published by the University Press of America (Washington, D.C.).

More recently, I was awarded an eight-month sabbatical (Summer, Fall, 1985) to begin work (hopefully a biography) on the late William Carey Crane, who was President of Baylor from 1863-1885. The first volume of the biography has been published as To Preach Christ: the Education of William Carey Crane (1987).

I don't think it can be said that I have neglected my teaching duties at Baylor University. I have tried to teach my classes well, continuously preparing extensive syllabi; as of 2000, all of my syllabi are online. I am sometimes called on to give lectures to English department classes, Honors Program colloquia and local (usually church) groups. I serve on a great many thesis committees for the English department. In 1984, I was designated an Outstanding Faculty Member and so honored at the May 1984 Commencement exercises. In 1994, I was given an Outstanding Faculty Service Award by the Baylor Faculty Senate. Over the years, I've been on several university committees, including a term as Chairman of the Honors Program. Later, I was Chairman of the University Libraries Committee, back on the Honors Program Committee, as well as the Beall-Russell Lectures Committee, the Cherry Lectures Committee, the Honorary Degrees Committee, etc. As to student involvement, I was a faculty sponsor for the social and service club of the School of Nursing for twelve years (at first it was Sigma Tau Lambda--always the most beautiful girls on campus!--and then Alpha Tau Delta), from 1967-1979. [October 4, 2009... My Mother, even more than my Dad, told me I should always stand up for those things in which I believed...the Nurses... this was a case, like the so-called "Baker Affair" my first year at Baylor, in which I failed to do that. In short, I was cowardly. Had I stood a bit taller, I would probably have been fired. Instead, I lost "only" a rather large amount of my self-respect. Would I do the same again? Sadly, I probably would. I grew up thinking that if you're right, you will eventually win; I learned that that isn't always true...a hard lesson...]

I also served as Chief Marshal at all Baylor graduations, a major task, for 15 years, from 1984-1998. In 1998, I was asked to chair the Book Store Committee; beginning 1999, I moved to the Committee on Committees.

In 1992, my wife and I had an unusual educational experience, attending a summer institute for about three weeks on the "Religious Roots of America: the British Backgrounds" under the auspices of The Westminster Theological Seminary. We stayed in dorms in St. Andrews University (Scotland), and at Cambridge, and attended lectures by the seminary's president, Dr. Samuel Logan, a church historian, and by their professor of Systematic Theology, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. In 1994, we attended another such institute on the "Continental Roots" in Switzerland and France, with more lectures by Dr. Logan, and by Dr. William Edgar, the Professor of Apologetics at Westminster. We did not exhaust the topic in 1992, so we returned to Scotland and England in 1995 and 1997- and we went back in 2001. If this seems to be irrelevant to my academic work, it should be noted that David Hume was born into a Scottish, Calvinist, culture, and that the principal early responses to his work came out of that tradition.

Beginning in about the Fall term of 1999, I have spent a great deal of time trying to get up to speed on the new computer technology. Thus I have taken a number of short computer courses, and, as indicated above, have put all my syllabi online, etc. I personally think my Moral Philosophy syllabus is my best, but my Aesthetics syllabus is featured by Aesthetics Online, in their Teaching Materials section (they have also put one of my recent papers online).

In the community, my wife and I are both members of Central Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), Waco. We were members of the Choir for a number of years (until her work schedule made this difficult). I have been on most of the major committees there (serving for some time as chair of the Worship Committee), taught an occasional Sunday School class, and served several terms as a Ruling Elder. I was Clerk of Session from 1987-1993. I became a member of the Session again in 2000, and back on the Worship Committee, rotating off again in 2003. We are also Benefactors of the Waco Symphony (I served a term as a member of the Board of Directors). We support The Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, the Kimbell Art Museum in Ft. Worth, etc. We also support the Westminster Theological Seminary. 

In March, 2003, at their annual Awards Ceremony, Baylor honored me for 40 years of service to the University. I hope to carry on for a couple more years. So what else do I have to add? Perhaps these lines I recently read, from Tennyson:

"'...you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.

Death closes all; but something near the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done......'"

On February 26, 2004, the whole picture changed, as I suffered a cardiac arrest, and, by all odds, should have died. But there is hope that the future will yet be bright, if not heroic. Read more in my contribution to the 2004 departmental Newsletter.

Happily, that is not the end of the story. I did rehab at something called the Getterman Wellness Center! I started well, but June was a tough month, with infections, irritations and inflammations slowing me down. July, however,was a great month, and as of August 4, 2004, I am doing very well, got a nice certificate of graduation (I think I may be the first to graduate in cap and gown!!) from the Center--plus a chance to hug all the nurses!! I plan to continue to work out at the Center--just call me "Arnold"!!

Wow!!

As of early 2005, the "wows" only continue. Two more items need to be added to my c.v. First, I cannot help feeling that there is a very large "sympathy vote" involved ( I'll take it, anyway!!), but it seems that April 14-16, a special conference will be held to honor me!! For once, I really am left speechless. The conference will be called "Hume and His Critics," named for the seminar I taught for a number of years. The idea was hatched by the two youngest members of our department: Todd Buras, a Yale graduate who is doing some fine work just now on Thomas Reid, and Margaret Tate, who recently took her Ph. D. from Notre Dame, and does excellent work on Hume. Some important, internationally-known scholars (from Notre Dame , Brown, and the University of Aberdeen), will do invited papers, and we may have as many as 25-30 other contributed papers to be read!! Since my friends call me "Bud," here at Baylor this event has become known as the "Budfest" ---I love that!

The conference began with a dinner --at the Seminary, yet! --to honor me, with all (almost) of my favorite people there. It is the custom, at such things, for the honoree to say a few words. I did, but did not want to speak too long, to bore everybody, so I also had ready for distribution, a document I call "The Turning Points of my Life." Since my Newsletter item is a rather personal document, too, not properly part of this more academic record, I have appended these two to the Newsletter item, so readers (if any), may consult them, if so minded.

More good news is that my doctor doesn't want me to actually "retire retire," as he puts it. I have submitted my letter, effective May 15, but I have been asked, and of course I agreed, to return for the Fall, 2005, term, to do my Philosophy of Art course at least one more time, because we don't have anyone else to teach it. Honesty requires me to say we really do; Lenore Wright could do an excellent job with the course, but her Baylor contract has her as part of BIC (Baylor Interdisciplinary Core). And she is released to the Philosophy Department to do just one course--which, for various reasons, has to be our course on Philosophical research and writing. My office won't be needed next term--so I have a super situation, at least for the rest of '05!!

Oh, I also continue to love, and to benefit from, my workouts, three afternoons per week, at the Getterman Wellness Center. If they will have me, and they say they will, I want to do volunteer work out there. Maybe it is true, after all, that the best is yet to be.....

Update-- 2006.

Things continue to go well. I have been bothered by a back sprain for the past 3 months, but it is much better, and no great problem. Since the Summer of '05, I have been volunteering at the Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center. It took a while to find my niche, but for the past several months, I have spent my Tuesdays, 7 a. m. to 12, in something called the Surgery Waiting Room. I answer the phones, keep tabs on people who have relatives in surgery, and pass out "beepers," so folks can go to the Cafeteria without losing touch. I also edit the newsletter for Hillcrest volunteers.

I continue to work out at the Getterman Center, and edit the Newsletter for their "Heart-to-Heart" support group (this got me a special lapel pin for "Innovation!). It may be the world's only newsletter done in a Power Point Presentation format! And check out this award!! I am so very proud of this award, because it was given by people who have come to mean a lot to me.

I have officially retired from Baylor University, but continue to teach the Aesthetics course during the Fall term (I taught it in the Fall of '05, and have an oral agreement to do it again in '06); during the Spring term, I do an Ethics course. Rosemary has also retired, effective January 1, '06, and also plans to do volunteer work--this past week, she was in Medical Records, and I think she enjoyed it.

Oh, permit me to insert a couple more things---forgive excessive pride:

I should add that when Rosemary retired, the hospital, and especially the Lab, were very kind to her. They gave us season tickets to the Waco Symphony for next season, a party at a nice Italian restaurant, a large Wedgewood crystal bowl, a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble, flowers, and even a couple of bears. This one was actually put together by the doctor in charge of Pathology at Hillcrest:

At Baylor, we tend to be partial to bears.

My Last Year

June 26, 2007

I hope what I mean is my last year of teaching at Baylor. And perhaps I should add just a word about that. Most Baylor profs retire at age 70, which for me would have been 2003. I thought of that, but felt so good at that time that I decided on age 72, or 2005. There is a certain irony there, since I "dropped dead " at 70, in early 2004, but my recovery went well, so back to the former plan. I should emphasize that, unlike some of my best friends, I never thought of not retiring at all. I have seen too many good teachers, preachers, orchestra directors (and whatnot) spoil their reputations by hanging on too long. For all of us there comes a time when we just "don't have it" any more...and we may not recognize this when it happens to us.

Thus I officially retired at the end of the '04-'05 school year... But, for various reasons (some political), I was asked to stay on to teach the Aesthetics course in the Fall of '05. I accepted, and taught as a part-time lecturer for that year, plus the '06-'07 year. A change was that I put together Power Points for all my lectures for the Aesthetics course. I don't do this in other classes In doing the Philosophy of Art, however, it's a good way to put the art in. So my week was spent teaching MWF, volunteering in my Surgery Waiting Room on Tuesday--and Thursday, as always, was Beauty Shop Day. During the Spring, '07 term, I taught my Junior-Senior level course in the history of Moral Philosophy. The plan is to do the same for one more time, the '07-'08 school year. If I live to May 26, of '08, I'll be 75; that's time to quit.

At the end of the .06-'07 school year, it was my very high honor to be asked to carry the ceremonial mace at Graduation. Of course, my back hurt that day, but I was determined to have the same step I had had as a sergeant a little more than 50 years ago. I recall making the turn and adjusting my pace as I headed up the center aisle. More people, mostly students, recognized me than I had expected. I recall shouts of "It's Bud!!", but mostly it was "Dr. Duncan!! Dr. Duncan!!"

I reached the top of the platform and paused for a moment by the base (always thought "mace-base" sounded a bit foolish), then held the mace high, in a clumsy little salute to wife Rosemary (who was in the stands with our friends the Petree family, whose pretty daughter Karen was to take a degree about an hour later). Then I took my assigned place, to sit out the rest of the ceremony.

The '07-'08 year promises to be interesting. I cannot escape health questions, especially regarding my back.I have learned (in '04??) not to try to predict what the future will bring. But there is one practice I want to continue. I have lost my office (no comment, perhaps more anon), so I'm not sure how well (or if) this will work in my new "digs.". Last year, there was a coed that I had known since '04 (She was very kind, to say the least,during my illness that year. As my back grew worse, there were actually days when she would help me up and down the stairs to and from my classroom; I'll never understand why she did so much for me.) who, at my invitation, began coming by the office for coffee before class. Usually, I would supply the Starbucks coffee; she would supply the "goodies." So we shared nothing but coffee and conversation, but these meetings became very helpful,even meaningful,at least for me.The fact that I think she's gorgeous doesn't hurt, but she is not looking for a 74-year-old boyfriend, and I am not looking for a second wife (the one I have is gorgeous, too). I think that I am looking for that grandchild I never had, and she is looking for a grandfather figure. So our needs are mutual. Further, I found that when the pain in my back was severe (and that was too often last term. I have changed doctors, and things are better now), she somehow managed to be a comforting presence.She was more help to me than she can possibly imagine, and I like to think I was of some help to her, too. Again, I hope this can continue. She is a very special young lady.

August, 2007

It is difficult to imagine that this is to be my last year at Baylor. Was it a football coach who first said, "Everything that goes around comes around"?? Or was it the other way about? Anyway, in a sense, I feel my last year takes me back to where I began. My first philosophy course was a course in "Logic in the Deweyean Manner," but I really fell in love with philosophy while taking a course in Ethics, the second term of the 1951-'52 school year. I took a lot of English literature, too, so that I often tell my students that I consider myself an English major who went wrong. The fact remains that I became a Philosophy major because I wanted to teach Moral Philosophy. My problem was that it seemed that, when I hit the job market in 1962, everybody wanted to teach Ethics. On the other hand, I had three teachers (Van Meter Ames, Joseph Margolis, and Campbell Crockett) who had published well in Aesthetics--so I marketed myself, so to speak, as a specialist in Aesthetics. It was much later that my major interests changed to Scottish Philosophy, especially Hume and his critics, (again) especially Thomas Reid. So for my last year of teaching at Baylor, it will be a semester of Aesthetics, and my favorite, a course in the history of Moral Philosophy.The fall term, 2007, will begin on Monday, August 20. I am determined that this will be my last year. I am also determined to make it. The bad back has only gotten worse than it was(as indicated above), but my doctor says it cannot get any worse than it is now, and it can be made bearable by treating the symptoms.

I am reminded that the motto for the Scottish Duncan clan is "Disce Pati," which translates to "Learn to suffer,"or (better, I think) "Learn to endure." As always, the Good Book says it better; remember the promise:

Every story, every book, and every life, great or not so great, has an ending, a final chapter, a final page. I have no clue as to how my life, or even this year, will end...somehow, more and more, I think of the moving (for me, at least) words of one of my favorite British hymns:

The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest;
To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

And once again, Amen.

EHD

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