American academic philosopher (1923–2005)
Richard Henry Popkin (December 27, 1923 – April 14, 2005) was an American academic philosopher who specialized in the history of enlightenment philosophy and early modern anti-dogmatism. His 1960 work The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes[1] introduced one previously unrecognized influence on Western thought in the seventeenth century, the Pyrrhonian Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus. Popkin also was an internationally acclaimed scholar on Christian millenarianism and Jewish messianism.
Life
Richard Popkin was born in Manhattan to author Zelda Popkin and her husband Louis Popkin, who together ran a small public relations firm. He earned his bachelor's degree and, in 1950, his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He taught at American universities, including the University of Connecticut, The University of Iowa, Harvey Mudd College, the University of California, San Diego, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He was visiting professor at University of California Berkeley, Brandeis University, Duke University, Emory University, Tel Aviv University, and was Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York. Popkin was the founding director of the International Archives of the History of Ideas.
Among his honors, Popkin was awarded the Nicholas Murray Butler Medal by Columbia University and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was president emeritus and founding editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy.
Richard Popkin spent his later years living in Pacific Palisades, California. He died of emphysema in Los Angeles in April 2005. His papers have been archived at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA.
Family
Popkin was survived by Juliet (née Greenstone, 1924–2015), whom he married in 1944, and two of their three children, the historian Jeremy Popkin (b. 1948) and his younger daughter, Susan Popkin (b. 1961). Margaret Popkin (1950–2005) was a prominent civil rights lawyer and activist, known particularly for her work in El Salvador during the civil war of the 1980s.
Works
Popkin published many textbooks on philosophy, some with Avrum Stroll. He was editor and translator of selections from Pierre Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary (1965). His last book, Disputing Christianity (2007), was completed posthumously by his son Jeremy.
Popkin published two autobiographical writings: Intellectual Autobiography: Warts and All in The Sceptical Mode in Modern Philosophy. Essays in Honor of Richard H. Popkin, 1988, pp. 103–149, and a continuation: Introduction: Warts and All Part 2, in Everything Connects: In Conference with Richard H. Popkin. Essays in His Honor, 1999, pp. XI-LXXVI.
Beyond his philosophical works, he is noted for writing The Second Oswald (1966), questioning the Warren Report lone gunman explanation of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Popkin's theory was that a look-alike of Lee Harvey Oswald was the actual assassin of Kennedy.[2][3]
