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  "path": "/2026/02/09/laurence-thomas-1949-2025/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-09T11:30:31.000Z",
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    "Laurence Thomas (1949-2025)",
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  "textContent": "Laurence Thomas, professor emeritus of philosophy at Syracuse University, died this past December. The following obituary is by David Benatar (University of Cape Town). Laurence Mordekhai Thomas (1949-2025) Laurence Thomas, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University, died on 27 December 2025. He was 76. His life focused on his work: he was a passionate, productive philosophical writer, and a popular professor. He was also a man of contrasts. He was effervescent and enthusiastic. However, he was also a man of great interiority, and very private. This challenges the obituarist who wishes both to convey a sense of the person and to respect his privacy. Laurence was born on 1 August 1949 and grew up, an only-child, in Baltimore, Maryland. Both his parents died by his mid-teens. Thereafter, he was reared by an aunt—an “ole fashioned Jamaican woman” who, he said, “never allowed me to wallow in the valley of despair”, and to whom he later dedicated his first book, Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character (Temple, 1989). He received his BA in Philosophy from the University of Maryland in 1971. At the University of Pittsburgh, he received an MA in 1973 and a PhD in 1976. His doctoral supervisor was Kurt Baier, for whose 1987 festschrift in Synthese, Laurence was later the guest editor. Before joining Syracuse in 1989, he held positions at Notre Dame (1977-1978), the University of Maryland (1978-1980), the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1980-1986), and Oberlin (1986-1989). In 1978-1979, he was Andrew Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard. While his primary Syracuse appointment was in Philosophy, he was also affiliated with the Political Science Department and the Judaic Studies program. Professor Thomas’ specialization was in moral, political, and social philosophy, with a strong thread of moral psychology. The hallmarks of his writing were exquisite sensitivity to human psychology and behaviour, thoroughgoing decency, and accessibility. His second book, Vessels of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust (Temple, 1993), is a prime example. It is a nuanced examination of the similarities and differences between the subtitular atrocities. Eschewing invidious judgements about which was worse, he probed the nature of these respective evils. He did much of his writing in Paris, to which he would regularly decamp...\n\nThe post Laurence Thomas (1949-2025) first appeared on Daily Nous.",
  "title": "Laurence Thomas (1949-2025)"
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