每日大赛入口

Obituaries

Recent Obituaries
In Memoriam Archive

Beloved Husband, Devoted Father, Treasured Grandfather, and Venerated Professor

Robert Greenberg 鈥�56

March 21, 2024, in Newton, Massachusetts, peacefully in his sleep.

Bob was a beloved husband, devoted father, treasured grandfather, and venerated professor. He taught philosophy to generations of students spanning more than 60 years—mostly at Brandeis University—and attended Reed on a Baker Scholarship, majoring in philosophy, quarterbacking and coaching the football team, and running a laundry service to support himself.

After graduating, Bob went on to study as a Fulbright Scholar at St. Andrew’s and Oxford and a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at the University of Chicago, where he earned his PhD. Admired for his insight into Kant, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy, he wrote several books, including Kant’s Theory of A Priori Knowledge (2001), Real Existence, Ideal Necessity (2008), and The Bounds of Freedom: Kant’s Causal Theory of Action (2016).

Bob enjoyed a 60-year-long love affair with his wife, Maida Jablon Greenberg, supporting her career as a psychoanalyst by sharing the duties of shopping for groceries, cooking family dinners, and taking care of their children.

As a parent, Bob fulfilled everything he had longed for, having lost his own father to cancer at age six. He was a Little League coach—and inspired all three of his children to pursue PhDs and careers in academia.

Proudly liberal in his politics, Bob always sided with the underdog and bequeathed to all his descendants a concern for those less fortunate and a skepticism towards authority. He disdained cant and sloppy thinking, but was always open to revising his beliefs. To his grandchildren, he was a source of love, enthusiasm, and support, as well as a joyful leader of family gatherings around the dinner table in Newton and at the beach in Cape Cod.

Bob is survived by his wife, Maida, and his children, Judith, David, and Jonathan.

Appeared in Reed magazine: Fall 2024