Comments on: Susan Moller Okin

By: Honor Spitz

Honor Spitz — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 00:32:52 +0000

I knew Susan and the rest of the Okin family as wonderful, engaging, open and generous neighbors when they lived next door to me in Los Altos, Ca. Susan’s laugh, quick but gentle wit, and large doe like eyes that looked as well as listened belied the fact that she was an eminent scholar…in fact I didn’t know of her academic stature for quite a few years after our first meeting, and then, it came from someone else. Humility and humor…that’s a pretty good way to be remembered. Goodbye, dear Susan, Godspeed. The world is a poorer place with your passing.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:04:42 +0000

“Well, after the responses to edward said’s death, i guess i can feel free to say i find this hilarious.” Jesus H. Christ. A new low is achieved.

By: drapeto

drapeto — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 00:18:00 +0000

She never came off as anything less than engaging, challenging, rigorous, and generous. Well, after the responses to edward said’s death, i guess i can feel free to say i find this hilarious. uh… she came off less than rigorous on n>1 occasions to me, anyway.

By: Wayne Eastman

Wayne Eastman — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 14:07:28 +0000

No! The memories are few and vague…she had beautiful long ironing board-straight 70s hair…I remember going to her office to turn in or maybe talk about a (late?) paper I wrote for her course on how the Mill of “On Liberty” would have thought about abortion…also an image of her writing on a blackboard wearing a shawl, maybe…the course where she was my section person must have been the political theory Gov requirement taught by Michael Walzer. Maybe she opened my mind to a feminist spin on Rawls, liberal justice, etc. the way she did later in the books that made her a political philosophy name…I just don’t remember. It’s one thing that some of the senior profs I took courses from like Robert Nozick and Richard Herrnstein are gone…it’s quite another that one of my section people who seemed hardly older than I was and who rose to shine brightly is no longer with us.

By: Maria

Maria — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 13:25:04 +0000

Sad, sad news. ‘Justice, Gender and the Family’ was one of the most exciting and important books I ever read (Henry’s copy of course). FWIW, that book is the one that got me thinking politically. It was a revelation. Susan Moller Okin seemed an especially humane and principled person in a field where it must be easy to become hopelessly angry. It’s a real loss that she has died while in the middle of a life’s work. Thanks for the link, Harry.

By: Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 00:59:30 +0000

I never met Okin; only heard her speak at different conferences on panels here and there. She never came off as anything less than engaging, challenging, rigorous, and generous. My worldview and her’s part in some pretty significant ways, but she is one of only two theorists (the only being Elshtain) that I simply cannot imagine ever teaching feminism without appealing to. Her take-downs of Rawls and (especially) Nozick in Justice, Gender, and the Family are, as far as I’m concerned, practically definitive.