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Professor Gillian Rose;Obituary ProQuest document link Abstract (Abstract): Gillian Rose, philosopher, died of cancer on December 9 aged 48. She was born on September 20, 1947. PHILOSOPHY in the late 20th century is, or ought to be, a more strenuous vocation than at any time in history. Gillian Rose was rare, perhaps unique, in being equal to the challenge. Her quest for alternatives to the intellectual cul de sac in which she found her generation led her to explore traditions despised at most Anglo-American universities, and to rise above academic mediocrity. Gillian Rosemary Stone, as she was born, grew up in a Jewish family in west London, highly talented (her sister Jacqueline is also an eminent academic) but overshadowed by memories of the Holocaust: her maternal grandmother was the only survivor of her family. She suffered from dyslexia which, she wrote, "is fraught with significance in a Jewish child" (especially one as precociously intelligent as her); her condition improved after an operation to correct a squint. Her parents were divorced early in her life, and at the age of 16 she decided to change her name from her father's, Stone, to her stepfather's, Rose. At Ealing Grammar School where her rebellions against the head, Miss Bland, did not prevent her gaining a scholarship to read PPE at St Hilda's College, Oxford she discovered philosophy for herself, by reading 's and Pascal's Pensees. Having graduated in 1970, Rose spent what she called her apprenticeship year at Columbia in New York and at the Free University in Berlin; at the New School of Social Research she was introduced to Hegel by Dieter Henrich and to the Frankfurt School by Jurgen Habermas. But it was in the Manhattan apartment of her bisexual lover, Jim Fessenden, that she first discovered Sixties culture. A quarter of a century later, after his death, Rose included in Love's Work an affectionate account of his bohemian milieu. Her frank portrait of their mutual friend Camille Paglia caused the now famous feminist to threaten Rose with a libel writ to little avail. Links: Linking Service Full text: Gillian Rose, philosopher, died of cancer on December 9 aged 48. She was born on September 20, 1947. PHILOSOPHY in the late 20th century is, or ought to be, a more strenuous vocation than at any time in history. Gillian Rose was rare, perhaps unique, in being equal to the challenge. Her quest for alternatives to the intellectual cul de sac in which she found her generation led her to explore traditions despised at most Anglo- American universities, and to rise above academic mediocrity. Her early death has silenced a great scholar in her prime: an authority on all continental, and especially German thought; on theology, sociology, political theory and post-modernism. But it has also extinguished a new star in the firmament of English letters. Earlier this year, already gravely ill, Rose published her last short book, an autobiographical meditation aptly entitled Love's Work; it resonated far beyond the academic sphere. Here her prose attained a concrete simplicity and existential intensity; her eloquent suffering was transfigured by a radiant spirituality which embraced both Jewish and Christian elements. Gillian Rosemary Stone, as she was born, grew up in a Jewish family in west London, highly talented (her sister Jacqueline is also an eminent academic) but overshadowed by memories of the Holocaust: her maternal grandmother was the only survivor of her family. She suffered from dyslexia which, she wrote, "is fraught with significance in a Jewish child" (especially one as precociously intelligent as her); her condition improved after an operation to correct a squint. Her parents were divorced early in her life, and at the age of 16 she decided to change her name from her father's, Stone, to her stepfather's, Rose. At Ealing Grammar School where her rebellions against the head, Miss Bland, did not prevent her gaining a scholarship to read PPE at St Hilda's College, Oxford she discovered philosophy for herself, by reading Plato's Republic and Pascal's Pensees. Going up to Oxford in 1966 was at once an escape from domestic conflict her mother, Lynn, had by this time

15 February 2016 Page 1 of 3 ProQuest separated from her stepfather and an ordeal. Love's Work describes the agoraphobia which the dreaming spires induced in her. Finding home unbearable, she was obliged to stay at Oxford in freezing digs during vacations, and was desperately lonely. But the greatest disappointment was the work: she again rebelled against her tutor Jean Austin (widow of J.L.Austin, founder of the Oxford school of linguistic analysis), whose greeting to her undergraduates was: "Remember, girls, all the philosophers you will read are much more intelligent than you are." Only in her final year did she recover her enthusiasm for study, under Jean Floud of Nuffield, who introduced her to sociology. Having graduated in 1970, Rose spent what she called her apprenticeship year at Columbia in New York and at the Free University in Berlin; at the New School of Social Research she was introduced to Hegel by Dieter Henrich and to the Frankfurt School by Jurgen Habermas. But it was in the Manhattan apartment of her bisexual lover, Jim Fessenden, that she first discovered Sixties culture. A quarter of a century later, after his death, Rose included in Love's Work an affectionate account of his bohemian milieu. Her frank portrait of their mutual friend Camille Paglia caused the now famous feminist to threaten Rose with a libel writ to little avail. Based at St Antony's College, Oxford, Rose wrote her thesis under the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski. As her subject she chose Theodor W.Adorno of the Frankfurt School, which dominated postwar German social theory; Kolakowski, then writing his debunking history of Marxism, mocked her gently: "I, too, wrote my thesis on a second-rate thinker." Having taught herself German by reading the notoriously dense works of Adorno, she felt a deep affinity with his thought, despite its cultural pessimism. Her thesis became her first book, The Melancholy Science (1978), which remains the best introduction to Adorno. By then Rose was a lecturer in sociology at Sussex, where she was to remain for 15 years, and it looked as though her career was leading away from philosophy. However, she attracted a number of philosophical refugees, disillusioned by logic-chopping, and acquired a well-deserved reputation as an inspiring postgraduate supervisor. Abandoning her worldly asceticism, she learnt to enjoy the good things in life: food, drink, music, art and sex. These Sussex years were highly productive. She enjoyed two happy relationships there, but never married; her children, she said, were her books. In 1981 the first book in what she later called her "trilogy" appeared: Hegel contra Sociology argued that sociology, whether Marxist or non-Marxist, had failed to assimilate the true significance of Hegel. The book was a landmark in Hegel studies, but the TLS criticised her idiom, which made "no concession whatever" to the general reader. Her neo- remained central; in 1984 she used it to devastating effect in Dialectic of : Post-Structuralism and Law, a critique of the tide of post-structuralism then overwhelming the academic scene. Rose was too uncompromising to be adept at academic politics, and she had to wait till 1989 for promotion. Aged 40, she became Professor of Social and Political Thought at Warwick, where she found true professional fulfilment, though the focus of her interests was increasingly theological. The Broken Middle: Out of Our Ancient Society (1992) was the second work in her trilogy, a visionary resolution of the political and metaphysical conflicts of the post-Communist world, with intimations of her eventual leap of faith. In 1993 she published one of her most valuable books, Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays. Buber, Simone Weil, Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Derrida and a host of other Jewish thinkers were scrutinised in her bid to help Judaism and modernity to find a way out of their "crisis of self-comprehension". That year Rose discovered that she had ovarian cancer. In spite of operations including a colostomy and chemotherapy, the disease spread inexorably until it reached her lungs. Love's Work (1995), the final work in her trilogy, was the product of her last two years. Into it she concentrated the essence of her life and thought. It dwells on sickness and mortality, on friendship and betrayal, on the most intimately personal and the most sublimely universal: "This is not love of suffering, but the work, the power of love, which may curse, but abides." Love's Work had a rapturous reception from reviewers, such as Marina Warner and Julia Neuberger, and at a public lecture at the ICA, Rose found herself feted by readers. To the end, she made close new friendships. In

15 February 2016 Page 2 of 3 ProQuest her last months, she worked on a collection of her essays, Mourning and the Law, which will appear next year, and a sequel to Love's Work, of which a publishable manuscript was completed. On the day that she died, fellow academics had gathered for a conference at Warwick on "The Soul and the City"; her name was on everybody's lips. Hours before her death, she was baptised by the Bishop of Coventry, the Right Rev Simon Barrington-Ward. She died reconciled to her family, to God and to her own cruel fate. Publication title: The Times Pages: 1 Number of pages: 0 Publication year: 1995 Publication date: Dec 14, 1995 Year: 1995 Section: Features Publisher: News International Trading Limited. Place of publication: London (UK) Country of publication: United Kingdom Publication subject: General Interest Periodicals--Great Britain ISSN: 01400460 Source type: Newspapers Language of publication: English Document type: NEWSPAPER ProQuest document ID: 318514319 Document URL: http://proxy.library.georgetown.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/318514319?accountid=11091 Copyright: Copyright News International Newspapers Ltd. Dec 14, 1995 Last updated: 2012-01-03 Database: International Newsstand ______Contact ProQuest Copyright  2016 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. - Terms and Conditions

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