In Loving Memory - Graciela de Pierris 1950-2024
The Stanford Philosophy Department mourns the passing of our colleague Graciela de Pierris, who died at Stanford Hospital on August 20, 2024. She was 74. De Pierris was the Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy at Stanford, where she taught starting in 2002 after previous professorships at Indiana University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from our sister department at U.C. Berkeley in 1983 with a dissertation on A Priori Knowledge under the direction of Prof. Barry Stroud, following earlier degrees in philosophy in her native Argentina.
De Pierris was a historian of modern philosophy with strong interests in epistemology. She was best known for her Hume scholarship, culminating in the book Ideas, Evidence, and Method: Hume’s Skepticism and Naturalism Concerning Knowledge and Causation (Oxford, 2015). The book argues that Hume’s naturalist commitment to ordinary and scientific knowledge can be reconciled with his radical skepticism, based on an innovative and controversial appeal to two different “standpoints” we take up toward our knowledge. Among its important contributions is the differentiation and careful analysis of two different models for understanding the early modern theory of ideas (a perceptual model focused on our phenomenological apprehension of ideas and a logico-conceptual model focused on their rule-based logical relations). The book also pays closer than usual attention to Hume’s account of logical and mathematical knowledge, yielding surprising insights in that area.
De Pierris’s scholarship carefully located Hume within the landscape of early modern natural philosophy. Down that path, she made important contributions to our understanding of Locke, Newton, Kant, and Descartes, as well. She never lost her keen interest in contemporary epistemology, and regularly engaged with work on skepticism and a priori knowledge. At the time of her death, she was engaged in a large scale project about Kant, Hume, and the Metaphysical Tradition.
Graciela’s colleagues will especially miss her deep love of philosophy and her devotion to the life of the mind. She was always attuned to the philosophical side of a conversation, and remained ever ready to push an exchange to a deeper level, whether with students, colleagues, or friends. She cared deeply for her students, and she was also a great lover (and generous supporter) of opera and of the arts.
She is survived by her husband and our Stanford colleague, Michael Friedman, and by her brother, her sister, and their families. The family plans a memorial service in remembrance of her life at a later date.