There Will Be Time
Quentin Smith (1952–2020)
The title, from T. S. Eliot, is simultaneously fitting and ill-fitting. Quentin Smith, the American philosopher, is gone. His work, notably in the philosophy of time, will go on.
I failed to meet Quentin Smith on the first Monday I spent as a graduate student in philosophy at Western Michigan University. He was teaching a seminar on metaphysics I was enrolled in. He didn’t show up on the first day of class.
I had been accepted into the program for the fall of 2003, but I was spending a lot more time organizing anti-war protests than studying during what should have been my last semester as an undergrad. So when I failed a general education requirement that any sentient being should have been able to pass, I was forced to retake the class in the fall. WMU kindly let me start my MA (and my assistantship) in January instead.
By the time I walked into that seminar room, I had been looking forward to meeting Quentin for a year and a half. In the fall of 2002, when I was working on my application to WMU, I got curious about the professors there and checked out a copy of Time, Change and Freedom from my college’s library.
Co-authored by Smith and Nathan Oaklander — who can be described, to use a word I can’t imagine coming out of Quentin’s mouth, as his philosophical…
