In Memoriam: George Dickie
It is with great sadness that we announce that Professor Dickie has passed away. George T. Dickie served in the Marine Corps from 1944 to 1946. He then received his BA from Florida State University in 1949 and his PhD from UCLA in 1959. He began teaching in 1956 at Washington State University, then briefly at the University of Houston, finally coming to UIC in 1965 where he taught for 30 years. After a distinguished career, he became Emeritus in 1995 and retired to Florida. He died peacefully on March 24, 2020 and is survived by his wife. Suzanne Cunningham, and his son Garrick Dickie.
Professor Dickie was an important and influential figure in aesthetics and philosophy of art. His critique of the so-called aesthetic attitude and his institutional theory of art were landmarks in 20 th century analytic philosophy of art, and his book The Century of Taste (Oxford University Press,1996) remains among the most prominent works on 18th century aesthetics. Other of Professor Dickie’s books include Aesthetics: An Introduction (Pegasus, 1971), Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (Cornell University Press, 1974), The Art Circle (Haven Publications, 1984), Evaluating Art (Temple University Press, 1988), Art and Value (Blackwell, 2001), and Aesthetic Journey: Selected Essays (Chicago Spectrum Press, 2007). He co-edited Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology (St. Martin's Press, 1977, second edition 1989), and Introduction to Aesthetics (Oxford, 1997). Professor Dickie has received numerous prestigious fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities (twice), the Guggenheim Foundation, the A.C.L.S. (twice), and the Advanced Studies for the Humanities at Edinburgh. He was a member of the Humanities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago during 1993-1994.
Professor Dickie’s students include: Peg Brand Weiser (University of Arizona), David Brubaker (University of New Haven), Noël Carroll (CUNY), Daniel Nathan (Texas Tech), and Rober Yanal (Wayne State University).