Nationality United States Role Author Region Western philosophy Influenced Alan Soble | School Humanist Name Irving Singer | |
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Born December 24, 1925 ( 1925-12-24 ) Brooklyn, New York, USA Notable work (see published works below) Website www.mit.edu/~philos/singer.html Era Contemporary philosophy Died February 1, 2015, Boston, Massachusetts, United States Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada Influenced by George Santayana, Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman Books Philosophy of Love: A Partial Su, Reality transformed, The Pursuit of Love, Ingmar Bergman - Cinemati, Three philosophical filmmakers | ||
Education Harvard University (1952) | ||
Irving Singer (December 24, 1925 – February 1, 2015) was an American professor of philosophy who was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 55 years and wrote over 20 books. He was the author of books on various topics, including cinema, love, sexuality, and the philosophy of George Santayana. He also wrote on the subject of film, including writings about the work of film directors Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, and Orson Welles. Singer began publishing philosophy in 1951.
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Biography
Singer was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on December 24, 1925; his parents were Isadore and Nettie Stromer Singer, Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary, who owned a grocery store in Coney Island.
Singer skipped three grades in school, graduating from Manhattan's Townsend Harris High School at age 15.
He entered the U.S. Army, serving in World War II, writing History of the 210th Field Artillery Group, which was published by the Army in 1945.
After studying for a short time at Brooklyn College before the war and attending Biarritz American University in Paris just after the war, Singer went to Harvard University on the G.I. Bill, joined Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in 1948. He did his graduate studies at Oxford University and Harvard, receiving his PhD in philosophy from Harvard in 1952.
Singer taught briefly at Harvard, Cornell University, the University of Michigan, and Johns Hopkins University. He joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958, first as a lecturer, but then promoted to associate professor in 1959, and full professor at 1967. He died in 2015.