NP R.I.P. Norman O. Brown

[Doug Millison]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/10/07/BA143731.DTL


Norman O. Brown, a philosopher whose writings were
embraced by the counterculture movement during and
after the Vietnam War, died Wednesday in Santa Cruz.
He was 89 and had suffered from Alzheimer's disease. 

Mr. Brown had been a professor of humanities at the
University of California at Santa Cruz until his
retirement in 1981. 

"He was a liberating, visionary scholar, the successor
in the 20th century to Blake and Nietzsche," said
Jerome Neu, professor of philosophy at Santa Cruz. "He
was a model of what a teacher, a colleague and an
engaged intellectual should be." 

After Mr. Brown published "Life Against Death" in
1959, writer Lionel Trilling called it "the best
interpretation of Freud that I know." 

"Until I wrote 'Life Against Death,' I was a perfect
sleeper," Brown said in 1970. "But when I learned to
interpret my dreams, the power of sleep was taken from
me. Freud said he came to disturb the sleep of the
world. In my case, he succeeded." 

The book, which offered a psychoanalysis of history
and emphasized rebellion and creative freedoms,
attracted a huge intellectual following among
activists and university students. In 1966, Time
magazine said the book was "one of the underground
books that undergraduates feel they must read to be
with it." But Mr. Brown preferred the labels of
scholar and teacher to that of radical or
revolutionary. 

Hordes of students flocked to his weekly lectures,
which were often poetic and imaginative. But the quiet
professor shied away from his celebrity, taking pains
to point out that his next book, "Love's Body" in
1966, was written as "some kind of obligation to undo
what I did in 'Life Against Death.' I wanted to
release any followers I had acquired -- I don't want
to be a leader." 

Born in Mexico, Mr. Brown was educated in Europe and
trained in classical literature at Oxford University.
He received his Ph.D in classics at the University of
Wisconsin and began teaching at Nebraska Wesleyan
University. 

During World War II, he took a leave from academics to
work as a research analyst for the Office of Strategic
Services. 

He returned to the classroom after the war, serving as
chair of the Classics Department at Wesleyan
University in Connecticut. He then moved to the
University of Rochester and joined the faculty at UC
Santa Cruz when it opened in 1968. He is the only
member of the university's faculty to be given the
title Professor of Humanities. 

Mr. Brown is survived by his wife of 64 years,
Elizabeth P. Brown, his sons, 

Stephen and Thomas, daughters Rebecca and Susan and
five grandchildren. 

A memorial service will be held Oct. 19 at 3 p.m. at a
place to be announced later by UC Santa Cruz. 

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