Paul F. Schmidt, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico and department chair from 1965 until 1976, died in Albuquerque on February 1. He was 82. The cause of death was pneumonia.
Schmidt came to UNM from Oberlin College, where he had taught for 14 years, to initiate the doctoral program in philosophy. He served on the faculty policy and the University Press committees and chaired the honorary degree committee for three years. In 1966 he established the Department of Philosophy Library and later worked with the architect to design its present quarters in the Humanities Building.
Beginning in 1976 until his retirement in 1989, to be able to travel, study and write, Schmidt taught every other year. In years he was not teaching his position was used to appoint a distinguished visiting professor of philosophy.
For several years he team-taught the English-Philosophy senior seminar, continuing his interest in the interactions of literature and philosophy that began at the University of Rochester, where he received his bachelor’s in 1947. The English-Philosophy seminar and another devoted to Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and Margaret Fuller were among his favorite classes.
While on sabbatical in Kyoto, Japan, in 1972 Schmidt studied Zen Buddhism with Professor Sohaku Ogata, Abbot of Chotoku-in, Shokoku-ji, and on his return began over a decade of teaching Ch’an/Zen Buddhism. He and Maria Chabot, a faithful auditor of his classes, were instrumental in founding the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs.
Schmidt’s journals, began in 1943 after reading Thoreau and Alcott and continuing until December, 2007, were donated to UNM’s Center for Southwest Research. The Philosophy Department Library will receive his books. His published works include Religious Knowledge (1961), Perception and Cosmology in Whitehead’s Philosophy (1967), Rebelling, Loving, and Liberation: A Metaphysics of the Concrete (1971), Temple Reflections (1980), Buddhist Meditation on China (1984), and numerous articles and reviews in philosophical journals as well as “Truth in Physics" in the American Journal of Physics (1960).
As one of his colleagues wrote, “To Paul, philosophy was not a ‘profession’…but a way of life—a true profession of faith in the power of reflection and reason.” Donations in his memory may be made to the UNM Foundation, Inc. for the Paul F. Schmidt Fund in Philosophy or for the Carl Frederick Schmidt and Karl Frederick Schmidt Fund in Philosophy. The latter fund is in memory of his father (1894-1988) and his son (1955-1969). Its purpose is to support an annual lecture in Asian philosophy.
Donations for the Paul F. Schmidt Endowment may be sent to:
UNM Foundation
Two Woodward Center
700 Lomas Blvd. NE, Suite 108
Albuquerque, NM 87131
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu