Jim Van Evra: 1938 - 2025

Born in Chicago in 1938, Prof. Van Evra completed his undergraduate degree at Valparaiso University in Indiana before going on to earn his PhD at Michigan State University. In 1965, he joined the very recently established Philosophy Department at the University of Waterloo.

Prof. Van Evra’s primary philosophical interests were in the history of and development of logic and the work of C.S.  Peirce. But his philosophical interests were wide-ranging: one of his most cited works is “On death as a limit,” a moving and essay that combines characteristic logical rigour with keen psychological insights to explore just what death means to us. 

Prof, Van Evra taught at Waterloo for 41 years, retiring in 2006. He was the original source of a long running source of laughs in the philosophy department. Around the time the University got a huge donation for the Institute for Nanotechnology, he proposed a Waterloo Institute for Nanophilosophy. The idea was that the institute would specialize in miniaturized versions of big philosophical questions --- e.g., instead of "do animals have rights?" (hard question!) ask "do animals have lefts?" (quite a bit easier). Eventually WINP T-shirts and mugs became a fundraiser for the Philosophy Department, though it never seemed to match the level of fundraising appeal of Nanotech. He was an early adopter of online education, teaching intermediate logic—a notoriously challenging course!—online and corresponding with students via email years before that became common practice. 

Prof. Van Evra worked on challenging and rigorous questions at a time when the discipline of philosophy was particularly inclined to be hard-nosed and combative, but this was not his approach. He was an excellent and supportive colleague and mentor to junior faculty members. Above all, former students and colleagues remember him as kind, generous, and encouraging; he brought out the best in his students and made them feel welcome and valued in a sometimes unwelcoming discipline.

Shared comments from Dave DeVidi:

• Jim was widely known for being one of the nicest people you could ever meet. He also thought of himself as teaching some of the hard-nosed parts of philosophy. One of his often-told stories about himself was that he thought he might be perceived as a tough instructor when he taught the upper year logic courses. Until one year when a comment from one of the students was "I wish he was my grandpa.”
• Jim was the most irenic and non-confrontational of colleagues. But it was hard not to notice over the years that decisions in the department almost always went the way Jim thought they should.

Shared comments from Shannon Dea (former UW undergraduate student, former UW Philosophy professor, current Provost at St Mary’s University)

Jim was kind, funny and smart. As a student, I both took courses with him and took courses that he sat in on. He loved to join colleagues’ senior seminars, and it was great to have him in the room. I remember in particular a seminar on thought experiments taught by Rolf George in 1992 or 1993, and Jim’s presence there, including the email exchanges germane to the topic that he printed off and shared with us. (Most of us didn’t yet have email ourselves.) When I decided to come back to university after having dropped out for almost a decade, Jim and Bill Abbott were the profs who helped me finish – Jim by supervising my honors thesis on Peirce. He did so entirely by email years before that was common because by then I lived across the province. I didn’t realize at the time but later learned about Jim’s own important work on Peirce’s philosophy of math and logic. I drew on this work in my PhD. He gave me an A+ for the thesis, which really encouraged me that I did indeed belong in grad school. It was a couple of years before I learned his nickname: “A+ Van Evra.” Apparently, he was pretty encouraging to a lot of students! His generous grading should not be mistaken for careless thinking. He was an excellent philosopher and a teacher who brought out the best in his students – even in intermediate logic! I gave a talk at the Waterloo PGSA conference when I was doing my PhD and Jim made a point of attending and sharing some advice and support after my talk. When I joined the faculty at Waterloo, he and Judy, his wife, had us over to their house for a visit. He was retired by then. Their hospitality and kindness remains a special memory of my first year back at Waterloo. He was a truly decent human being in a discipline that wasn’t always decent at the time. How fortunate we were to have him.