Lawrence L. Haworth
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Larry Haworth died on April 28th, 2024.
Originally from Chicago, Professor Haworth served in the US Army in Japan at the end of the Second World War, arriving in Nagasaki shortly after the city was struck by an atomic bomb. It was in Japan
that he first begun to study Philosophy, supervised by a German professor at Kyoto University. Upon returning to the United States, he received his PhD in Philosophy in 1952 from the University of Illinois, and then taught at the University of Alabama and Purdue University.
Professor Haworth moved to Canada in 1965 to join the brand-new Philosophy Department at the University of Waterloo. During his career at Waterloo he served as Chair of the Philosophy Department and as Associate Dean of both Graduate Studies and Research. He was the founding Director of the Waterloo Centre for Science, Technology, and Values, which was established in 1985 to help the University community both understand and affect the impact of technology on people.
Professor Haworth philosophical interests were primarily in social and political philosophy. He is the author of five books: The Good City (1963), Decadence and Objectivity (1977), Autonomy: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology and Ethics (1986), Value Assumptions in Risk Assessment (1991), and A Textured Life: Empowerment and Adults with Intellectual Disabilities (1996), along with dozens of book chapters and articles. Animating much of his research across his career was an interest in public philosophy that responds to issues of pressing issues of public concern.
Professor Haworth was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1991. He retired from the University of Waterloo in 1995. In 2020, thanks to a generous donation from a former student of Professor Haworth’s, the Philosophy Department established the Lawrence Haworth Prize in Philosophy, awarded to the best essay on a theme related to public philosophy by an undergraduate Philosophy student.