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An Elegiac Essay to Paul Kurtz – A Skeptic’s Skeptic
from Part V - Transcendent Thinkers: Reflections on Controversial Intellectuals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2020
This essay was commissioned by the Center for Inquiry and Prometheus Books to remember and celebrate the life and work of Paul Kurtz, one of the central figures in the birth of the modern skeptical and humanist movements, in conjunction with his passing on October 20, 2012. It was published as a Foreword for a new addition of Paul’s magnum opus, The Transcendental Temptation (Prometheus Books, 2013), which I read initially when it was originally published in 1987, and then re-read in the 1990s for inspiration during our inchoate efforts to contribute to the skeptical movement through the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine. Paul was a university professor (SUNY Buffalo), but he was also an entrepreneur of ideas and – unbeknownst to him – served as a mentor and role model to me. I was honored to be asked to pen this elegiac essay.
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