It is with sadness that we note the passing of Brian Barry the philosopher and political scientist. Brian was the author of seven books including Political Argument (1965), Sociologists, Economists and Democracy (1970), Democracy, Power and Justice (1989), Justice as Impartiality (1995) and Culture and Equality (2000), as well as numerous articles. A former student of H. L. A. Hart, Brian inherited a sympathy for the radical egalitarianism of Bentham and Mill although he remained a forthright critic of utilitarianism in moral and political philosophy. Although Brian suffered ill-health towards the end of his life, he remained intellectually active and his last work, an essay on David Hume as a Hobbesian, will be published in a later issue of Utilitas. For Brian, utilitarianism was only one facet of a broader British strand of political philosophy and political science which had its roots in the ideas of Hobbes and Hume, and which included the work of recent philosophers such as H. L. A. Hart as well as his own work.
Brian served on the editorial board of the Utilitas from its beginnings in 1989. He was an accomplished journal editor in his own right and he was supportive of all of the journal's editors. Brian also served on the Bentham Committee, which oversees publication of the new Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. His support for the Bentham edition and the Bentham project is greatly valued by all who worked with him. His friends and colleagues in the community of scholars that is served by Utilitas will miss him greatly. A more complete tribute to his work will be published in a later issue.
