ELIAS BAUMGARTEN JULY 15,1945- MAY 5, 2024

Elias Baumgarten died on May 5, 2024 after an extended battle with complications arising from esophageal cancer. He was 78 years old and is survived by his sister Rochelle/Medhashri Gatlin, his God-daughters Benna and Mira Kessler, his close friends, and the many students he influenced during the course of his life.

Elias was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 15, 1945. He and his family moved to California in 1952. He graduated from North High School in Torrance, California in 1963 where he was a champion debater. He received his B.A. degree in Philosophy from Brandeis University in 1967, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Northwestern University in 1972.

Elias joined the faculty of UM-Dearborn in 1972 where he taught until he retired in 2018. His courses included Introduction to Philosophy, Ethical Theory, Bioethics, and Ethics of War, Peace, and Nationalism, and Ethics of Social Policy. He won the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1977. His most important publications include “Zionism, Nationalism, and Morality” (2000) and “Curiosity as a Moral Virtue” (2001). He served for many years on the Pediatrics Ethics Committee and Adult Ethics Committee at the University of Michigan Medical Center and on the Executive Committee of the Medical Ethics Resource Network.

Elias’s greatest love was teaching and learning. He greatly valued his relationships with students, some of whom remained friends or at least correspondents long after they graduated from UM-Dearborn. He especially valued coming to know some of his Arab and Muslim students who changed his life and his perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a Jew and a human being, Elias hoped above all to see a peaceful and just solution to this conflict and to this end sought to foster dialogue between advocates for both sides. His role model here was the great Jewish sage Rabbi Natan who defined a hero as “someone who turns an enemy into a friend.”

Elias’s other great loves were conversation, enjoying natural beauty, art and architecture and world travel. Over time, he traveled widely in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, the Far East and Africa. His innate curiosity, his sense of adventure, and his open mindedness enabled him to see farther and deeper into foreign horizons than most people whoventure beyond our shores.

Finally, Elias was a kind, empathic, caring individual who took life seriously, but viewed it always with a keen sense of humor and irony. In living his ideals, he touched the lives of countless people in various settings for the good. May his memory be for a blessing to all those who were fortunate enough to know him.

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