Assessing The Work Of Richard H. Popkin From The Vantage Point Of Comparative Philosophy

I met Dick and Julie Popkin in the spring of 1999, when I and other graduate students were enjoying a drink at UCLA' Faculty Club with Peter Reill. Dick Popkin rolled in on his motorized wheelchair. Julie followed behind. Peter invited them to join us. They pulled up to our table. Dick pulled up right next to me. It wasn't clear to me how well Dick could see. I had heard that his vision was very poor. However, it was absolutely clear that his attention was focused on the conversation. As I had very recently read The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, I wanted to talk about skepticism, but didn't quite know how to talk about it with the expert himself. What could I tell him that he didn't already know? I mentioned that some were studying skepticism in Asian philosophy. He responded that there was a conference in Israel recently taking up the subject. What didn't he already know?

Early during my assistantship, I worked with Dick mainly on the skeptical anthology. When we needed a skeptical excerpt from a modern philosopher, Dick usually had a clear idea of which text, and sometimes also which part of the text, he wanted to excerpt from. Since Dick couldn’t see well and was restricted in his movement, I was his eyes and legs. He directed me to the bookshelf or to the part of the house where the sought-after book could be found. I brought it back to the dining table (where we usually sat) and read to him the table of contents or searched in the index. In this manner we located the appropriate passages to excerpt. I then copied out the passages, sometimes manually and sometimes with a text-scanning program which visually impaired persons such as Dick used.