Louis Karel Dupré (16 April 1925 – 11 January 2022) was a Belgian

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

phenomenologist and

religious philosopher Religious philosophy is philosophical thinking that is influenced and directed as a consequence to teachings from a particular religion. It can be done objectively, but may also be done as a persuasion tool by believers in that faith. Religious ...

. He was the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor in

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

's religious studies department from 1973 to 1998, after which he became Professor Emeritus. His work generally attempts to tie the modern age more closely to medieval and classical thought, finding precursors to Enlightenment and

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

events that were naively viewed as revolutions. Dupré was a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

Biography

Louis Dupré was born at the village of Veerle, a province of Antwerp, in Belgium, on 16 April 1925. He graduated at the

Catholic University of Louvain The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

as a doctor in philosophy in 1952 with a dissertation on

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1958 and became a professor at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

. Known as a Marx specialist then with three studies on Marx, he became a professor in religious philosophy at Yale University in 1973. Afterwards he became also known as a Kierkegaard specialist. Marx's and Kierkegaard's criticisms of modernity and the cultural fragmentation inherent in it became the kernel of his later works. The phenomenon of religion in a secularised world is the main subject in "The Other Dimension", "Transcendent Selfhood" and "A Dubious Heritage", but also in his works on Christian mysticism. Eventually, the religious philosopher poses the large cultural question about the relation between (Christian) religion and the birth of modern western culture: "Passage to Modernity" (14th–16th century), "The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture" and "The Quest of the Absolute. Birth and Decline of European Romanticism". In 2010, Dupré left the United States and lived in Kortrijk, Belgium thereafter. Dupré died in

Kortrijk Kortrijk ( , ; vls, Kortryk or ''Kortrik''; french: Courtrai ; la, Cortoriacum), sometimes known in English as Courtrai or Courtray ( ), is a Belgian City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Regio ...

, Belgium, on 11 January 2022, at the age of 96.

References

1925 births 2022 deaths 20th-century Belgian philosophers Phenomenologists Catholic philosophers Flemish philosophers Belgian expatriates in the United States People from Laakdal {{Belgium-philosopher-stub Kevin B. Anderson, “Louis Dupré, Dialectical Humanist,” Philosophy and Global Affairs, Vol. 2:1, pp. 41-46 https://www.pdcnet.org/pga/content/pga_2022_0999_8_30_26