OBITUARY: Harry Lesser

[Clark, Stephen]

________________________________
From: Hill, Daniel
Sent: 07 May 2015 14:06
Harry Lesser (1943–2015)

Harry Lesser, retired Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Manchester, died in hospital on 2nd May 2015, following a stroke.

After education at Charterhouse and Oxford, Harry taught in Chicago and Aberdeen before settling in 1970 at the University of Manchester for some forty years. Harry’s interests in philosophy were broad, but concentrated in the history of philosophy, and political and moral philosophy, especially Jewish ethics. He edited five books, and wrote a large number of articles, book chapters, and encyclopaedia entries. (These last formed a good showcase for his vast general knowledge and range of interests.) His impact was most felt as a teacher, where he successfully supervised over fifty graduate theses, not to mention forty years of undergraduates. To say Harry was a good teacher would not begin to do justice to the esteem, affection, and love felt for him by many generations of students. His generosity of spirit and seemingly limitless patience meant that if a student had a problem, Harry was the person to whom he or she went, and if he or she kept in touch with just one former teacher a
t Manchester, it would be Harry. To quote a former colleague, he was ‘the most beloved and inspirational teacher in the place, the very soul of the department in most students’ memories’. Harry organized the Department’s annual ‘philosophical weekend’ in the Lake District; a highlight here was his evening reading of either a ghost story (he loved M R James) or some Jewish humour (his favourite being Leonard Q. Ross’s stories of Hyman Kaplan).

Harry also engaged in public ‘mediaeval-style’ debates, in which he was noted for his uncanny ability to make any thesis, no matter how outrageous, sound utterly common-sensical. This was just the fun of debating for him; in fact he held strong moral and political views, though he was always tactful in voicing them.

He enjoyed a long and happy marriage to Margaret. Just a few months before his untimely death they had celebrated the wedding of their only child, Marcus.

Where Harry was around laughter was never far away; his endless repertoire of anecdotes and jokes would enliven any social gathering. The memory of both his dry sense of humour and his unfailing kindness, often at personal cost, will remain a long time with all those that knew him.

Daniel J. Hill




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