Andries Gouws (1952-2025)
David Spurrett
David Spurrett
Andries Gouws (1952-2025)
Andries Gouws was Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Natal, and then at UKZN (Howard College), between 1990 and 2012. He passed away at home with members of his family in Stellenbosch on 29 May. Andries is described on the LitNet website as a "kaalkop Boeddhisties-Calvinistiese filosoof-skilder" (a bald Buddhist-Calvinist philosopher-painter). These are surely his own words, and characteristically combine self-deprecating humour with deep insight.
Andries studied art in South Africa (at Michaelis in Cape Town), Germany (at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf) and the Netherlands (at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam) as well as in Rome and Venice, and pursued graduate study in Philosophy at Utrecht (both Masters and Doctorate). Much of his published philosophical work, like his doctoral study, concerned Freud, and he also published both theory and criticism on art and literature. His contribution to teaching while at UKZN was enormously varied, including courses related to aesthetics, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, literary theory, self-control, and topics in the philosophy of cognitive science. Although he had definite specialisations, Andries had no time for philosophical camps or factions, both refusing and transcending clumsy divisions such as that between ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy in his own thought and teaching. He was reliably valuable contributor to philosophical seminars and discussion irrespective of their topic, and had a beneficial impact on much of the work done in the department, whether by students or colleagues.
Andries’ ‘Calvinism’ consisted primarily of an unsparing work ethic. He took considerable pains in developing his courses and their supporting materials, and was also immensely generous in giving students feedback on their efforts, and in his willingness to devote time to anyone who was trying to learn. His intellectual breadth and generous industry made him an extraordinarily valuable graduate supervisor, who read his student’s working chapters closely, and provided painstakingly detailed, carefully considered, sympathetic feedback and many constructive suggestions. He supervised one or more graduate degrees of four of the current members of staff in philosophy, in widely varying topics, and to the lasting benefit of each young philosopher. The discipline at UKZN benefitted inestimably from his mentorship.
Besides being an excellent, subtle and erudite philosopher, Andries was an immensely constructive and valuable colleague. He was never egotistical, always constructive and creatively pragmatic about identifying common ground, and defusing mutual incomprehension. He combined a psychoanalyst’s capacity for detachment, a Buddhist’s principled compassion, and his own immense decency in ways that made all of our working lives better, and was in the words of one colleague ‘the glue that kept us together’.
He also had a dazzling and unmalicious sense of humour, its fruits often delivered entirely deadpan. One former colleague recalls that when some Durban philosophers drove up to the PMB campus to hear a lecture by Jacque Derrida, Andries turned to the colleague (a specialist in ‘analytic’ philosophy) and said “you’re lucky I’m here. Just watch me, and you’ll know when you should be laughing”. He delighted in puns and wordplay that spanned multiple languages, and his 1988 paper ‘Bluff your way in postmodernism’ about the career of the fictional Bok Visagie is still the funniest thing ever written by a South African philosopher.
While contributing so much to UKZN as philosopher, Andries continued to paint, and exhibited his works nationally and abroad. His works were mostly still lives, arresting and contemplative observations of mundane objects and locations, including parts of the change rooms at the Howard College campus swimming pool. He once described his paintings as a “modest salute to painters like Vermeer, Piero, Morandi, Arikha, and how they capture light, space and stillness”. When he retired from the university it was to devote himself more fully to painting, and to family life, including the delight of becoming a grandfather.
Former colleagues, students, and philosophers from other institutions have written to express their sadness and appreciation, all saying that they admired Andries, and that they liked him. The Chair of philosophy at the University of Natal from 1996 to 2002, Professor Daniel Herwitz (now Professor of Comparative Literature, History of Art, Philosophy and Art & Design at Michigan) writes:
“When I arrived at University of Natal, Durban in 1992, Andries became a kind of shepherd for me, even while himself ill. He wrangled lecture invitations from UCT, Stellenbosch and Rhodes Universities for me, giving me the pleasure of meeting people who would become friends and colleagues, and also through them getting a crash course in South African intellectual life. When my family and I returned in 1996 we became close friends, along with Ingrid (his talented spouse) and their children. Andries was perhaps the only Afrikaner I met who had no nostalgia for his ethnicity, directing his laser-like gaze on their faults as well as virtues. This eagle-eyed sense of truth was truly that of a philosopher, and his work, largely on Freud, was as meticulous as it was unvarnished. He was alternately serious and funny, with a wry melancholy that refused charm but rather offered blank clarity and also the kind of alienation that so well suits philosophers. Gradually his work changed from philosophy to what was I think his first love, painting. And he brought these qualities to a talented ability with drawing, color and the physicality of forms to produce work that in its miniature was about the core of what painting is: a way of capturing the embodied presence of the world as it appears to the eye. Call this his shift from Freud to Cezanne.”
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David Spurrett (Philosophy, UKZN)
School website: https://srpc.ukzn.ac.za/staff-profile/philosophy/david-spurrett/
Academic profiles:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Spurrett
https://philpeople.org/profiles/david-spurrett
https://scholar.google.co.za/citations?hl=en&user=iAiNkHgAAAAJ
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