"I will never forget Michael and Graciela.  They lived with admirable focus and dedication, and the only thing to which they were more dedicated than philosophy was each other.

Of course, some of my memories of them are more vivid than others.  To start with Graciela, philosophical conversations with her were always intense, but one of my most vivid memories sticks with me mostly because it made her into a kind of symbol in my personal life for the fact of getting old.  This was back when I was a lot younger than I am now.  We had a particularly intense conversation one day—probably it was about her striking distinction between presentational and logico-conceptual versions of the early modern theory of ideas, but I can’t remember for sure.  All I remember for sure was that it was upsetting, because if she was right it would completely overturn what I “already knew” about the history of modern philosophy.  This is so fixed in my memory because the next day I had my annual physical at the doctor’s, and I was still thinking about the issues she had raised while the tech did their thing and took all my measurements.  When the doctor came in, she said “Whoa!  What’s up with your blood pressure?”  That day marked the beginning of my having to be careful and manage my health—that is, it marked my entry into being “of a certain age.” 

Naturally, it was hardly Graciela’s fault that I got old, nor even that I have to manage my blood pressure.  But she thereby took on a certain symbolic place in my mental landscape—a reminder that the intensity of our activities has consequences.  Talking philosophy with Graciela had that kind of intensity.  After one or another round with her, I would often think the conversation was about to turn to daily mundanities—like maybe what’s for dinner, or something.  But she would typically put a quick end to that.  She was a master of such redirection: “Yes, yes, but really, what about this question in Descartes?”  Or, “Have you considered this point about skepticism?”  I had never considered the points about skepticism deeply enough for her to be satisfied…

Being a philosophical interlocutor of Michael’s was equally intense.  I first encountered him in writing, like many of us.  In my case, it was the famous, groundbreaking paper on “Kant’s Theory of Geometry” (Phil Rev 1985).  But a little while after that, I got to meet him in person, when he came to give a spellbinding set of lectures at Penn, where I was a grad student, on the Cassirer/Heidegger/Carnap material that eventually became A Parting of the Ways (2000).  That work was terrifically important to me as a young scholar trying hard not to fall between the stools of analytic and “continental” philosophy.  But it was just as important on that visit that I got to have a 1:1 meeting with Michael himself and got a first experience of having him put pressure on my nascent philosophical ideas.  That experience was both exhilarating and intimidating, as many of you will know.

Some time later, Tom Ricketts, put Michael’s book Kant and the Exact Sciences in my hands, and told me that I really needed to have a close look at it, because it would turn out to be important to my way of thinking.  It was one of the many great teacherly acts Tom has performed for me.  I did not understand Kant and the Exact Sciences at the time—and I made the mistake, at the time, of thinking that it was just for specialists in Kant’s philosophy of science and mathematics, which I was not, especially.  But when I got to Stanford, I turned back to it, and Sol Feferman invited me to give a talk in the Stanford Logic Lunch about Friedman’s Kant reading and diagrammatic reasoning.  Walking out, one of our hard core proof theorists remarked that I should come and present in the Logic Lunch more often, and that encouragement got me started thinking more about how Michael’s approach might reshape my own reading of Kant, generally.

By the time Michael arrived at Stanford himself, after another exhilarating set of bravura lectures to the Stanford department—the Kant lectures that became Dynamics of Reason—I had made some progress down that line, and had a nascent paper on Kant’s philosophy of arithmetic.  I was very keen to show it to Michael.  I have never gotten tougher pushback about a paper in my life.  I was pretty sure my career in philosophy was over, actually.  That began a very long series of exchanges with Michael about the idea behind that paper.  By the time I came up for tenure, Michael pulled me aside at a party and told me (about the version included in my tenure file) that he finally saw something of the point (or saw that there was some kind of point to it, or something like that).  He was still not really satisfied with my argument yet, of course!  I did eventually produce a version he found just about acceptable some years later, in the version of the idea for my book.  The back and forth took about 12 years.

That kind of intensity of exchange never stopped happening, but I finally did produce one piece that really satisfied Michael on first exposure.  I gave it as a talk at the Kant Kongress in Oslo in 2019, and Michael was in the first row.  The talk was a striking experience.  It was a plenary keynote, so around 2-300 people were in the audience, and when I finished and stepped back from the podium, about half of them had their hands raised, ready with objections.  They all hated it, but Michael loved it.  Just goes to show, Michael’s interest was enlivened exactly where the thread of argument and idea opens up an avenue sufficiently orthogonal to the conventional wisdom that everyone else is going the other direction. 

Michael and Graciela loved philosophy, and they pursued it with an intensity that was inspiring, even when it could also take you aback or be intimidating.  They charted pathways that reshaped our understanding of major figures in European philosophy, and made us see them in completely different ways.  Hume was really motivated by issues in philosophy of mathematics—who knew?  Kant’s philosophy of the exact sciences was not some specialized sub-area but actually the heart of the critical philosophy itself, overturning everything I learned in grad school.  Who knew?  They taught all of us, but they also pushed and taught each other.  Their bond was so strong, so tight, that it could sometimes be very hard for others to connect.  That gave their relationship an intense privacy, alongside its intensity.  But the only commitment that approached their love and dedication to each other was their love for philosophy, and through the generosity of their engagement with philosophy—the discipline we love—they gave us new vistas on our intellectual world.

I want to thank each friend of Graciela and of Michael who shared their thoughts with us at the memorial for them we held at Stanford in June 2025.  The chance to come together as admirers of these two remarkable people was the only salve we had for the pain of their loss.  I hope they appreciated the ice cream we served in Michael’s honor.  Michael would surely want all of us to evaluate his conjecture that the very possibility of such a treat shows there must be a God."

 

Words in memory of Michael Friedman and Graciela de Pierris

(Adapted from remarks at the Stanford Memorial event on June 10, 2025)

R. Lanier Anderson

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"I first met Michael when I gave my job talk at IU in 1995. Or rather, he met me, because in those pre-internet days, I knew he was in the audience but did not know what he looked like.

Presumably he liked my talk, on Caroline of Ansbach and the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, since I was offered the job in our department.

He later told me that Ed Grant had alerted him to my book, Equivalence and Priority. Newton versus Leibniz. The first section, titled "The Cassirer Thesis", caught his eye: in it I followed Cassirer in arguing for a link between Kepler and Leibniz.

As chair, Michael gained the respect and trust of everyone, both historians and philosophers, for his genuine commitment to integrating history and philosophy.

A few years after Michael left Bloomington for Stanford it was my turn to serve as chair, and Michael was my model.

Michael was a keen cyclist. He often talked with fellow cyclists, graduate students and colleagues, about technical biking matters that then made little sense to me. 

In those days I started swimming but then had to stop with the pandemic.

It was at that time, with the pools closed, that I took up biking.

When I ride around Bloomington I often think of Michael: I am sure I am following routes that would have been very familiar to him, and I wish we could ride together."

-Domenico Bertoloni-Meli (Indiana University)

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"Michael Friedman was a philosopher's philosopher, a dear colleague, and a friend for nearly forty years. His first book Foundations of Space-Time Theories (1983), discussing philosophical issues in spacetime theories (relationism, conventionalism) within the frame of modern differential geometry, already indicated a unique character of mind, one combining philosophical acuity, historical sensitivity, and technical expertise. His passing has left an enormous gap in the Stanford Department of Philosophy; indeed, in the profession of philosophy worldwide."

-Thomas Ryckman (Stanford University)

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"The community of the Vienna Circle Institute and the Vienna Circle
Society was shocked about the message of Michael Friedman's death. From
the beginning of our activities in 1991 Michael participated in several
conferences with subsequent publications in our book series. One
highlight was his role as an instructor for our 4th summer university on
'the quest for objectivity' in 2004, together with John Beatty and Helen
Longino.

I personally was very much impressed by Michael's scholarly expertise
and creativity bridging the gap between continental (Kant, Cassirer))
and analytic philosophy of science (Logical Empiricism) as documented in
his book 'A Parting of the ways' (2000), which was translated into
German by a working group of analytic philosophy at the Department of
Philosophy directed by my colleague Elisabeth Nemeth in 2004. He was
paving the way to the integration of history and philosophy of science
(HPS) and enriching the history of philosophy of science (HOPOS). In
addition, I very much appreciated Michael's inviting as well as
professional way of lecturing and discussing. I remember his pioneering
lectures on Carnap's 'Aufbau' (published in German 1997), his
participation in HOPOS 2000 in Vienna, also as a speaker of the
distinguished 8th Vienna Circle Lecture on 'The Idea of Scientific
Philosophy', which was published as 'Kant, Kuhn, and the Rationality of
Science' (2002). Ten years later Michael contributed to the Carnap
conference with his talk on scientific philosophy from Helmholtz, Carnap
to Quine. Occasionally, he was accompanied by his lovely wife and
excellent philosopher Graciela De Pierris (1950-2024), who lectured in
Vienna on Quine in 2001, too.

When I met Michael in person several times, I always enjoyed his
presence as a scholar and discussant with a sense of humor. I felt very
much honored to have received his monographs with a dedication.
Regrettably, my last meeting him was only a virtual one on the occasion
of the big Kant Congress 2015 in Vienna, where he presented his recorded
keynote lecture in his unique exact and informative style, but without a
discussion option. I am sure he would have liked our first exhibition on
the Vienna Circle in the main building of the University of Vienna in
the same year as a sort of rehabilitation and appreciation of this
famous Viennese philosophical movement by the University of Vienna.

In the context of our forthcoming conference on the Vienna Circle and
Logical Empiricism in 2026 we scheduled the first 'Michael Friedman
Memorial Lecture', to be delivered by his renowned disciple Alan
Richardson.
I myself, and our philosophical community in Vienna will miss Michael as
an outstanding philosopher and sophisticated man."

-Friedrich Stadler (University of Vienna)

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"Like others of my generation of Vienna Circle scholars I regarded Michael Friedman as a guiding light. Fortunately I had found my calling with Neurath before I first met him as a postdoc in Chicago, so the compatibility of Neurath’s naturalism with Carnap’s post-Neokantian inheritance provided a topic of mutual interest. Again like others of my cohort I found it hard to secure steady academic employment, but Michael always gave encouragement. On the fringes of one APA meeting in New York he took me to lunch. After a long discussion in which I failed to convince him of my Neurathian reading of a particularly delicate set of Carnap passages he noted my disappointment. “Don’t worry,” he said, “this is good work, keep at it!”: a leader in his field proving to me the legitimacy of plural viewpoints in history. I can only hope to have been similarly constructive with my students. Michael was a philosopher of very great brilliance and a true Mensch. He will be missed for a long time."

-Thomas Uebel (Manchester University)

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"As a closeted graduate student in the 1990s, I knew Michael Friedman as the author of an intimidating book with an intimidating title, Foundations of Space-Time Theories:  Relativistic Physics and Philosophy of Science.  Originally, I mistakenly believed that the book’s appendix—also intimidating—was the key to unlocking its many diagrams and heavy use of differential geometry, and indeed slogging through the appendix does enable one, eventually, to follow the mathematics.  Little did I understand, however, that the true key to entire book, and to much of Friedman’s subsequent career, lay in its epigraph, a quotation from Kant to the effect that philosophy can profit enormously from the “real application” of mathematical material to “the objects of philosophy.”  Lucky for me, despite the fact that I had missed the point of the book, Friedman took some notice of my work as a graduate student, a notice that eventually landed me a kind of dream-job as his colleague for a decade at Indiana University, where, over the course of countless discussions with him from the lunch table to the climbing wall, the meaning and value of that epigraph for Friedman and for philosophy slowly dawned on me.  It sums up much of what I owe to him."

-Michael Dickson (University of South Carolina)