Richard H. Popkin was born
in Manhattan in 1923. He obtained his Ph.D. from Columbia University
in 1950 with a dissertation titled The Neo-Intuitivist
Theory of Mathematical Logic. He has taught philosophy
at the University of California, the University of Iowa and Washington
University.
In 1960 Popkin published
The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to
Descartes. This was followed by Philosophy
of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1966). Popkin
has taken a close interest in the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy and
in 1966 he published The Second Oswald.
Poplin is founding director
of the International Archives of the History of Ideas, and the editor
of the Journal of the History of Philosophy.
Other books by Popkin include Philosophy
Made Simple (1969), History of
Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (1980), Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion (1985), Isaac
La Peyrère (1987), The
History of Western Philosophy (1999), Messianic
Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium
(1999), Skeptical Philosophy for Everyone
(2001) and Spinoza (2004).
Richard H. Popkin died
from emphysema in April, 2005.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Richard
H. Popkin, The
New York Review of Books (28th July 1966)
In one of Victor Serge’s
last works, The Case of Comrade Tulayev, written over fifteen years
ago, the Russian equivalent of the Oswald story is set forth. An alienated
young man, unhappy with the many aspects of his life in the Soviet
Union - the food, his room, his job, etc. - acquires a gun, and manages
to shoot Commissar Tulayev one night when he is getting out of a car.
An extensive investigation sets in, followed by an extensive purge.
Millions of people are arrested and made to confess to being part
of a vast conspiracy against the government. The actual assassin is,
of course, never suspected, since no one can imagine him as a conspirator.
He continues to lead his alienated unhappy life, while the government
uncovers the great plot.
In contrast, when John
F. Kennedy was assassinated, a solution emerged within hours: one
lonely alienated man had done the deed all by himself. The investigation
by the Dallas Police and the FBI then proceeded to buttress this view,
and to accumulate all sorts of details about the lone assassin, some
false (like the murder rap), some trivial (like his early school records),
some suggestive (like the bag he carried into the Book Depository),
some convincing (like the presence of his rifle and the three shells).
From its origins in Dallas on the night of November 22, 1963, the
career of the theory of a single conspirator indicated that this was
the sort of explanation most congenial to the investigators and the
public (although the strange investigation of Joe Molina, a clerk
in the Book Depository, from 2 a.m. November 23 until the end of that
day, mainly for his activities in a slightly left-wing veterans’
organization, suggests a conspiratorial explanation was then under
consideration).
The Warren Commission, after
many months of supposed labor and search, came out with an anticlimatic
[sic] conclusion, practically the same as that reached by the FBI in
its report of December 9, 1963, except for details as to how it happened.
The Commission, clothed in the imposing dignity of its august members,
declared its conviction that one lone alienated assassin, Lee Harvey
Oswald, had indeed carried out the crime...
However, the “official
theory” was in many ways implausible. It involved a fantastic
amount of luck. If the FBI and Warren Commission reconstructions were
correct, Oswald had to get the rifle into the building without attracting
attention. Only two people saw him with a long package, and none saw
him with it or the rifle in the building. He had to find a place from
which he could shoot unobserved. The place, according to the “official
theory,” was observed until just a few minutes before the shooting.
He had to fire a cheap rifle with a distorted sight, old ammunition,
at a moving target in minimal time, and shoot with extraordinary accuracy
(three hits in three shots, in 5.6 seconds, according to the FBI;
two hits in three shots in 5.6 seconds, according to the Commission).
If the “official theory” of the Commission is right, Oswald
had no access to the rifle from mid-September until the night before
the assassination, and had no opportunity whatsoever to practice for
at least two months. Having achieved such amazing success with his
three shots, Oswald was then somehow able to leave the scene of the
crime casually and undetected, go home, and escape. But for the inexplicable
(according to the “official theory”) Tippit episode, Oswald
might have been able to disappear. In fact, he did so after that episode,
and only attracted attention again because he dashed into a movie
theater without paying.
The critics have argued
that the Commission’s case against Oswald, if it had ever been
taken to court, would have collapsed for lack of legal evidence. A
legal case would have been weakened by sloppy police work (e.g., the
failure to check whether Oswald’s gun had been used that day),
confused and contradictory reports by witnesses (e.g., the mistaken
identification of Oswald by the bus driver), and questionable reconstructions
by the Commission (e.g., testing the accuracy of the rifle with stationary
targets). The Report (against the better judgment of at least two
of the Commission’s staff, Liebeler and Ball) had to rely on
some of the shakiest witnesses, like Brennan and Mrs. Markham. It
also had to impeach some of its best, like Wesley Frazier.
(2)
Wolfgang Saxon, Richard
Popkin, Historian of Philosophy and Skepticism, New
York Times (19th April, 2005)
Forswearing philosophy
for a spell in the 1960's, Dr. Popkin joined the chorus of doubters
who prominently disputed the Warren Commission Report on the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy. In an article in The New York Review
of Books and in a paperback he argued that the commission's single-assassin
solution was not just implausible, but also impossible in terms of
the commission's evidence.
The book, "The Second
Oswald" (Avon, 1966), promptly came under attack. Eliot Fremont-Smith,
in a review in The New York Times, called it "a very hasty book,
but fascinating reading."
(3)
Sarah Hutton, Richard
Popkin, The Guardian
(7th May, 2005)
In the field of the history
of philosophy, Richard Popkin, who has died aged 81, was best known
for his work on scepticism, and especially for his classic study The
History Of Scepticism From Erasmus To Descartes (1960).
A professor at the University
of California, San Diego, (1963-73) and Washington University, St
Louis, Missouri (1973-86), he was among the founders of the Journal
Of The History Of Philosophy, and, with Paul Dibon, started the International
Archives In The History Of Ideas; he also wrote about the 1963 assassination
of the US president, John Kennedy.
The History Of Scepticism
revolutionised the received picture of both the history of philosophy
and the history of science, by demonstrating the influence, in the
century before Descartes, of ancient Greek sceptical arguments about
the impossibility of knowing God and the world.
In making his case for
this central contribution to the development of modern science and
philosophy, Popkin gave attention to the intellectual context of the
time, especially the role of religious disputes in the take-up of
philosophical scepticism deriving from the discipline's Greek founder,
Pyhrro. Instead of treating the history of science and philosophy
as a series of breakthroughs by canonical figures, Popkin sought to
view the thought of the past from within its own framework...
Popkin also achieved fame
with The Second Oswald (1966), the book in which he disputed the findings
of the Warren commission that Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin.
He foresaw the rise of religious fundamentalism in the United States
and the Middle East, contributing an analysis of its American dimension
in Messianic Revolution (1998, co-authored with David Katz). He also
wrote for a general philosophical readership, with such books as Philosophy
Made Simple (co-authored with Avrum Stroll, 1969).
Popkin was an inspirational
teacher who gave great encouragement to younger scholars, such as
myself. When I first met him, I was struck by his wry sense of humour,
and the touch of scepticism that ensured he never took himself or
others over-seriously. All who knew him remember his generosity; and
he was always good company and an entertaining raconteur.
(4)
Myrna Oliver, Boston
Globe (19th April, 2005)
Richard H. Popkin, a retired
professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles,
who became a specialist on skepticism and its history through the
centuries, died here Thursday, his family said. He was 81 and had
emphysema, which caused him to use a wheelchair.
Dr. Popkin, despite limited
vision, had been working on a book about the 16th-century Rabbi Isaac
of Troki in Russia, said his son, Jeremy, of Lexington, Ky.
As an author, Dr. Popkin
published his most durable book, ''The History of Skepticism From
Erasmus to Spinoza," in 1960, and continued updating it through
a 2003 edition.
He attracted mainstream
readers with such books as his 1966 ''The Second Oswald: The Case
for a Conspiracy Theory," about the assassination of John F.
Kennedy. In the book, Dr. Popkin strongly challenged the finding of
the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in fatally
shooting the president during a 1963 motorcade in Dallas.
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