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RIP, Donald Heath

RIP, Donald Heath

5 minutes
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March 28, 2016

don heath

We note in sorrow that Donald Heath died Friday, March 25, of a heart attack. He was 56.

Don worked for our organization as our first director of operations, 1992-98, leaving a successful position in sales at IBM in Canada. Over the years since, he attended many of our annual Summer Seminars and Summits and was a generous friend and advisor.

Don earned his BA in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 1983, and his Masters in Management Sciences three years later. At IBM (1985-1992) he led teams of specialists in marketing and information technology to provide solutions for customers, winning sales awards every year.

After leaving us in 1998, he moved to Los Angeles to work for the Reason Foundation through 2007 in fund-raising and finance. Since then he specialized in finance and accounting, most recently for New York Live Arts in Manhattan.

I first met Don in the late 1980s, when I gave a number of talks in Toronto, Waterloo, and elsewhere in Canada. At the time, Don was a key player in one of the most active and effective networks of Objectivist students, including Susan Dawn Wake, Stephen Hicks, and many others who have gone on to successful careers and engagement with TAS. Don was especially active in that network. He debated the moral basis of capitalism, appeared on radio and TV, and engaged hundreds of young people on Objectivist topics, recruiting them for campus clubs and other activism.

Don was a bright light in our universe.
donald heath atlas

In 1989, he organized a weekend event—a panel with me and two other speakers—that we offered in multiple cities. I learned from that experience how skilled he was in managing operations. So when he wrote me in 1992, two years after I founded what was then called the Institute for Objectivist Studies, to propose that he join the staff, I jumped at the chance. Easy for me, but incredibly gutsy for Don: He was leaving a promising future at IBM for a small nonprofit with an uncertain future, leaving Canada for the US, and leaving his active life in Toronto for the backwater of Poughkeepsie, New York, where we were based at the time.

During his time on the staff, Don put our business affairs on a professional basis. He designed the program format for the Summer Seminar that we still use to this day, and we worked together to build attendance from 40 to over 200. He trained the administrative staff, managed fund-raising campaigns that built our revenues, worked with me on strategic issues, and prepared reports to our board, among the myriad tasks involved in any organization.

Don was a man of tremendous energy and enthusiasm. He had the quickest wit of anyone I have known. He made me laugh, he made me proud to know and work with him, sometimes he made me mad, as friends and colleagues do, and now it makes me sad that I will never have his company again.

My heart goes out to his family and many friends, and especially to his beloved Rebecca Reale, with whom he attended the 2015 Atlas Summit, where his enthusiasm, charm, wit, and insight helped make the event special.

Don was a bright light in our universe. It’s a great loss to know that his light is gone.

From the archives:

Read Don's 1995 review of The Letters of Ayn Rand: Correspondence to Reality

David Kelley

À PROPOS DE L'AUTEUR :

David Kelley

David Kelley est le fondateur de l'Atlas Society. Philosophe professionnel, enseignant et auteur de best-sellers, il est l'un des principaux défenseurs de l'objectivisme depuis plus de 25 ans.

David Kelley Ph.D
About the author:
David Kelley Ph.D

David Kelley founded The Atlas Society (TAS) in 1990 and served as Executive Director through 2016. In addition, as Chief Intellectual Officer, he was responsible for overseeing the content produced by the organization: articles, videos, talks at conferences, etc.. Retired from TAS in 2018, he remains active in TAS projects and continues to serve on the Board of Trustees.

Kelley est un philosophe professionnel, un enseignant et un écrivain. Après avoir obtenu un doctorat en philosophie à l'université de Princeton en 1975, il a rejoint le département de philosophie du Vassar College, où il a enseigné une grande variété de cours à tous les niveaux. Il a également enseigné la philosophie à l'université de Brandeis et a donné de nombreuses conférences sur d'autres campus.

Les écrits philosophiques de Kelley comprennent des travaux originaux sur l'éthique, l'épistémologie et la politique, dont beaucoup développent les idées objectivistes en profondeur et dans de nouvelles directions. Il est l'auteur de L'évidence des sensun traité d'épistémologie ; Vérité et tolérance dans l'objectivismesur les questions relatives au mouvement objectiviste ; Unrugged Individualism : La base égoïste de la bienveillanceet L'art du raisonnementun manuel d'introduction à la logique largement utilisé, qui en est aujourd'hui à sa cinquième édition.

M. Kelley a donné des conférences et publié sur un large éventail de sujets politiques et culturels. Ses articles sur les questions sociales et les politiques publiques ont été publiés dans Harpers, The Sciences, Reason, Harvard Business Review, The Freeman, On Principle et ailleurs. Dans les années 1980, il a fréquemment écrit pour Barrons Financial and Business Magazine sur des sujets tels que l'égalitarisme, l'immigration, les lois sur le salaire minimum et la sécurité sociale.

Son livre A Life of One's Own : Individual Rights and the Welfare State (Une vie à soi : les droits individuels et l'État-providence) est une critique des prémisses morales de l'État-providence et une défense des alternatives privées qui préservent l'autonomie, la responsabilité et la dignité de l'individu. Son intervention dans l'émission spéciale "Greed" de John Stossel sur ABC/TV en 1998 a suscité un débat national sur l'éthique du capitalisme.

Expert internationalement reconnu de l'objectivisme, il a donné de nombreuses conférences sur Ayn Rand, ses idées et ses œuvres. Il a été consultant pour l'adaptation cinématographique de Atlas Shruggedet rédacteur en chef de Atlas Shrugged : Le roman, les films, la philosophie.

 

Principaux travaux (sélectionnés) :

"Concepts et natures : A Commentary on The Realist Turn (by Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl)," Reason Papers 42, no. 1, (Summer 2021) ; Ce compte-rendu d'un livre récent comprend une plongée profonde dans l'ontologie et l'épistémologie des concepts.

Les fondements de la connaissance. Six conférences sur l'épistémologie objectiviste.

"La primauté de l'existence" et "L'épistémologie de la perception", The Jefferson School, San Diego, juillet 1985.

"Universals and Induction", deux conférences aux congrès du GKRH, Dallas et Ann Arbor, mars 1989

"Skepticism", Université de York, Toronto, 1987

"The Nature of Free Will", deux conférences au Portland Institute, octobre 1986

"The Party of Modernity", Cato Policy Report, mai/juin 2003 ; et Navigator, novembre 2003 ; un article largement cité sur les divisions culturelles entre les points de vue pré-moderne, moderne (Lumières) et post-moderne.

"I Don't Have To"(IOS Journal, volume 6, numéro 1, avril 1996) et "I Can and I Will"(The New Individualist, automne/hiver 2011) ; des articles d'accompagnement sur la concrétisation du contrôle que nous avons sur nos vies en tant qu'individus.

L'histoire
Travail et réussite