Obituary: Dr Brian Carr (1946–2022)

It is with great sadness that we record the death at the age of 76 of Dr Brian Carr, the cofounder and co-editor with Professor Indira Mahalingam Carr of Asian Philosophy. Brian was born on 12 June 1946 in Falmouth, Cornwall, the son of Gertrude and Wilfrid Carr, and one of six children. Although Wilfrid had left school at the age of 14, he was wellread and Brian used to recall many a boyhood conversation with his father about the classical philosophers such as Aristotle. It is surely here that the foundations were laid for Brian’s future philosophical career. Having passed the 11-plus, Brian attended Falmouth Grammar School from 1957 to 1964. Then, unusually for a future academic philosopher, Brian started his career by reading Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial College, London (1964–1965). However, he soon decided that life as a future engineer was not for him and he switched to Philosophy at King’s College, London in 1966, graduating with first class honours in Philosophy in 1969. He then continued his studies with an MPhil in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London (1972) and later crowned these academic achievements with a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Exeter in 1987. After a brief period teaching physics and maths at a secondary school in London (1969– 1971), Brian was appointed Lecturer (later Senior Lecturer) in Philosophy at Exeter University where he happily taught and researched from 1971–1988. At the tender age of 24 he was the youngest Lecturer ever to be appointed to that Department, then under the magisterial headship of Professor D.J.O’Connor (1914–2012). Brian’s first wife Maria tragically died of cancer and he later married Indira Mahalingam, a doctoral researcher and later a distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Surrey. They were very happily married for over 40 years and Indira became, and remained, a stalwart academic companion and co-researcher in Brian’s burgeoning interests in the various philosophical schools of the East. The 1980s were an extremely difficult period for University Departments of Philosophy in the UK. There were many closures including the Department at Brian’s alma mater of the University of Exeter. Nonetheless, in 1988, Brian was able to accept a new appointment at the University of Nottingham where he was Senior Lecturer from 1988 to 2002 and where he became Vice-Dean for Postgraduates in Arts, Law, Social Sciences and Education from 1997 to 2001. Brian engaged mainly with metaphysics in his research and, as his career progressed, he became increasingly drawn to the metaphysics found in Indian Philosophy such as those of the early eighth century CE Hindu philosopher Śaṅkara who is regarded as ‘the most renowned teacher of nondualist (Advaita) Vedānta, which emphasizes realizing the nondual reality’. Thus, while Brian wrote eruditely about the philosopher of science and politics, Karl Popper (1904–1994), the analytical philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and theory of knowledge as well as virtues like pity and ASIAN PHILOSOPHY 2023, VOL. 33, NO. 2, 91–93 https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2023.2174483