Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

66
OBITUARIES
understood even by the 12-year-olds in the audience, though their parents
might find it harder. It was a staggering but absolutely winning performance.
He regularly gave sermons for the Beth Shalom Synagogue, especially onYom
Kippur – not many synagogues hear about Kripke and Thomas Kuhn on a
Sabbath morning. He taught the children’s services, too – “taught” because
Peter was such an influential and gripping teacher that the children always
came away from services buzzing with intellectual excitement and ready to
plague their parents with questions and new wisdom.
His University students were equally passionate about his teaching. After one
lecture course, he was showered with roses. Many brought friends from other
faculties, just to hear.The students used the verb “to lipton”, which meant to
summarize an argument more clearly and precisely than the arguer, and then
to reveal its gaps with critical rigour. As with everything Peter did, the
combination of clarity with intellectual insight and a NewYork wry humour
won over even the cynical Cambridge students.
Peter described himself as a “religious atheist”. He and Diana were mainstays
of Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, and almost every Friday night, their house
was full of an unpredictable mix of people, theologians, visitors to
Cambridge, artists, singers, families, some initially confused but most won
over by the infectiously raucous singing, the passionate conversation and the
happy mixture of claret and anecdote. Peter was often upbraided by the more
and less religious than himself – but he always responded with his
characteristic generosity and openness. When a fundamentalist Christian told
him that evolution was just a theory, he responded, “Yes, you are right. But
the thing about a theory is that you have to have a better theory to displace it.
So what is yours?”
Peter loved the idea of AskPhilosophers.org, a website to which anyone could
ask a question of a philosopher. He answered many himself, often hilariously
and always kindly. He was attracted by the thought that anyone could ask a
philosophically interesting question – he always came out of sessions with
children amazed at their perspicacity. And he thought it only proper that an
extremely busy, extremely high-powered professional philosopher was the
right person to answer such enquiries.That willingness to use his intellectual