Nalin Ranasinghe, 59, passed away suddenly on March 13 during a flight from India. Prof. Ranasinghe had been a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy since 2001, during which he encouraged students to live up to their humanity, connected with them on a personal level, and left a lasting impression upon them both in and outside of the classroom.
At a young age, Prof. Ranasinghe came to appreciate the works of Plato, Shakespeare, and the British classics of the 18th and 19th centuries, leading him to an academic career that sought to integrate politics, philosophy, and literature. His intellectual passions were the Great Books, the integrity of classical liberal arts education, the intersection of philosophy and literature, and the defense of the soul against theoretical and practical materialism and the advances of a technocratic spirit shorn of moral considerations. The highlight of his scholarly work was an impressive trilogy on Plato’s Socrates and Platonic thought more broadly, The Soul of Socrates (2000), Socrates in the Underworld: On Plato’s Gorgias (2009), and Socrates and the Gods: How to Read Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito (2012). He also edited an impressive and valuable Festschrift for his doctoral dissertation mentor: Logos & Eros: Essays Honoring Stanley Rosen (2006). At the time of his passing, Prof. Ranasinghe was completing books on Homer and on Shakespeare, who, along with Plato, were his great sources of inspiration.
