Eugene Thomas Long facts for kids

Eugene Thomas Long (1935-March 13, 2020) was born in Richmond, Virginia. He was the author of Jaspers and Bultmann: A Dialogue Between Philosophy and Theology (1968), Existence, Being and God: An Introduction to the Philosophical Theology of John Macquarrie (1985) and Twentieth Century Western Philosophy of Religion:1900-2000 (2000).

Life and Career

Long was born in Richmond, Virginia. He is the first son of Eugene Thomas Long, Jr. and Emily Barker Long. He is a graduate of Randolph-Macon College in Virginia (BA), Duke University (BD) and the University of Glasgow, Scotland (Ph.D). He was a student of John Macquarrie and Ronald Gregor Smith.

He was a Professor of Philosophy at Randolph Macon College between 1964 and 1970. He was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina between 1970 and 2002. During that time he was Chair of the Department of Philosophy (1972-1987). He retired in 2002 as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus.

He was elected President of The Metaphysical Society of America and President of the Society for Philosophy of Religion. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (1990-2010) and the Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion.

The major focus of Long’s work is the dialogue between philosophy and theology and he is often characterized both as a philosophical theologian and philosopher of religion. Attracted in his early days to the work of Hegel and British and American Idealism, he is influenced in particular by the work of Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Paul Tillich and John Macquarrie. Appealing to the theories of experience in the tradition of so-called radical empiricism, Long argues for transcendent dimensions of general human experience to bridge the gap between specifically religious and ordinary experience.

Long died on March 13, 2020 at the age of 84.