manwithoutqualities

Only today did I learn of the passing of a colleague and friend, Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo. I’d met Gloria at an Atlas conference back in 2008 in Portsmouth. Dave Hardwick and I were most taken with the quality of her mind and equally by her conviviality and by her no-nonsense stance towards some of the prominent “know-alls” within our circles. Gloria and I shared an appreciation for Barry Smith under whom she so happened to have done her dissertation. (Barry was the one whose work first got me into Hayek’s philosophical psychology). Soon after Portsmouth I signed her up to write this chapter: “The Emergence of the Mind: Hayek’s Account of Mental Phenomena as a Product of Spontaneous Physical.” In 2013 Dave and I got Gloria out to Vancouver for C+T’s inaugural conference (back row, fourth in from the right). As a member of C+T’s editorial board she had my full encouragement for her and Gerald to undertake a festschrift for Barry (photo below). This issue is one of the most downloaded issues of C+T. Looking over my correspondence I see that the last time we were in contact was in September of 2020. Ontogloria (her apropos email nom de plume) then communicated condolences for the loss of another C+T notable, Corey Abel: “On another matter, I learned by looking at the Masthead about Corey’s passing, which saddened me very much. I did not know him other than the couple of times at the C&T conferences, but he made an impression. I remember that he was your friend, so I wanted to extend my condolences. He left too soon. Big hug, Gloria”. Gloria enthusiastically told me of her interest in Edith Stein and I was honored to be sent an early draft of her “Phenomenological Ontology: Stein’s Third Way” which appeared in Intersubjectivity, Humanity, Being: Edith Stein’s Phenomenology and Christian Philosophy. Gloria always had the following epigram in footer of her emails: “A characteristic of virtue is “to feel [emotion] at the right times, with reference to the right objects, toward the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way.” Aristotle [NE, book II, 1106b 20-23]. I believed she embodied that: she left too soon. Below is Barry’s LinkedIn recommendation for Gloria. Here is a brief obituary.