From the service...

Isn’t it a beautiful day for a memorial? I know that sounds a bit odd to say, but Leslie was the last person in the world who would want us to be sitting here acting all somber and morose. If he were here right now he’d be cracking jokes and making us all laugh.

I was thinking about him on the drive over here just now because I used to see him as I drove in to school. One semester we were on the same schedule and would often see one another while driving across Alabama to UH from Montrose. I would see him in his cute little red Mazda Miata convertible and I would honk and wave and he would honk and wave and flash me that big smile of his. I’ll miss seeing that.

Leslie wasn’t a particularly religious person, but I hope he would not mind if I read this quote from one of the Stoics who are perhaps the most religious of all philosophers—they have the religion of the worship of reason. This is from Epictetus’ Manual:

If you desire philosophy,
prepare now as one being ridiculed,
as you are being mocked by many,
who are saying, "Suddenly a philosopher has returned to us"
and "From where has this high brow come to us?"

But you should not have a high brow;
but hold thus to what is appearing best to you,
as to that place assigned by God;
and remember that if you remain in the same,
these ridiculing you before will later be amazed,
but if you are overcome by them,
you will receive ridicule twice.

Leslie was first and foremost a philosopher. I first met him back in the late 1990’s when we team-taught together in the Honors College course “The Human Situation.” One semester he was lecturing on Plato’s Phaedrus, which has a famous metaphor of the soul as a charioteer with one good horse and one bad horse. There is one passage that’s rather obscure that tells how in the beginning all the souls were trying to follow the chariots of the gods up to the rim of the universe to view the heavens, but the humans with bad horses—desires—could not get up to the top. Leslie made this all quite clear by telling the students to picture the universe as a big football stadium. The gods had great horses that could fly up to the top and look out over the rim but many of the humans had bad horses and were stuck in the fray down below on the field and couldn’t get to the top. He would stand on his tippy-toes and demonstrate the position of the gods looking out at the rest of the universe. It was quite funny and made the book come alive.

I always envied Leslie’s classroom presence. I consider myself a pretty good teacher, but Leslie was just a born teacher who was utterly natural and at home in the classroom. He was so casual and relaxed, always totally himself. He was at ease even lecturing on some of the hardest material like Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and explaining the categorical imperative. He could make things very clear and he had an easy conversational style. He would pause often and ask the students, “Do you get it? Anyone have any questions? What do you think?”

We were lucky to be able to have Leslie as an adjunct professor in the Philosophy Department for the last ten years. I know at first he taught too many classes for too little money, but we were able to improve that situation in recent years, with Dean Antel’s help, to get him more money and fewer courses, along with TA’s so he didn’t have to do all the grading. The students really loved Leslie and he got very good teaching evaluations. I looked over his most recent evaluations in preparing for this talk, and found a number of very positive remarks (keep in mind these were done two weeks ago, before his accidental death):

Very smart and a good communicator.
Funny and very interesting, cares about his class.
Did a great job at not rejecting someone’s thoughts.
He truly cares about what he teaches and if we understand it or not. He’s my favorite teacher.
My most favorite class so far in college, a very clear and funny professor.
Students were able to express their opinions.
I liked this class a lot. I made this subject my minor from this class.
Wonderful personality and knowledgeable.
Funny, related material to everyday life, easy to understand.
Actually made me think rather than just give facts.
Very respectful of students.

I know his students will really miss him. If you could have seen their faces when they learned about his death, you would have seen how much he meant to them. They showed shock, horror, and great sadness and dismay. The students really considered him a friend.

It would not be fitting to speak of Leslie without mentioning his sense of humor, which could at times be outrageous and rather off-color. I have one anecdote to tell about that. Once he was at a party at my house for some famous philosopher (I think it was Bob Brandom). Those who know me know that I am a cat person and I have too many cats. One of my cats was being very cute and rolling around on the floor showing off her fat spotted belly. I was patting her and talking sweet-talk to her like people do with cats, “Nice kitty! Sweet pussy-cat!”, etc. Leslie stood there and kind of grunted and said, “Eh, doesn’t it just make you want to get laid?” I said “WHAT?!” –but I’ve never quite been able to look at my cats in the same way since.

Perhaps this might suggest that Leslie was somehow inappropriate or lacking in decorum. On this point, and as my final remark, I’d like to comment on the definition of decorum from Cicero’s book On Duties. This is another text Leslie lectured on in “The Human Situation” course. It was above and beyond the call of duty for him to do that because another professor was scheduled to teach it but he had quit just a week before classes began. No one really wanted to teach Cicero, who is a bit dense and dry, but Leslie volunteered and did a good job. When Cicero discusses decorum or the virtue of seemliness, he describes it in this way:

Each person should hold on to what is his in so far as it is not vicious but peculiar to him, so that the seemliness we are seeking might more easily be maintained. For we must act in such a way that we attempt nothing contrary to universal nature; but, while conserving that, let us follow our own nature… If anything at all is seemly, nothing, surely, is more so than an evenness both of one’s whole life and one’s individual actions. You cannot preserve that if you copy someone else’s nature and ignore your own. (On Duties, selections from 110-111)

By this definition, Leslie Marenchin definitely manifested the virtue of decorum or seemliness, because he was always precisely just himself, and no one else. He was truly his own person.

Cynthia Freeland
Professor and Chair, UH Philosophy Department