Carl G. Vaught

Vaught, Carl G. October 21, 1939 - September 18, 2005 Carl G. Vaught, 65, died at 5:30 PM on Sunday, September 18, at Hillcrest Medical Center in Waco, Texas after an extended battle with Parkinson’s Disease. Visitation will be observed on Tuesday from 6-8PM at the Vaught family home at 3915 Green Valley in Waco. The memorial service will be held on Wednesday at 2PM at the Miller Chapel in the Tidwell Building on the Baylor University campus. Pastor Burt Burleson and Professor Robert Baird will conduct the memorial service at Baylor. The pianist will be Kurt Kaiser. The graveside service will follow at Boalsburg Cemetery in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania on Friday, September 23, at 2PM. Carl and Jane Vaught lived in nearby State College, PA for 31 years before moving to Waco. Pastor Dick Ottoson, a dear friend and neighbor now living with his wife, Nita, in Anacortes, Washington, will officiate. An insightful philosopher, passionate teacher, and caring husband, father, and grandfather, Carl will be dearly missed. He is survived by his wife, Janie Daggett Vaught, of Waco; his daughter and son-in-law, Jennifer C. Vaught and Will Emblom, of Lafayette, LA; his daughter and son-in-law, Cheryl and Steve Hile and his three grandchildren, Lauren, Kristi, and Rebecca Hile, of Boalsburg, PA; his first cousin and his wife, Professor Robert and Vicki Kruschwitz, of Waco; and his first cousin, Sibley Charles Burnett, of New Mexico. He was preceded in death by his mother and father, Pastor W.O. and Mary Frances Vaught, of Little Rock, Arkansas. Carl was a member of the DaySpring Baptist Church in Waco. Professor Vaught was appointed Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University in 1998. He received his B.A. from Baylor in 1961, where he graduated summa cum laude and received the Alpha Chi Scholarship Award as the valedictorian of his class. He attended Yale University as a Woodrow Wilson and a Danforth Graduate Fellow and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale in 1966. Before he came to Baylor, he taught in the Philosophy Department at Penn State for 31 years, where he served as Head of the Department of Philosophy from 1982 to 1992, and he directed the dissertations of thirty-five graduate students both at Penn State and at Baylor. He became a Fellow of the Society of Philosophy in America in 1987, was affiliated with Oriel College in Oxford in 1990-91, and became a Professor Emeritus at Penn State in 1998. In addition to numerous articles in books and professional journals, Professor Vaught is the author of several books: Essays in Metaphysics 1970, The Quest for Wholeness 1982, The Sermon on the Mount: A Theological Investigation 1986, and Metaphor, Analogy, and the Place of Places 2004. He is also the author of a three-volume work about Augustine's Confessions published by SUNY Press: The Journey Toward God in Augustine’s Confessions, Books I-VI 2003, Encounters with God in Augustine’s Confessions: Books X-XIII 2004, and Access to God in Augustine’s Confessions: Books X-XIII 2005. Dr. Michael Beaty, Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Baylor University writes, “Carl will be remembered for his intelligence, for his wide and deep knowledge of history and the substance of philosophy, for his insightful treatment of Augustine’s Confessions, for his strong will and fierce spirit, and for his love of students. He loved Baylor as an undergraduate student. Even near the end, he was expressing his concern and affection for his students. We will miss him.” One of his graduate students, John Wolfe, dedicated a sheet to “Vaughtisms” during each course he had with him. Some of the most memorable sayings are: “Stop pushing away your maladies…our maladies are part of who we are;” “we are all headed somewhere--one of the greatest philosophical questions to ask is WHERE are we going?”; and “experience must be malleable, and we must be flexible to produce new things…we must be willing to be surprised.” Dr. Robert Baird, former Chair of the Philosophy Department at Baylor for a number of years and close friend of Carl since high-school in Little Rock, Arkansas, writes that Vaught received a letter from Professor Alastair MacIntyre of the University of Notre Dame about his book, Metaphor, Analogy, and the Place of Places: “I had intended to put it on one side and read it only when the semester was over, but I started to read the first chapter and was gripped. Not many philosophy books have that quality, but not many philosophy books have so many interesting thoughts. Thank you.” Professor Robert Neville, a leading American theologian, says that this book makes Vaught “a major contender in contemporary philosophical theology and philosophy of religion.” Baird adds that not only was Carl an outstanding scholar, he was a remarkable teacher: “He taught with passion. He took the head and heart seriously, and this came through readily to the students who sat in his classroom.” Memorial contributions can be made to the DaySpring Baptist Church Building Fund in Waco or the W.J. Kilgore Fellowship Fund, Department of Philosophy, at Baylor University. The family invites you to leave a message or memory in our “Memorial Guestbook” at www.wilkirsonhatchbailey.com Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey