#1 In Memoriam John Hoaglund PubVers


 

 

 
 

In Memoriam: J O H N  H O A G L U N D  
1936 – 2012 

 
 
It is with great sadness that the Editors inform our readers that 
John Hoaglund died, on June 16, 2012, after a long illness. 

John joined the Philosophy Department of Christopher 
Newport University in 1972. He taught classes in Ancient and 
Modern Philosophy, Critical Thinking, Logic, and Aesthetics. 
He served as chair of the department for nine years, developing 
and furthering its Critical Thinking Program during his tenure. 
In addition to authoring a textbook in Critical Thinking and a 
number of scholarly articles, he attended and read papers at nu-
merous conferences and was considered an internationally rec-
ognized expert in the fields of critical thinking, logic, and aes-
thetics. Some of his research focused on Pre-Socratic Philoso-
phy and Modern Art, as well as the world of art forgery. 
          During his career he was awarded the Berlin Senate Merit 
Scholarship, the John F. Kennedy Institute Doctoral Award, the 
American Council of Learned Societies Travel Grant Competi-
tion, the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer 
Seminar in Music Criticism at Berkeley, California, and a Sen-
ior Fulbright Reward Fellowship at the University of Bergen, 
Norway.  

John was a member of numerous national and interna-
tional scholarly associations including the American Philosophi-
cal Association, the American Society for Aesthetics, the Asso-
ciation for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking, the British So-
ciety of Aesthetics, the International Society for the Study of 
Argumentation, and the Society for Business Ethics. He served 
for many years on the Executive Committee and as president of 
the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking. 
 From 1985 to 1988 John hosted a series of Critical Think-
ing conferences at Christopher Newport College in Newport 
News, Virginia. In 2004, he published his own text, Critical 
Thinking.  

John contributed five articles to  Informal Logic:  “Ar-
gumentum ad Hominem: Aut Bonum aut Malum?” Vol. 4, No.3, 
(1981); “Typing,” Vol. 8, No. 1 (1986); “A Critical Thinker 
Abroad,” Vol. 8, No. 3 (1986); “The Logic of 'If-Then' Proposi-
tions,” Vol. 8, No. 3 (1986); Review of Boone's Critical Think-
ing: An Applied Approach, 2nd ed., Vol 23, No. 3 (2003). 
  In 1995, John and his wife, Lilian, founded Vale Press, 
which has published several titles that readers of this journal 
will be familiar with, including:  



In Memoriam: John Hoaglund 

 

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Fallacies (1970/1994), C.L. Hamblin  
The Rise of Informal Logic (1996), Ralph H. Johnson  
The Philosophy of Argument (1999), Trudy Govier   
Reason Reclaimed (2007), Hans V. Hansen and Robert C. 

Pinto (Eds.) 
 
 John was a valued colleague with a wide range of inter-
ests, an engaging manner, and a ready wit. He will be missed by 
his colleagues and friends in our scholarly community.