Paul Douglas Lyon

Paul Douglas Lyon was born on May 30, 1949 in Utica, New York. In 1954, after four years in Providence, Rhode Island while his father attended graduate school at Brown University, the family moved to Atlanta, Georgia. where his father became a faculty member in Biochemistry at Emory University. Paul attended elementary and high school at Decatur High School graduating in 1966 with one of the highest scores in Georgia on the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Paul majored in mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis and continued his graduate studies there, earning a PhD in philosophy in 1980. Edward McClennan, his dissertation director, described him as “the best graduate student [he had] ever had the pleasure of teaching,” combining “an unusually fine analytic mind with a staggeringly wide range of knowledgeable interests.” All those who knew Paul will recognize Frederic Schick’s description of him as “a first-rate philosopher, a man of wide learning, and yet a modest, unassuming person.”Paul held positions as a Beekman Fellow in Philosophy at Columbia University and a Thyssen Research Fellow in Philosophy at Darwin College at the University of Cambridge. He taught at Rutgers University, Washington University, and, starting in 1988, the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught Government courses in Decision Theory, Foundations of Political Argument, Rationality and Political Philosophy, Utilitarianism, Introduction to Political Theory, and Issues and Policies in American Government.

In 1993 Paul joined the staff of Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services and served as Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy. He constructed the Classical Utilitarianism web site, which makes publicly available edited and annotated versions of the central works of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick. According to a colleague, “Paul’s knowledge of the utilitarian tradition in philosophy, politics, and economics was unparalleled. He knew thoroughly not only the classic texts but the vast literature they inspired, in its humanistic as well as its most technical aspects.”

Paul’s love of scholarship was matched by his love of classical music and his love of animals. He cared not only for his long-time pets Spice, Brandy, and Tall Bear, but also for a group of stray animals in his neighborhood. His colleagues have described him as “a brilliant scholar, a sincere and gentle person, and a faithful friend” who will be sorely missed.

Paul is survived by his parents, John and Elizabeth Lyon, of Flowery Branch, Georgia; his brother-in law, David Warren of Tujunga, California; and by many aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews on both sides of his family scattered from New England to California. His sister, Deborah Elizabeth Lyon Warren, died in 2012.