John N. Deck

Although he died in 1979, he is arguably more popular and influential now than ever before. Nature, Contemplation, and the One was republished in 1991 (back in print for the first time after over twenty years, and in a convenient paperback) and now a proliferation of websites such as Anthony Flood's [1] are making available his articles for ongoing discussion.

After serving as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston College and a brief stint working for the Canadian Pacific Railway, in 1957 he became Professor of Philosophy at Assumption College, (later known as the University of Windsor), where he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in metaphysics and the history of philosophy until his death. The University of Windsor awards the John N. Deck Memorial Prize in Philosophy each year "in recognition of outstanding scholastic achievement or proficiency."

He was educated at Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario, which at that time was affiliated with the University of Western Ontario (B.A., 1946, M.A., 1946). He received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Toronto in 1960. His doctoral dissertation reappraised the Neoplatonic philosophy of Plotinus from the standpoint of a central doctrine in his Enneads, exploring how "contemplative producing" gives rise to every level of reality, including the physical world; it was published as Nature, Contemplation, and the One: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus by the University of Toronto Press in 1967.

John Norbert Deck (born Buffalo, New York, December 2, 1921; died September 5, 1979) was a Canadian philosopher. Adhering to neither sartorial nor intellectual fashions, Deck inspired generations of students with his highly idiosyncratic form of idealism, deriving from Plotinus but equally rooted in Thomas Aquinas and Hegel.