RALPH AUSTIN POWELL, O.P., Ph.B. , Ph.D. (1914-2001)

1914-1921: Washington, DC: childhood upbringing; 1st and 2nd grades at home

1923: St. Paul's elementary Catholic, 3rd grade

1924: family moves to Chevy Chase, MD; attends Cobb's School, a Bahai school, 4th

1922: Blessed Sacrament School (Holy Cross Sisters), 5th - 8th

1927-31: Georgetown Prep, Garrett Park MD

1931-33: Georgetown University; as radical disciple of Fr. Burke, S.J., who criticized the curriculum as too pagan, Powell refused to continue for 3rd year

1933, September- 1939, Sept. 21, birthday & Ph.D., Louvain, thesis on Lachelier

1939-1940: year at home

1940-1941: Dr. Goetz Briefs gets him job at St. Michael's, Toronto, quits because it was only history of philosophy and not philosophy

1941-1942 studies under Dietrich von Hildebrand and Maritain in New York

1942-1944, asst. prof. at Georgetown

1944, September, joins Dominicans, goes through studies

1950, ordained,

1951/2 De Paul professor

1952/3 Rosary (River Forest) professor

1953/8 professor in studium, Dominican House of Studies Pontifical Faculty, River Forest, Ill.
Publication: Truth or Absolute Nothing. A critique of the idealist philosophy of Jules Lachelier (River Forest, IL: Aquinas Library, 1958).

1958/62 asst prof at the Angelicum, Rome
Publication: "Etiam in am tractatione acatholicorum probatur solum statum catholicum adimplere altissima desideria altissima in humana vita", in Thomstica Morum Principia. Communicationes V Congressus Thomistici Internationalis (Rome, 13-17 September 1960), pp. 442-451.

1962-1968 River Forest professor; authors "The Problem of Identifying More or Less Unitary Beings in Our World" (unpublished and perhaps lost manuscript, c.1967).

1968/70 St. Rose Priory, Dubuque
Publication: "The Late Heidegger's Omission of the Ontic-Ontological structure of Dasein", in Heidegger and the Path of Thinking. ed. John Sallis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. 1970), 116-137 (volume presented on the occasion of Heidegger's 80th birthday, September 26, 1969).

1970-1981 research, occasional special course

1981- emeritus research professor & occasional seminars. Publications:

1983. "Poinsot as Foil for Doctrinal Considerations on Inexistent Personality in Existent Substance According to C. S. Peirce", in Semiotics 1983, ed. Jonathan Evens and John Deely (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), 93-104.

1983a. Freely Chosen Reality (Washington, DC: University Press of America).

1984. "Kant's Thought Interpreted through Peirce's Categories", in Semiotics 1984, ed. John Deely (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 325-332.

1985. "The Evidential Priority of Unindividuated Realities: The Philosophy of Science of Willard Van Oman Quitter, in Semiotics 1985, ed. John Deely (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986), 45-55.

1986. "From Semiotic of Scientific Mechanism to Semiotic of Teleology in Nature", in Semiotics 1986, ed. John Deely and Jonathan Evans (Lanham, MD: University Press of America), 296-305.

1987. "Democracy's Causal Signs of Primitive Justice", in Semiotics 1987, ed. John Deely (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 414-422.

1988. "Epistemology's Minimal Cause as Basis of Science", in Semiotics 1988, ed. John Deely, and Karen Haworth (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), 180-188.

1988a. "Degenerate Secondness in Peirce's Belief in God", in ACPA Proceedings LXII, I 16-123.

1988b. "Epistemology's Minimal Cause as Basis of Science", Semiotics 1988, ed. Terry Prewitt, John Deely, and Karen Haworth (13th Annual Proceedings of the Semiotic Society of America; Lanham, MD: University Press of America), 180-188.

1988c. Personal correspondence to author dated 16 December.

1989. "The First Amendment Become Causal Sign of Freely Avoiding Injustice over Abortion", in Semiotics 1989, ed. John Deely, Karen Haworth, and Terry Prewitt (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), 130-137.

1990. "Dicent Signs as Signs of Mechanist Causality in a Totally Intelligible Universe", in Semiotics 1990, ed. Karen Haworth, John Deely, and Terry Prewitt (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), 354-361.

1991. "Mechanist Justice Limits U.S. Politics", in Semiotics 1991, ed. John Deely and Terry Prewitt (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), 308-318.

1992. "Voter's Peircean Free Non-Existence", in Semiotics 1992, ed. John Deely and Robert Corrington (Lanham, MD:University Press of America, in press).

2000. "'That a State Establishment of Any Religion Claiming Divine Revelation Is Contrary to Natural Law': The Semiotics of Separation of Church and State", in Semiotics 2000, ed. Scott Simpkins and John Deely (Ottawa, Canada: Letters Press).

Died June 12, 2001; Funeral and Burial with the Midwest Dominican Province