John N. Deck

Who was John N. Deck?

John Norbert Deck 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.

He was educated at Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario, which at that time was affiliated with the University of Western Ontario. 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.

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, where he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in metaphysics and the history of philosophy until his death.