Jewish Academician Knighted

King Baudouin of Belgium has knighted Prof. Chaim Perelman, a member of the Belgian Royal Academy and a distinguished auth-or and academician who has lectured and taught at leading universities in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Israel.

Perelman, 72, was given the title of Baron in recognition of his contributions to philosophical thought in Belgium and abroad. He was born in Warsaw and has lived in Belgium since 1925. He received a Doctor in Law degree in 1934 and a Ph.D from the University of Brussels in 1938. He was a member of the Belgian resistance movement during World War II.

Since 1944, Perelman has been a full professor of logic, ethics, history of philosophy and metaphysics at the Brussels University faculty of law and humanities. He was also a visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, McGill University in Canada, Pennsylvania State University, the State University of New York, Queens College of City University in New York, and Temple University in Philadelphia.

He has lectured at the University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, Cornell, Harvard, Stanford and the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Florence, Italy, the Hebrew University and McGill.

Perelman, who is currently vice president of the Intemational Federation of Philosophical Societies is the author of more than 300 publications including 12 books and papers translated in 10 languages.

His works include “The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument” (1963); “An Historical Introduction to Philosophical Thinking” (1965); “Justice” (1967); “The New Rhetoric and the Humanities” (1979); “Justice Law and Argument” (1980); and “The Realm of Rhetoric” (1982).

Perelman’s wife, Fela, heads the Belgian Friends of the Hebrew University.