Gregory Vlastos

Preeminent scholar on Socrates who transformed the analysis of classical philosophy. A professor emeritus at both Princeton University and the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Vlastos was widely respected as a teacher and thinker in philosophy. He was born in Istanbul, known then as Constantinople, where his family belonged to a small sect of Greek Protestants. He earned his undergraduate degree at the American-run Robert College in Istanbul. At the age of 18 he came to the United States to study. At the Chicago Theological Seminary, he earned a doctorate of divinity and was ordained as a Congregational minister, although he never became a pastor. Then he went to Harvard University to obtain a doctorate in philosophy. Dr. Vlastos taught at Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario, from 1931 to 1948, when he went to Cornell. After seven years there, he went to Princeton University, where he became chairman of the philosophy department and played a leading role in campus governance. Upon retiring from Princeton in 1976, he moved to Berkeley and taught there part time for more than a decade. He is survived by a son, Stephen, of Iowa City, a daughter, Mari, of Berkeley, and a brother, Kimon, of Athens, Greece.