Wm. David Solomon

Funeral Mass Livestream Link: https://basilica.nd.edu/sacraments/funerals/funerals-livestream/
David Solomon taught philosophy at the University of Notre Dame for almost half a century. He died at 81 on February 26, 2025, after a valiant battle with leukemia and esophageal cancer. A native of Texas, Professor Solomon earned his B.A. from Baylor University and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He began his career at Notre Dame in 1968 and retired in May, 2016.
Solomon's academic specialty was ethics, and he was a strong defender of the virtue tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas. He spent much of his professional life exploring questions in applied ethics, especially in medical ethics and right-to-life issues. His views were deeply in uenced by Saint John Paul II and based on the fundamental principle that human dignity must be the foundation of Catholic social and moral teaching.
Solomon served in a wide variety of administrative roles, including founding and directing both the Arts&Letters/Science Honors Program and what is now the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. His vocation, however, was teaching and mentoring students. For many years, he taught undergraduate courses in medical ethics and on morality and modernity, equipping students to think more deeply about current pressing moral matters. At the graduate level, he delighted in his interactions with students interested in moral or political philosophy. He directed the dissertations of many remarkable students who have taught philosophy across the country and world.
In online tributes posted after Solomon's death, students recalled his "unique ability to view matters from different perspectives," his penchant for "bringing people together in love of philosophy
and the joy of truth's service," and the reality that "he often seemed happiest when supporting, connecting and promoting others." The de Nicola Center memorialized him as "a longtime champion for Catholic identity and the harmony of faith and reason at the University of Notre Dame."
The youngest of four children in a Southern Baptist family, Solomon was born in Stephenville, Texas, on May 7, 1943. The family soon moved to a farm in Walnut Springs, Texas, in the state's North Central Plains. The family home still sits within walking distance of the town's tabernacle, where Solomon rst professed his faith.
His father, Raymond Stockton Solomon, was a skilled welder, and his mother, Elizabeth Florence (Reed) Solomon, was an elementary school teacher. In 1950, the family moved to Knoxville, Iowa, a small town about 40 miles southeast of Des Moines. There, Solomon read voraciously in the local library and listened to baseball on AM radio. In high school, he worked as a clerk at Western Auto, repairing bicycles after school, and during summer vacations in college, he sold Bibles and encyclopedias
door-to-door.
After graduating from Knoxville High School, Solomon found his way to Baylor University for his undergraduate education in part because his mother wanted him to be a Baptist preacher. After discovering philosophy, however, he pursued his doctorate at the University of Texas. While in Austin, he met fellow graduate student Mary Louise Schwartz and the devoted couple was married
in September, 1966; they moved to his rst job at the University of Notre Dame in September, 1968.
While academia was the backbeat of his life, Solomon's joy of living was pure and palpable, and he celebrated many common pleasures of daily life. His nature was to revel in small delights-the birds in his backyard, the music of Bach, Dylan and Wagner, and the writings of Austen, Dickens and Trollope-and to share those joys generously with his wife, family and friends. He was an artful conversationalist who told stories with vivid detail and enviable air. Profoundly fond of traveling, he accepted speaking engagements around the world and developed deep, lifelong friendships during his three sabbaticals in Oxford and his year as director of Notre Dame's London Program.
In 1999, Solomon founded the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, and he served as its director until 2012. His vision was to build a space where the cultural and spiritual mission of St. John Paul II would be explored in tandem with the work of theologians and philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Ralph McInerny, all while maintaining a practical engagement with the modern world. "John Paul was the spiritual heart of what we were trying to do at the Center; MacIntyre and McInerny were the intellectual beating heart," said Solomon in an interview after stepping down as director.
Shortly after establishing the Center, Solomon launched its annual Fall Conference, which now gathers more than 1200 guests and 150 speakers for three days of discourse on contemporary questions of ethics, culture and public policy. He also inaugurated the Notre
Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal, awarded annually to honorees whose work has served to proclaim the gospel of life.
A conference in Solomon's honor at Notre Dame in 2014 resulted in the publication of the festschrift "Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture" (Baylor University Press, 2019; Raymond Hain, Editor) with contributions from many of his graduate students and collaborators in the revival of virtue ethics.
Solomon's profoundly Christian faith began with his family's Southern Baptist heritage. He nonetheless became strongly in uenced by the Catholic world he discovered at Notre Dame, Our Lady's University. He admired the richly Catholic character of the campus-cruci xes in classrooms, prayers offered by colleagues before classes, chapels in dormitories, and the Basilica's spire at the center of the campus. This ambience drew him into the intellectual foundation of Catholicism, the beauty of the liturgy and the powerful guidance it gave to the rhythm of everyday life. David Solomon and his wife were received into the Catholic Church with humility and joy in May, 2024.
Solomon is survived by his wife, Mary Louise, of Granger; son, Reed Solomon, daughter-in-law, Helene Marcy, and grandchildren, Marika and Willis Solomon Marcy, of Mans eld, Connecticut; daughter, Elizabeth Solomon, and son-in-law, Chad Konecky, of Gloucester, Massachusetts; and sister, LaNelle Gallagher, of Richardson, Texas. The family is immensely grateful for the excellent care given to David by his doctors, nurses and caregivers.
A visitation is scheduled from 4-7pm on Thursday, March 6 at Kaniewski Funeral Home (South Bend) with a praying of the Rosary at 5:30pm. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at The Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Notre Dame) on Friday, March 7, 2025 at 2:30pm with a burial service to follow at Cedar Grove Cemetery.
In lieu of owers, please consider supporting the Logan Center (2505 East Jefferson Blvd., South Bend) or Right to Life Michiana (2004 Ironwood Circle, Suite 130, South Bend).
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