From the Baltimore Sun:
Kingsley Blake Price, a retired philosophy professor who taught at the Johns Hopkins University for more than three decades, died Oct. 27 of multiple organ failure at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 92.
… He was 3 years old when he fell ill with scarlet fever, which left him blind. As a boy, he was encouraged by his parents, who sent him to a boarding school to learn Braille, to do things for himself.
He was a graduate of University High School in Berkeley, and earned his bachelor’s degree with the highest honors from the University of California at Berkeley in 1938.
After earning his bachelor’s degree, he considered seeking a career as a concert pianist but decided to pursue an academic career in philosophy.
Dr. Price received his master’s degree and doctorate from Berkeley in 1942 and 1946, respectively. His dissertation, colleagues said, was on John Locke’s theory of knowledge.
… [One friend said that Price] “lived alone throughout his adult life” and had “traveled extensively abroad, usually going alone.”
… “He was a man who had a wide range of knowledge. He was very learned in literature, art and music, which he coupled with a prodigious memory, and was very centered morally,” he said.
… Dr. Price never relied on a seeing-eye dog or carried a cane.
“He used to walk from his office in Gilman Hall, down to Charles Street and over to St. Paul. He walked all the way by himself and without help or reliance on a dog or cane.”
Dr. Price was a prolific contributor to philosophical journals, edited two books and was the author of “Education and Philosophical Thought,” which has been called a standard in the field.
“One book he edited was on the philosophy of education and the other on the philosophy of music,” [a colleague] said. “In later years, he concentrated on aesthetics. One topic he dealt with concerned how to explain the sense in which music can be said to be joyful or sad.”
… He was an accomplished gardener and a connoisseur and collector of fine antique furniture. Earlier in his life, he made furniture in his home workshop.
… On Sept. 11, 2001, Dr. Price was flying back alone from California when all of the airliners were suddenly grounded because of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
“He was stranded in the middle of the country without adequate resources,” [a friend] said.
“Fortunately, he had struck up an acquaintance with his seatmate, who lived near where the plane had stopped. This man so enjoyed Kingsley’s company that he took him home as a houseguest and entertained him until flights resumed,” he said…
November 12th, 2009 at 4:44PM
He was my Great Uncle, what a loss. My Mom is really sad but what an extraordinary life this man led. How very proud I am to call him family. He is remembered. Lori
November 12th, 2009 at 8:38PM
Thank you for writing, Lori. He was clearly a most remarkable man.
November 14th, 2009 at 10:05AM
I am Uncle Kingsley’s oldest Niece. I remember so many great things about him. We would take walks when I was very young and I would try to walk past my grandmother’s house and he would correct me. He would play the baby grand for me and I loved especially Malaguania and Claire de Loon. He wouldn’t send presents on Birthdays but just would surprise me with wonderful books when it was out of the blue. He had the front porch full of beautiful tuberos begonia’s and a persian cat named Grushanka. He was very special to all who knew him and I am Sad too like Barbara.
Carol Anne
August 27th, 2020 at 6:59PM
I used to read for Dr. Price at Berkeley in the early 1970s. I found him to be an extraordinary intellect and wonderful companion. He could absorb complex ideas as fast as I could read them to him. Despite the handicap of blindness, he made many friends around Berkeley. When we walked the streets, we couldn’t go far before someone shouted out to him.
August 27th, 2020 at 8:22PM
Anthony: One of the pleasures of maintaining a blog like this one is that comments like yours come in years after a post and draw me back to the post. Thank you for reminding me about this remarkable human being. UD
November 23rd, 2024 at 5:03PM
I just came upon this obit as I was curious about the fate of my JHU professors. I took an ethics course with Professor Price. It was excellent. He was inspirational. That was about 60 years ago. I am glad he lived a long life. He was an extraordinary person.
November 24th, 2024 at 9:11AM
Marc: Thanks for writing. I reread the obit, and man. The 9/11 account was amazing, of course. But so was his whole life.
December 1st, 2024 at 9:58AM
Hello Anthony,
I also read for Dr. Price as a student at U.C. in the early 70s.
He was truly remarkable.
Question: Do you recall his address on Panoramic Way?
Thank you,
John
December 16th, 2024 at 12:07AM
I used to work for Dr. Price in the mid nineties, reading to him his mail and other things, gardening, painting, cleaning and I helped him a bit with his transition from his house to his apartment. I really honor the time I spent with him and was proud to help him out for a while.
December 16th, 2024 at 9:10AM
Thanks, Matt. It’s been wonderful for me to get details of Price’s remarkable life from people who knew him.
February 3rd, 2026 at 5:32AM
I am just in the middle of a zoom session with a blind student and I encouraged her by telling her about my memories of Prof. Price from my days at Johns Hopkins back in the 1970s.
February 3rd, 2026 at 2:59PM
Berel: Wonderful!
February 17th, 2026 at 3:28PM
I, too, read for Kingsley back in the late 1960s at Johns Hopkins. He liked my reading because I could read very fast with no expression. He hated it when people would try to add “emotion” to their reading. He really was quite the character. He and I used to bop around Baltimore in my topless MGA. One time, we were having dinner in one of those now-nonexistent apartment buildings on Charles or St. Paul Streets where residents and outsiders could eat in an old-fashioned dining room. He lived there before buying his place. For dessert, we had what was described as “homemade peach charlotte”. After a bite or two, he remarked, “This charlotte is so bad it couldn’t be anything BUT homemade!” He offered a course on Wittgenstein. I would read a line from the Tractatus in German, then again, and again, and again, and then in English again, again, and again. Drove me crazy. He has a fantastic sense of humor and loved reading novels. Once, I read him the entire Mrs. Dalloway at top speed in one sitting. He thoroughly enjoyed that. We kept in touch until his death.
February 17th, 2026 at 9:44PM
Daniel: Wonderful anecdotes! The Mrs Dalloway story reminded me of the character in Waugh’s A Handful of Dust who has to read all of Charles Dickens out loud…
June 13th, 2026 at 12:55AM
My father Ronald Andrew Slipper shared a room with Kingsley Price for two years at Berkley. Kingsley and my mechanical engineer Dad discussed all matters- Dad was struck by Kingsley’s doubt that he would ever fall in love or get married. When Dad left the USA to return to Australia he promised that if he ever had a son he would name him after Kingsley and Kingsley P would be his God-Father. Thats me! I met Kingsley twice: once in Baltimore with my parents and sister in 1980, then ten years later having finished university. My strongest memory is Kingsley taking me to the permanent art collection of his Faculty. He asked me to describe the paintings and sculptures – his way of getting to know people. Special memories.
June 13th, 2026 at 10:30AM
Kingsley – Thank you so much for that wonderful addition to the tales about him I’ve been able to collect here. UD
September 12th, 2026 at 10:23AM
The anecdote at the end of this article about Kingsley’s experience on 9/11 is conceptually correct but not entirely accurate. I was the person who was with him in San Francisco and on the 25th Anniversary of our chance encounter I thought I would set the record straight.
Both of us were scheduled to fly out that morning from SFO, he to Baltimore and me to Vermont by way of Pittsburgh. Shortly after the scope of tragic day was understood, everyone was cleared out of the terminal, and I jumped onto a hotel shuttle bus that serviced the airport Marriott and Hyatt hotels. I took the first open seat which was on an aisle, next to Kingsley. There was very little conversation, everyone was still stunned by what we had seen on the TV’s in the terminal. When the bus stopped first at the Marriott I asked Kingsley if he was getting off there. He said he wasn’t sure where he should go, asked me where I was going, and when I told him I was going to the Hyatt, he said he’d try that hotel too.
At the registration desk Kingsley told the clerk that he didn’t travel with credit cards and that he had limited cash since he was at the end of his trip and expected to be home that night. I offered to put his room and charges onto my credit card, knowing he would reimburse me once he got home. Before heading to our rooms, we agreed to meet for lunch.
Over the next three days, Kingsley and I took all of our meals together and we also took walks on a sidewalk near the hotel that followed the fence line of the airport. It was eerily quiet walking in full view of the runways that typically saw a constant stream of jets taking off and landing.
I don’t know if I could have found a better companion for those three days than Kingsley. To be honest, I don’t specifically recall anything we discussed. Each of us were longing to get home, frightened for how the world had changed forever, but we both found comfort in our conversations and the company of each other.
There was great uncertainty about when commercial airplanes would resume service. Each of us spent a lot of time waiting on hold with the airline reservation offices trying to reschedule our flights home. I believe it was Friday, 9/14, when both of us were finally rebooked on outgoing flights. That morning, we got back on the shuttle bus and upon disembarking at the curb we started to walk to the check in counters. The lines were enormous, stretching outside the terminal. The article mentioned that Kingsley never used a cane, but I have a very clear recollection that he had one. He hadn’t been using it on our walks, as he simply held my elbow as a guide, but as we approached the terminal, I told him to get it out. When he asked me why, I said, “That cane is a sign that says, ‘I’m blind and I’m going to the front of the line.’” And that’s what we did, where a gracious USAirways reservations clerk guided us discreetly to a ticketing agent who issued both of us our boarding passes.
With passes in hand, we walked thru the new security screens that had been hastily set up, and I accompanied Kingsley to his gate. After saying heartfelt goodbyes, I went to my gate, and by the grace of God and USAirways, both of us made it home that night.
Needless to say, a check to reimburse me for his hotel charges arrived within a week. Included in the envelope were a sampling of articles that Kingsley had published, including Does Music Have Meaning? from the British Journal of Aesthetics. A few years ago, when my wife and I moved out of our Vermont home of forty-plus years, I threw or gave away a lifetime of accumulated ephemera, including many items from my career at Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. But I kept the file folder with all the articles Kingsley had sent me, and they remind me of a time when something beautiful emerged from the most inconceivable tragic turn of events.
Kingsley and I spoke only two or three times after we parted ways in SFO, once I believe on the first-year anniversary of 9/11, but perhaps as might be expected, we lost contact over time. I retold this story to a friend last night, as we shared where each of us were on 9/11, and after getting home I googled Kingsley’s name and came across this post. I knew he had passed away and I think I had read this once prior, long ago, but I had never commented on it. Reflecting yesterday upon all the grief and sorrow from that day twenty-five years ago, I thought it would be worthwhile to more fully share the details of what I know was a very meaningful event in both Kingsley’s life and mine.