Arnold Siegel announcement
1939 – 2025
On January 21st, 2025, after a brief illness, Arnold Siegel died peacefully at his home in Mill Valley, CA. He faced death as he faced life, philosophically, artfully and poetically. He loved his life, he loved his work, he loved his family, his students and his friends. He wanted to live. Yet, he understood that our lives are finite. In the last of his days, with the same strength, courage and joy for the rich and meaningful life he had created, knowing that his was coming to an end, he accepted his fate with grace, dignity and love.
Arnold will be remembered for the profound contribution he made to so many. He authored a life-altering ontological perspective for the ages. He taught his students how to live a good life, to strive for being a self-possessed enduring public person and to be at home in the world. He will be greatly missed.
Autonomy and Life represents Arnold Siegel’s work. This site offers a view into his unique voice, his commitment to the challenge to “know thyself” and his enormous contribution to the transformative experiment that supports civilized life in America. Its content looks to define the rich and dynamic ontology of the free individual, identifying the free individual with the public person in principled possession of itself. Arnold's hope was for this content to be relevant and meaningful in our efforts to know who we are and create and live a life of our own design.
The classes and coursework Arnold Siegel conducted reflected his ongoing effort to push the horizons of this new philosophical paradigm. This paradigmatic shift in ontology offered a more real and useful description for addressing our natural and social circumstances, together with a practical methodology for autonomously authoring a more free, more self-possessed, more authentically original and fulfilling life.
Plans are currently underway to create new opportunities for his students to continue their studies and development in this new performative ontology, which Arnold has so beautifully left in our hands.