Seale Doss

Philosophy

For 35 years, from 1964 to 1999, Seale R. Doss was a professor of philosophy at Ripon College. He was born Oct. 4, 1929, in Grapevine, Texas. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics, math and philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to teaching, he had spent eight years in the newspaper business as a reporter, columnist and assistant editor. Other schools at which he taught include the University of California and the University of Washington.

He served in the U.S. Army in Korea, Germany, Vietnam, the Middle East, and Latin America, commanding several Army Reserve and Army Special Forces groups. An avid paratrooper, he commanded the 12th Special Forces Group, an airborne Green Beret group which prepared for international missions and support for allied nations. After he left the group, he was promoted to brigadier general and served in intelligence.

He made more than 780 jumps, completing his last at the age of 89.

He anticipated what came to be known as asymmetrical warfare and wrote and spoke about this emerging tactic. He worked on studies for the Department of Defense and received the Army’s Legion of Merit award in 1974.

Research was an important part of his work, and his studies included the existential phenomenological theory of truth and the problem of war and morality. He lectured at many universities and conferences, from Hawaii to Vermont to the Pentagon. He also published articles on the nature of truth, of logic, and of the relationships between rational thinking and the visual presentation of ideas.

At Ripon, he was a major contributor to the First Year Studies Program, Leadership Studies Program, Ripon College Press, Ripon College Museum, a major curricular restructuring of the Department of Philosophy and the first sustained course concerned with film at the College.

Teaching honors included Ripon’s May Bumby Severy, Class of 1908, Award in 1968, 1983 and 1985, and the Senior Class Award in 1969.

He was the author of “Elementary Logic for Philosophy Students,” and after his retirement, he published several novels.

Family members who attended Ripon include two sons, Jonathan Doss, Class of 1983, and Vonelly Doss, Class of 1988; a daughter, Erika Doss, Class of 1978, and a 2018 recipient of Ripon’s Distinguished Alumni Citation; and a son-in-law, Geoffrey Thrumston, Class of 1978.

A faculty resolution of appreciation at the time of his retirement stated: “Professor Doss quickly became one of the more colorful and controversial members of the Ripon faculty … (with) his sustained effort to make philosophy relevant — relevant to other disciplines, relevant to military practice and strategy, relevant to academic practice and college policy, and relevant to individual lives. …

“No one who knew him will forget the abundant creativeness of his ideas or the forceful eloquence with which he presented them or … the lengths to which he was willing to go to share them. And no one who knew him at all well will ever forget the glaring and glowing example he provided of someone who, as he might have phrased it, goddamn cared about liberal education at Ripon College.”

Doss died Aug. 3, 2022, at the age of 92.