More than a score of friends, colleagues, and former students spoke Sunday at the Low Library, recalling Sidney Morgenbesser’s vigorous scholarly life and passion for conversation.

The John Dewey professor emeritus of philosophy, Morgenbesser died this summer at age 82. Having begun teaching at Columbia in 1954, he influenced generations of Columbia students. How does one describe a towering intellectual who once said his three greatest heroes begin with the letter J – John Dewey, Jeremiah the Prophet, and Joe DiMaggio.

“There can be no taking the measure of Sidney, there can be no putting one’s finger on him, not on this occasion not on any other,” said David Albert, after welcoming attendees on behalf of the Columbia philosophy department, describing him as too vast, deep, complicated, funny, and fast.

“Most of us are going to be talking about him for the rest of our lives. And other people are going to be talking about him after we’re gone. And I suspect we are never going to hear the end of him.”

Mr. Albert described Morgenbesser as a “philosopher in the nearly gigantic, primordial sense of the word” who knew better than most that knowledge is hard.

Mr. Albert recalled how at Morgenbesser’s funeral, sociologist Allan Silver said that Sidney had raised embarrassment to a place of high moral dignity.

“I think he did very much the same thing with kvetching,” Mr. Albert added, recalling how Morgenbesser once told him that there were “exactly two circumstances in which he was capable of feeling in touch with the eternal, in which he was capable of feeling that time had somehow ceased to matter. One was on seeing a student’s eyes light up on suddenly understanding exactly what it was that (say) some particular passage in Plato was getting at – and the other was on Yom Kippur, when he could sit in shul and listen to the kvetching of the whole world, and feel it roll down onto him from all people, through all the generations, back to the beginning of time.”

Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam recalled being a student in a reading course in the philosophy of science 55 years ago when Morgenbesser was a graduate student. He also recalled examples of Morgenbesser’s famed wit: “What is Jewish decision theory? Maximize regrets.” Linguist Noam Chomsky said that underneath the surface of wit was a voice of penetrating reason, sympathetic understanding, Socratic instruction, and deep compassion.

Brandeis philosopher Alan Berger, who first met Morgenbesser in the late 1960s, often met Morgenbesser in his unofficial office – the Chock full o’ Nuts Coffee shop.

He described Morgenbesser’s contributions to scholarship, including being “the greatest authority in the logic of social inquiry, especially in economics”; making important contributions in the philosophy of science, especially his notion that he called “intertwining.” Most of his ideas, Mr. Berger said, live on in books and articles of his friends who are deeply indebted to him.

Philip Kitcher recalled how after a conversation the night before, Morgenbesser would call to say, “I’m afraid I wasn’t so clear yesterday.” Moshe Halbertal described him as “a master of distinctions and there were just too many to be made.”

Ofrah Rechter recalled meeting him on the stairs of a college building, and he would begin in mid-sentence, picking up on a conversation, as if there had been no intervening weeks or months. It was like meeting philosophy itself, Ofrah Rechter said.

“He just read more than the rest of us,” said Charles Parsons, recalling his office and apartment overflowing with books. Similarly, Nation publisher Victor Navasky recalled, as a freshman at Swarthmore in 1950, entering his office, piled with books like “an obstacle course.”

Assigned him as an adviser because of listing philosophy as a possible major, Mr. Navasky sought advice about courses to take: the only important course to take “is mine – and you’re in,” Morgenbesser informed him.

Mr. Navasky recalled Morgenbesser’s indomitable spirit. During a sunny spring day while on the porch of Parrish Hall, Morgenbesser broke into song:

Oh, the cloakmakers’ union is a no-good union,
It’s a company union by the bosses.
The right-wing cloak makers and the Socialist fakers
Are making by the workers double crosses.
The Hillquits and Dubinskys and the Thomases
Are making by the workers false promises,
They preach Socialism, but they practice Fascism
To preserve Capitalism by the bosses
Hoo ha!

Mr. Navasky later asked him to join the Nation editorial board.

Aesthetician Arthur Danto, who got to know Morgenbesser in 1952, recalled one imperturbable scholar making the distinction that a religious man never doubts but a philosopher doubts.

Turning to Mr. Danto, Morgenbesser said sotto voce, “The Lubavitcher Rebbe has had more doubts in a single night than that man has had in his entire life.”

Noting Morgenbesser’s “uncommonly free mind,” Leon Wieseltier said Morgenbesser’s life exemplified that compassion is also an idea, rationality also a sentiment, and that the heart prepares the mind.

Mr. Wieseltier led the time-honored Jewish prayer for the dead, standing ironically in front of a Bodhisattva in a glass case behind him.

One Columbia professor later discussed which Hebrew pronunciation Mr. Wieseltier should have been using – in other words, just the kind of discussion Morgenbesser would have enjoyed – and had an opinion on.