Henry Leroy Finch, Jr.


Henry Leroy Finch, Jr., also known as Roy Finch was an American scholar and professor of philosophy and a pacifist organizer.

Early Life and Education

Roy Finch was born in New York, NY, the oldest child of Henry Le Roy Finch and Mary Farquhar Baker. His grandfather was Stephen Baker, President of the Bank of the Manhattan Company. He had three brothers: Charles B. Finch Jr., Stephen Baker Finch, and John Finch. He attended the Buckley School, Phillips Academy, and Yale University. During World War II he registered as a conscientious objector. After the war he earned a Ph.D in Philosophy at Columbia University, writing a dissertation on the pre-Socratic philosophers.

Career in Philosophy and Religion

Finch was a professor of philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College from 1952-1972 and in the Department of Philosophy at Hunter College from 1973-1989. A devoted student of world religions including Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Taoism, he founded the Seminars in World Religion at Columbia University and organized the first conference on Buddhist thinker Dogen held in the United States. He was also active in the Gurdjieff Foundation. He was interested in the work of Eric Gutkind and Simone Weil and was one of the founders of the American Weil Society in 1970.

Pacifism

Henry Leroy Finch, Jr. was a pacifist and conscientious objector during World War II. He served in Civilian Public Service Camp 11 and Camp 37. The first two were engaged in U.S. Forest Service efforts, and the latter was a mental hospital. After the war, Finch worked as an editor for Alternative and Liberation. For a time he was involved with the American Forum for Socialist Education, but his primary affiliations were with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and War Resisters League. He hosted a pacifist radio show and involved in the formation of Public Radio in the United States and specifically WBAI Radio in New York.
Finch was known as Roy in pacifist circles during the 1940s-1950s.

Personal Life

Finch married poet and artist Margaret Evelyn Rockwell in 1947. Their five children are Margaret Finch, Martha Willard Finch, Mary Dabney Baker Finch, Annie Ridley Crane Finch and Henry Leroy Finch III .

Archives

Henry L. Finch's papers on pacifism are held in the Swarthmore Peace Collection at Swarthmore College.
His philosophical papers are included in the archive of Annie Finch in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.