ABSTRACT
Edward Shils wrote A Fragment of a Sociological Autobiography: The History of My Pursuit of a Few Ideas during the years of 1991 and 1992, when he was eighty-one years old. He was in full command of his considerable intellectual abilities, and remained so until only a few months before his death in January 1995. I was in a position to judge firsthand how intellectually powerful he remained during even the last six months of his life; for, in July 1994, I accompanied him to the meeting of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen held at the summer residence, Castelgandolfo, of Pope John Paul II. Cancer had spread throughout his body, and the treatments of chemotherapy had physically exhausted him to the point where he could not travel alone, which is why I was with him in Italy and, later, England. Nonetheless, his comments during the discussions at Castelgandolfo were in full accord with the intellectual insight and bravery that were characteristic of him throughout his life. I remember one evening at Castelgandolfo Paul Ricoeur saying to me that, while he did not always agree with Shils’ views, he had always admired Shils’ intellectual and personal bravery, and never more so than at that time in Italy.
