Elton A. Hall

Biography

Growing up in a fundamentalist family, science and history brought me into a larger world in high school (Redondo Beach, California). Occidental College provided an excellent program in philosophy, which included religious studies, and I graduated with All-College Honors in 1963. I studied philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, receiving an M.A. in philosophy in 1965 and completed all but the dissertation there. Teaching at Moorhead State University in Minnesota, I introduced classes in Hinduism, Buddhism and Chinese religious thought for the first time at that institution. When I moved to California State University, Fresno, I was involved in developing religious studies there, including Eastern religions and early Christianity. Though I took history courses as an undergraduate, the early religious history of various traditions grabbed my attention which quickly came to include the Italian Renaissance and often misunderstood Enlightenment period. Over time, it became clear that one cannot really understand philosophy or religion without a broad knowledge of history. Now that I am retired, I find that I study more than I could when full-time teaching, and I enjoy providing adult education courses in philosophy and religious studies, including several years at the Osher Institute at Boise State University in Idaho.