Professor Burbidge took his graduate studies in philosophy at Yale University and the University of Toronto. He studied theology at Heidelberg University in Germany, and has done research at the Centre de Recherche et Documentation sur Hegel et Marx in Poitiers, France; the Oxford Centre for post-graduate Hebrew Studies; the Hegel Archiv in Bochum, Germany; the University of Exeter and in Rome, Italy. In retirement, John Burbidge continued to ponder philosophical questions. In 2013 he published a systematic discussion of questions in epistemology and the philosophy of logic, entitled Ideas, Concepts, and Reality, followed in 2014 by Cause for Thought: An Essay in Metaphysics, both published by McGill-Queen's University Press. In addition, he has added Historical Dictionary of Hegelian Philosophy(Scarecrow), The Logic of Hegel's Logic: An Introduction (Broadview), and Hegel's Systematic Contingency (Palgrave Macmillan) to his previous studies of Hegel's logic and philosophy of nature: On Hegel's Logic (Humanities/Prometheus), Hegel on Logic and Religion (SUNY), and Real Process: How Logic and Chemistry Combine in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature (University of Toronto). He was involved in translating Hegel's Jena Logic and Metaphysics, 1803-4 and Jacques D'Hondt's Hegel in his Time; and he has edited Emil Fackenheim's The God Within. Earlier in his career he wrote two works of philosophical theology: One in Hope and Doctrine (Ryerson) and Being and Will (Paulist); and an introduction to non-deductive reasoning: Within Reason (Broadview). In addition he has taken up the avocation of book binding and repair, and has sent decrepit volumes that originated from the 17th to the 21st centuries back to their owners in a restored and usable state. Professor Burbidge is a past president of the Hegel Society of America, and has received Trent University's Distinguished Research Award, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and was elected honorary president of the Hegel Society of Great Britain in 2008. Professor Burbidge passed away on November 2, 2023.
Professor Burbidge's Obituary can be found here: John W. Burbidge