Richard McKeon
| Richard McKeon | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 26, 1900 Union Hill New Jersey |
| Died | March 31, 1985 Chicago, Illinois |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | American New Rhetoric |
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Main interests
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philosophy, rhetoric, science and metaphysics, pluralism, communication, history of philosophy |
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Influences
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Richard McKeon (/məˈkiːən/; April 26, 1900 – March 31, 1985) was an American philosopher.
McKeon obtained his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1920, graduating at the early age of 20 despite serving briefly in the U.S. Navy during the First World War. Continuing at Columbia, he completed a Master's thesis on Leo Tolstoy, Benedetto Croce, and George Santayana, also in 1920, and a doctoral thesis on Baruch Spinoza in 1922. In his doctoral studies, McKeon's mentors were Frederick J. E. Woodbridge and John Dewey. From Woodbridge, McKeon would later write, he learned that "what philosophers meant might be comparable or even identical, despite differences in their modes of expression," while Dewey taught him how "to seek the significance of philosophic positions in the problems they were constructed to solve." He then studied philosophy in Paris, where his teachers included Étienne Gilson, until he began teaching at Columbia in 1925.
In 1934, McKeon was appointed visiting professor of History at the University of Chicago, beginning a 40-year association with that university. The following year, he assumed a permanent position as professor of Greek philosophy, a post he filled for twelve years. As professor and, starting in 1940, as Dean of the Humanities, McKeon was instrumental in developing the distinguished general education program of the Hutchins era at the University of Chicago. He later founded Chicago's interdisciplinary Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods. He presided over the Western division of the American Philosophical Association in 1952, and over the International Institute of Philosophy from 1953 to 1957. In 1966, he gave the Paul Carus Lectures. He retired in 1974.
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