Metaphysical Society of America

The Metaphysical Society of America (MSA) is a philosophical organization founded by Paul Weiss in 1950. As stated in its constitution, "The purpose of the Metaphysical Society of America is the study of reality." The society is a member of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Metaphysical Society of America
Founder(s)Paul Weiss
Established1950
MissionTo advance the study of metaphysics
PresidentLawrence Cahoone
Location
United States
Website

Early history and purpose

In his opening address, "The Four-Fold Art of Avoiding Questions", Paul Weiss spoke of the need for a society that would reinvigorate philosophic inquiry. He denounced "parochialism," referring to those who insisted upon "some one method, say that of pragmatism, instrumentalism, idealism, analysis, linguistics or logistics, and denied the importance of meaningfulness of anything which lies beyond its scope or power," as well as those who confined their studies to only some historic era.

Early in the history of the society, there was some dispute about whether certain schools of thought should be included in the program. By the second meeting there was controversy regarding papers by logicians, a controversy possibly fueled by the dominance of positivism in that decade. Before 1960, there had been some fear of admitting the existential metaphysics. However, as Paul Weiss remarked in 1969, the society had succeeded in accomplishing metaphysical diversity:

Gradually and persistently, year after year, men of the most diverse backgrounds and commitments exhibited the strengths and weaknesses of their doctrines and methods. Every year, men from all over the United States met to engage in original and historic studies of basic questions regarding the nature of knowledge and reality.

A book on the history of the society, Being in America: Sixty Years of the Metaphysical Society, was published by Rodopi in 2014 in its Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies Series.

Presidents and addresses

Since the founding of the Metaphysical Society, presidential addresses have been published in the Review of Metaphysics, which was also founded by Paul Weiss.

YearPresidentPresidential address[1]
1952Paul Weiss"The Past: Its Nature and Reality"
1953Paul Weiss"The Contemporary World"
1954John Wild"The New Empiricism and Human Time"
1955Charles Hartshorne"Some Empty Though Important Thoughts"
1956Newton P. Stallknecht"The Quality of Man"
1957George Klubertanz"The Problem of the Analogy of Being"
1958William Ernest Hocking"Fact, Field and Destiny: Inductive Elements of Metaphysics"
1959Rudolph Allers"The Subjective and the Objective"
1960Richard McKeon"Being, Existence, and That Which Is"
1961Henry Veatch"Matrix, Matter, And Method in Metaphysics"
1962James Daniel Collins"The Bond of Natural Being"
1963Donald Cary Williams"Necessary Facts"
1964Peter Bertocci"Toward a Metaphysics of Creation"
1965Francis H. Parker"The Temporal Being of Western Man"
1966Robert Brumbaugh"Applied Metaphysics: Truth and Passing Time"
1967John Herman Randall Jr."Metaphysics and Language"
1968W. Norris Clarke"The Self as Source of Meaning in Metaphysics"
1969Errol Harris"The Power of Reason"
1970Richard Hocking"Event, Act and Presence"
1971John Edwin Smith"Being, Immediacy and Articulation"
1972Joseph Owens"Reality and Metaphysics"
1973Roderick Chisholm"Parts as Essential to Their Wholes"
1974Ernan McMullin"Two Faces of Science"
1975J. N. Findlay"The Three Hypostases of Platonism"
1976Marjorie Grene"Merleau-Ponty and the Renewal of Ontology"
1977Wilfrid Sellars"Being as Becoming: Towards a Metaphysics of Pure Reason"
1978Andrew Reck"Being And Substance"
1979John Compton"Reinventing the Philosophy of Nature"
1980Kenneth L. Schmitz"A Moment of Truth: Present Actuality"
1981Ivor Leclerc"The Metaphysics of the Good"
1982Thomas Langan"A Strategy for the Pursuit of Truth"
1983Richard T. De George"Social Reality and Social Relations"
1984Jude P. Dougherty"Structure: Substantial and Other"
1985R. M. Martin"The Metaphysical Status of Mathematical Entities"
1986George L. Kline"Past, Present and Future as Categorical Terms and the Fallacy of the Actual Future"
1987Edward Pols"On Knowing Directly: The Actualization of First Philosophy"
1988Richard Bernstein"Metaphysics, Critique and Utopia"
1989Robert Neville"Value, Courage and Leadership"
1990Robert Sokolowski"The Question of Being"
1991Stanley Rosen"Is Metaphysics Possible"
1992Mary T. Clark"An Inquiry Into Personhood"
1993Ralph McInerny"The Science We Are Seeking"
1994Donald Sherburne"Some Reflections on Sartre's Nothingness and Whitehead's Perishing"
1995William Desmond"Being, Determination and Dialectic: On The Sources of Metaphysical Thinking"
1996Sandra B. Rosenthal"Self, Community, and Time: A Shared Sociality"
1997John Lachs"Valuational Species"
1998Eugene Thomas Long"Quest for Transcendence"
1999Oliva Blanchette"Suárez and the Latent Essentialism of Heidegger's Fundamental Ontology"
2000George James Allan"Perishable Goods"
2001Jorge Gracia"Are Categories Invented or Discovered? A Response to Foucault"
2002James Felt"Epochal Time and The Continuity of Experience"
2003Vincent Colapietro"Striving to Speak in a Human Voice: A Peircean Contribution to Metaphysical Discourse"
2004Frederick Ferré"The Practicality of Metaphysics"
2005Nicholas Rescher"Textuality, Reality and the Limits of Knowledge"
2006John Wippel"Thomas Aquinas on the Ultimate Question: Why Is There Anything at All Rather Than Nothing Whatsoever?"
2007Lenn Goodman"Value and the Dynamics of Being"
2008Joseph Grange"The Generosity of the Good"
2009Donald Verene"Metaphysics and the Origin of Culture"
2010Dan Dahlstrom"Being and Negation"
2011Thomas R. Flynn"Whatever Happened to Humanism? Reconciling the Being of Language and the Being of Man"
2012Edward Halper"Reason and the Rationality of Being"
2013May Sim"Metaphysics and Ethics, East and West"
2014Alan White"Rearticulating Being"
2015Richard Dien Winfield"Self-determination in Logic and Reality"
2016George R. Lucas, Jr."Anaximander and the Ordering of Time"
2017Nancy Frankenberry"Consenting to Contingency After Rorty and Nagarjuna"
2018Richard Velkley"The Fate of Human Action: The Agency of 'Reason' in Modern Philosophy"
2019Daniel Dombrowski"Metaphysics, Political Philosophy, and the Process of Liberal Political Justification"
2020Lawrence Cahoone"Towards an Ordinal Naturalism"
2021 Owen Goldin TBA

References

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