The Carus Lectures are a prestigious series of three lectures presented over three consecutive days in
plenary session
A plenary session or plenum is a session of a conference which all members of all parties are to attend. Such a session may include a broad range of content, from keynotes to panel discussions, and is not necessarily related to a specific styl ...
s at a divisional meeting of the
American Philosophical Association
The American Philosophical Association (APA) is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly ...
. The series was founded in 1925 with
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
as the inaugural presenter. The series was scheduled irregularly until 1995, when they were scheduled to occur every two years. The series is named in honor of
Paul Carus
Paul Carus (; 18 July 1852 – 11 February 1919) was a German-American author, editor, a student of comparative religion by Mary Carus and is published by Open Court.
[O'Brien, Ken (October 23, 1994). Roots of Carus Corp. reach back to Germany. '']Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'' In his introduction to the inaugural speech,
Hartley Burr Alexander
Hartley Burr Alexander, PhD (1873–1939), was an American philosopher, writer, educator, scholar, poet, and iconographer.
Family and early years
Alexander was born in Syracuse, Nebraska, on April 9, 1873. His father, the Rev. George Sherman Alex ...
praised the series as an unusual opportunity of presenting ideas "with no institutional atmosphere to further the free play of the mind upon all phases of life."
[Alexander Hartley Burr. Introduction. In Dewey, John (1925) ''Experience and Nature.'' Kessinger Publishing, reprint 2003, ]
Lecturers
*1925
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
"Experience and Nature" Inaugural lecture
*1925-1939
William Montague "Great Visions of Philosophy"
*1925-1939
A.O. Lovejoy "The Revolt Against Dualism"
*1930
George H. Mead "The Philosophy of the Present"
*1939
E.B. McGilvary "Toward a Perspective Realism"
*1945
C.I. Lewis "An Analysis of Knowledge"
*1945
Morris R. Cohen
Morris Raphael Cohen ( be, Мо́рыс Рафаэ́ль Ко́эн; July 25, 1880 – January 28, 1947) was an American philosopher, lawyer, and legal scholar who united pragmatism with logical positivism and linguistic analysis. This union coale ...
"The Meaning of Human History"
*1949
C.J. Ducasse "Nature, Mind, and Death"
*1953
J. Loewenberg "Reason and the Nature of Things"
*1955
A.E. Murphy "An Inquiry Concerning Moral Understanding"
*1957
George Boas
George Boas (; 28 August 1891 – 17 March 1980) was a professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He received his education at Brown University, obtaining both a BA and MA in philosophy there, after which he studied shortly at ...
"The Inquiring Mind"
*1959
Brand Blanshard
Percy Brand Blanshard (; August 27, 1892 – November 19, 1987) was an American philosopher known primarily for his defense of reason and rationalism. A powerful polemicist, by all accounts he comported himself with courtesy and grace in philosop ...
"Reason and Analysis"
*1963
Ernest Nagel
Ernest Nagel (November 16, 1901 – September 20, 1985) was an American philosopher of science. Suppes, Patrick (1999)Biographical memoir of Ernest Nagel In '' American National Biograph''y (Vol. 16, pp. 216-218). New York: Oxford University Pr ...
"The Dimensions of Critical Philosophy"
*1964
Stephen Pepper
Stephen C. Pepper (April 29, 1891 – May 1, 1972) was an American pragmatism philosopher, the Mills Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. He may be best known for World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence (1942) but was ...
"Concept and Quality"
*1965
Richard McKeon
Richard McKeon (; April 26, 1900 – March 31, 1985) was an American philosopher and longtime professor at the University of Chicago. His ideas formed the basis for the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Life, times, and influences
McKeo ...
"Facts, Categories, Experience"
*1967
Roderick Chisholm
Roderick Milton Chisholm (; November 27, 1916 – January 19, 1999) was an American philosopher known for his work on epistemology, metaphysics, free will, value theory, and the philosophy of perception.
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ...
"Person and Object: A Metaphysical Study"
*1970
Carl G. Hempel
Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel (January 8, 1905 – November 9, 1997) was a German writer, philosopher, logician, and epistemologist. He was a major figure in logical empiricism, a 20th-century movement in the philosophy of science. He is espec ...
*1972
W.V. Quine "
The Roots of Reference"
*1974
William Frankena
William Klaas Frankena (June 21, 1908 – October 22, 1994) was an American moral philosopher. He was a member of the University of Michigan's department of philosophy for 41 years (1937–1978), and chair of the department for 14 years (1947 ...
"Three Questions about Morality"
*1976
Gregory Vlastos
Gregory Vlastos (; el, Γρηγόριος Βλαστός; July 27, 1907 – October 12, 1991) was a preeminent scholar of ancient philosophy, and author of many works on Plato and Socrates. He transformed the analysis of classical philosophy ...
*1977
Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States".
Life and career
His father ...
"Foundations for a Metaphysics of Pure Process"
*1980
Donald Davidson "The Grounds of Truth and Value"
*1983
Paul Grice
Herbert Paul Grice (13 March 1913 – 28 August 1988), usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, or Paul Grice, was a British philosopher of language. He is best known for his theory of implicature and the cooperative prin ...
"The Conception of Value"
*1985
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...
"The Many Faces of Realism"
*1988
Stanley Cavell
Stanley Louis Cavell (; September 1, 1926 – June 19, 2018) was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, an ...
"Emersonian Strains: 'The American Scholar and Heidegger on Thinking,' 'Experience and Wittgenstein Skepticism,' and 'Self-Reliance and American Cinema"
*1990
Kurt Baier
Kurt Baier (26 January 1917 – 7 November 2010) was an Austrians, Austrian moral philosopher who taught for most of his career in Australia and the United States.
Life and career
Born in Vienna, Austria, Baier studied law at the University of V ...
"The Rational and the Moral Order"
*1995
Annette Baier
Annette Claire Baier (née Stoop; 11 October 1929 – 2 November 2012) was a New Zealand philosopher and Hume scholar, focused in particular on Hume's moral psychology. She was well known also for her contributions to feminist philosophy and to t ...
"The Commons of the Mind"
*1997
Alasdair MacIntyre
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (; born 12 January 1929) is a Scottish-American philosopher who has contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's '' After Virtue'' (1981) is one of the most ...
"Dependent Rational Animals"
*1999
Ruth Barcan Marcus
Ruth Barcan Marcus (; born Ruth Charlotte Barcan; 2 August 1921 – 19 February 2012) was an American academic philosopher and logician best known for her work in modal and philosophical logic. She developed the first formal systems of quant ...
(Withdrew/Cancelled)
*2001
Arthur Danto
Arthur Coleman Danto (January 1, 1924 – October 25, 2013) was an American art critic, philosopher, and professor at Columbia University. He was best known for having been a long-time art critic for ''The Nation'' and for his work in philosophi ...
*2003
Judith J. Thomson
*2005
Tyler Burge
Tyler Burge (; born 1946) is an American philosopher who is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Burge has made contributions to many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, philosophy of logic, epistemology, philosop ...
*2007
Bas van Fraassen
Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen (; born 1941) is a Dutch-American philosopher noted for his contributions to philosophy of science, epistemology and formal logic. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University and ...
*2009
Ernest Sosa
Ernest Sosa (born June 17, 1940) is an American philosopher primarily interested in epistemology. Since 2007 he has been Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, but he spent most of his career at Brown University.
Educa ...
*2011
Sally Haslanger
Sally Haslanger () is an American philosopher and professor. She is the Ford Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She held the 2015 Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at ...
*2013
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Kwame Akroma-Ampim Kusi Anthony Appiah ( ; born 8 May 1954) is a philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. Appiah wa ...
*2015
Claudia Card
Claudia Falconer Card (September 30, 1940 – September 12, 2015) was the Emma Goldman (WARF) Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with teaching affiliations in Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, Environmental Studi ...
*2017
Nancy Cartwright
Nancy Cartwright (born October 25, 1957) is an American actress. She is the long-time voice of Bart Simpson on the animated television series ''The Simpsons'', for which she has received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Perform ...
See also
*
Carus Mathematical Monographs
The ''Carus Mathematical Monographs'' is a monograph series published by the Mathematical Association of America.Drake, Miriam A. (2003). ''Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Lib-Pub.'' CRC Press, Books in this series are intended t ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Carus Lecturesvia
American Philosophical Association
The American Philosophical Association (APA) is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly ...
Philosophy events
Lecture series