| Founder | Paul Weiss |
|---|---|
| Established | 1950 |
| Mission | To advance the study of metaphysics |
| President | Lawrence Cahoone |
| Location | United States |
| Website |
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.
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.
| Year | President | Presidential address |
|---|---|---|
| 1952 | Paul Weiss | "The Past: Its Nature and Reality" |
| 1953 | Paul Weiss | "The Contemporary World" |
| 1954 | John Wild | "The New Empiricism and Human Time" |
| 1955 | Charles Hartshorne | "Some Empty Though Important Thoughts" |
| 1956 | Newton P. Stallknecht | "The Quality of Man" |
| 1957 | George Klubertanz | "The Problem of the Analogy of Being" |
| 1958 | William Ernest Hocking | "Fact, Field and Destiny: Inductive Elements of Metaphysics" |
| 1959 | Rudolph Allers | "The Subjective and the Objective" |
| 1960 | Richard McKeon | "Being, Existence, and That Which Is" |
| 1961 | Henry Veatch | "Matrix, Matter, And Method in Metaphysics" |
| 1962 | James Daniel Collins | "The Bond of Natural Being" |
| 1963 | Donald Cary Williams | "Necessary Facts" |
| 1964 | Peter Bertocci | "Toward a Metaphysics of Creation" |
| 1965 | Francis H. Parker | "The Temporal Being of Western Man" |
| 1966 | Robert Brumbaugh | "Applied Metaphysics: Truth and Passing Time" |
| 1967 | John Herman Randall Jr. | "Metaphysics and Language" |
| 1968 | W. Norris Clarke | "The Self as Source of Meaning in Metaphysics" |
| 1969 | Errol Harris | "The Power of Reason" |
| 1970 | Richard Hocking | "Event, Act and Presence" |
| 1971 | John Edwin Smith | "Being, Immediacy and Articulation" |
| 1972 | Joseph Owens | "Reality and Metaphysics" |
| 1973 | Roderick Chisholm | "Parts as Essential to Their Wholes" |
| 1974 | Ernan McMullin | "Two Faces of Science" |
| 1975 | J. N. Findlay | "The Three Hypostases of Platonism" |
| 1976 | Marjorie Grene | "Merleau-Ponty and the Renewal of Ontology" |
| 1977 | Wilfrid Sellars | "Being as Becoming: Towards a Metaphysics of Pure Reason" |
| 1978 | Andrew Reck | "Being And Substance" |
| 1979 | John Compton | "Reinventing the Philosophy of Nature" |
| 1980 | Kenneth L. Schmitz | "A Moment of Truth: Present Actuality" |
| 1981 | Ivor Leclerc | "The Metaphysics of the Good" |
| 1982 | Thomas Langan | "A Strategy for the Pursuit of Truth" |
| 1983 | Richard T. De George | "Social Reality and Social Relations" |
| 1984 | Jude P. Dougherty | "Structure: Substantial and Other" |
| 1985 | R. M. Martin | "The Metaphysical Status of Mathematical Entities" |
| 1986 | George L. Kline | "Past, Present and Future as Categorical Terms and the Fallacy of the Actual Future" |
| 1987 | Edward Pols | "On Knowing Directly: The Actualization of First Philosophy" |
| 1988 | Richard Bernstein | "Metaphysics, Critique and Utopia" |
| 1989 | Robert Neville | "Value, Courage and Leadership" |
| 1990 | Robert Sokolowski | "The Question of Being" |
| 1991 | Stanley Rosen | "Is Metaphysics Possible" |
| 1992 | Mary T. Clark | "An Inquiry Into Personhood" |
| 1993 | Ralph McInerny | "The Science We Are Seeking" |
| 1994 | Donald Sherburne | "Some Reflections on Sartre's Nothingness and Whitehead's Perishing" |
| 1995 | William Desmond | "Being, Determination and Dialectic: On The Sources of Metaphysical Thinking" |
| 1996 | Sandra B. Rosenthal | "Self, Community, and Time: A Shared Sociality" |
| 1997 | John Lachs | "Valuational Species" |
| 1998 | Eugene Thomas Long | "Quest for Transcendence" |
| 1999 | Oliva Blanchette | "Suárez and the Latent Essentialism of Heidegger's Fundamental Ontology" |
| 2000 | George James Allan | "Perishable Goods" |
| 2001 | Jorge Gracia | "Are Categories Invented or Discovered? A Response to Foucault" |
| 2002 | James Felt | "Epochal Time and The Continuity of Experience" |
| 2003 | Vincent Colapietro | "Striving to Speak in a Human Voice: A Peircean Contribution to Metaphysical Discourse" |
| 2004 | Frederick Ferré | "The Practicality of Metaphysics" |
| 2005 | Nicholas Rescher | "Textuality, Reality and the Limits of Knowledge" |
| 2006 | John Wippel | "Thomas Aquinas on the Ultimate Question: Why Is There Anything at All Rather Than Nothing Whatsoever?" |
| 2007 | Lenn Goodman | "Value and the Dynamics of Being" |
| 2008 | Joseph Grange | "The Generosity of the Good" |
| 2009 | Donald Verene | "Metaphysics and the Origin of Culture" |
| 2010 | Dan Dahlstrom | "Being and Negation" |
| 2011 | Thomas R. Flynn | "Whatever Happened to Humanism? Reconciling the Being of Language and the Being of Man" |
| 2012 | Edward Halper | "Reason and the Rationality of Being" |
| 2013 | May Sim | "Metaphysics and Ethics, East and West" |
| 2014 | Alan White | "Rearticulating Being" |
| 2015 | Richard Dien Winfield | "Self-determination in Logic and Reality" |
| 2016 | George R. Lucas, Jr. | "Anaximander and the Ordering of Time" |
| 2017 | Nancy Frankenberry | "Consenting to Contingency After Rorty and Nagarjuna" |
| 2018 | Richard Velkley | "The Fate of Human Action: The Agency of 'Reason' in Modern Philosophy" |
| 2019 | Daniel Dombrowski | "Metaphysics, Political Philosophy, and the Process of Liberal Political Justification" |
| 2020/2021 | Lawrence Cahoone | "Towards an Ordinal Naturalism" |
| 2022 | Owen Goldin | "Symbolic Classification and the Emergence of a Metaphysics of Causality" |
| 2023 | David Weissman | "Presidential Roundtable with Tim Maudlin and Peter van Inwagen" |
| 2024 | Michael Baur | "Some Thoughts on the Identity and Difference of Knower and Known, and the Difference It Makes" |