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| American Metaphysical Society | |
|---|---|
| Name | American Metaphysical Society |
| Type | Learned society |
| Founded | 20th century |
| Headquarters | United States |
| Fields | Philosophy, Metaphysics, Comparative Religion |
American Metaphysical Society The American Metaphysical Society is a scholarly organization dedicated to the study of metaphysics, ontology, and related branches of philosophical inquiry. It engages with figures and institutions across academia and public intellectual life, interacting with philosophers, theologians, and cultural historians linked to movements and works in Western and comparative traditions.
The Society emerged amid intellectual currents shaped by debates involving Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and G.W.F. Hegel-inspired circles, alongside influences from Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Thomas Aquinas. Its early development paralleled scholarly networks including Harvard University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Yale University, University of Chicago, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Paris, Sorbonne University, University of Heidelberg, and Leipzig University. The Society’s formation was contemporary with institutions such as the American Philosophical Society, Royal Society, British Academy, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and organizations linked to figures like William James, Josiah Royce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Karl Popper, and Isaiah Berlin.
The Society articulates a mission resonant with themes explored by Saint Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, Blaise Pascal, Jonathan Edwards, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Sanders Peirce, William Rowan Hamilton, and Henri Bergson. Activities include symposia referencing debates tied to works such as Critique of Pure Reason, Phenomenology of Spirit, Being and Time, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Process and Reality, The Concept of Mind, and The Idea of the Holy. The Society collaborates with departments and centers at The New School, Johns Hopkins University, Brown University, Duke University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, and cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Library of Congress, and The British Museum.
Membership draws scholars associated with programs at Princeton Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, Yale Divinity School, Harvard Divinity School, Claremont Graduate University, Notre Dame University, Georgetown University, Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, Center for Philosophy of Religion, and international institutes like the Max Planck Society, Institut universitaire de France, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Bologna University, University of Toronto, and McGill University. Governance structures are analogous to models used by American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, Modern Language Association, American Historical Association, Association for Symbolic Logic, and Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, with elected officers, executive committees, and standing panels that interact with awards named in the spirit of honors such as the Nobel Prize in Literature-adjacent lectures, Templeton Prize-linked initiatives, and prizes analogous to the Berggruen Prize or MacArthur Fellowship in promoting work on metaphysical themes.
The Society sponsors annual and regional conferences featuring keynote addresses and panels that recall gatherings like the World Congress of Philosophy, International Congress of Philosophy, Society for Applied Philosophy meetings, and symposia tied to journals such as Mind (journal), Philosophical Review, Journal of Philosophy, Nous (journal), The Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, European Journal of Philosophy, American Philosophical Quarterly, Oxford Journal of Philosophy, Harvard Theological Review, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Religious Studies (journal). Its publication output includes edited volumes and monographs similar in scope to works published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Princeton University Press, Harvard University Press, Yale University Press, and periodicals modeled after The Atlantic (magazine) and The New Yorker for public-facing essays. Conferences have been hosted at venues including Carnegie Mellon University, Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institution, Royal Institution, Berlin Philharmonic Hall, and international congress centers.
Affiliates include scholars and public intellectuals whose careers intersect with names like Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Martha Nussbaum, Cornel West, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, Donald Davidson, Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Strawson, G.E.M. Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Wilfrid Sellars, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Dummett, J.L. Austin, Isaiah Berlin, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, Cornelius Castoriadis, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Žižek, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Amartya Sen, Martha Craven Nussbaum, Paul Churchland, Patricia Churchland, David Hume, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Baron d'Holbach, Alexandre Koyré, Ernst Cassirer, Leo Strauss, H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin.
The Society’s intellectual influence resonates with debates tied to movements and texts associated with Analytic philosophy, Continental philosophy, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Pragmatism, Process philosophy, and dialogues involving institutions like The Vatican, World Council of Churches, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, European Union, Council on Foreign Relations, and policy fora linked to Brookings Institution and Hoover Institution. Criticisms echo controversies surrounding figures such as Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Herbert Marcuse, Noam Chomsky, and debates over canonical works including Being and Time, Of Grammatology, Discipline and Punish, Dialectic of Enlightenment, and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, with interlocutors from Scientific American-styled venues, legal theorists like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, theologians like Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, and historians such as Edward Gibbon and Fernand Braudel.
Category:Philosophical societies