Portraits of American Philosophy by Steven M. Cahn

Author:Steven M. Cahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

And today, more than fifty years after that meeting, it is still the image that comes to mind when I think of what democracy at its best really means.

In March 1965, I was denied tenure at Yale, and suddenly, I found myself involved in a famous tenure dispute. Two thousand students marched for me and for several days kept all-night vigils around the president’s office—demanding reconsideration of my case. Dozens of letters by philosophers and supporters from all over the country poured into Yale. The story was picked up by the national media. I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut and to stay away from the demonstrations, but reports of what was happening at Yale were broadcast on all the networks and written about in Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times. I think the story got so much national publicity because this was the first major student demonstration in the Ivy League; it was a time when students were protesting that universities were stressing research at the expense of fulfilling their mission as teaching institutions. I enjoyed some popularity as a teacher, although I also had begun publishing and had written a couple of books. The students carried placards protesting my dismissal. And my favorite was the one that read, “Homer Was A Two Book Man.” Anyway, the media made me into some sort of hero—and as a result, I was approached by thirty-six colleges and universities inquiring if I wanted to join their faculties. In order to tell the truth and the whole truth, I should mention that just a few years ago, David Crocker, who had been one of my teaching assistants in 1964, told me that one of the students in the large introductory course I taught was a very weak freshman by the name of George W. Bush. When I discovered this, I told my own president at the New School, Bob Kerrey, that Socrates was also famous for his failures.

When I left Yale, I was also the editor of the Review of Metaphysics. Paul Weiss had founded the Review of Metaphysics in the 1940s. The Review was run in a very unusual manner. Paul read all the submitted manuscripts and made all the decisions about what to publish. Everyone who submitted a manuscript received a personal letter—regardless of whether his or her manuscript was accepted or rejected. At a time when many “prestigious” philosophic journals would publish only analytic articles, the Review was genuinely pluralistic. Quine, Sellars, and Rorty, Leo Strauss, Hans Jonas, and even Heidegger were contributors to the Review. Paul asked me to be managing editor and then assistant editor when I was still in my twenties. I was never attracted by Paul Weiss’s grand style of metaphysical speculation, but few teachers had a greater influence on me. Paul was the quickest and sharpest critic I ever encountered. He could quickly detect the weakest point of any argument—and go for the jugular. When a manuscript was submitted to the Review, I read it and wrote a comment.

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