The Metaphysical Society of America is a philosophical

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 organization founded by Paul Weiss

Paul Weiss (philosopher)

Paul Weiss was an American philosopher.-Background:Paul Weiss grew up on the lower east side of New York City. His father, Samuel Weiss , was a Hungarian emigrant who moved from Europe in the 1890s. He worked as a tinsmith, a coppersmith, and a boilermaker. Paul Weiss's mother, Emma Rothschild ...

 in 1950 for promoting the study of metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

. The society is a member of the American Council of Learned Societies

American Council of Learned Societies

The American Council of Learned Societies , founded in 1919, is a private nonprofit federation of seventy scholarly organizations.ACLS is best known as a funder of humanities research through fellowships and grants awards. ACLS Fellowships are designed to permit scholars holding the Ph.D...

. Philosophers may join by contacting the Secretary of the Society.

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

Positivism

Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....

 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.

Presidents and addresses

Year	President	Presidential Address
1952	Paul Weiss Paul Weiss (philosopher) Paul Weiss was an American philosopher.-Background:Paul Weiss grew up on the lower east side of New York City. His father, Samuel Weiss , was a Hungarian emigrant who moved from Europe in the 1890s. He worked as a tinsmith, a coppersmith, and a boilermaker. Paul Weiss's mother, Emma Rothschild ...	"The Past: Its Nature and Reality"
1953	Paul Weiss	"The Contemporary World"
1954	John Wild John Daniel Wild 516 pages. ISBN 0819138908 . 259 pages. 297 pages. ISBN 0313211272. 250 pages. 186 pages. 243 pages. 430 pages. ISBN 0313226415.-Further reading: 414 pages. 226 pages. ISBN 0820427969. 289 pages. ISBN 0739113666....	"The New Empiricism and Human Time"
1955	Charles Hartshorne Charles Hartshorne Charles Hartshorne was a prominent American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and produced a modal proof of the existence of God that was a development of St. Anselm's Ontological Argument...	"Some Empty Though Important Thoughts"
1956	Newton Stallenacht	"The Quality of Man"
1957	George Klubertanz	"The Problem of the Analogy of Being"
1958	William Ernest Hocking William Ernest Hocking William Ernest Hocking was an American idealist philosopher at Harvard University. He continued the work of his philosophical teacher Josiah Royce in revising idealism to integrate and fit into empiricism, naturalism and pragmatism...	"Fact Field and Destincy: 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 Collins	"The Bond of Natural Being"
1963	Donald Williams	"Necessary Facts"
1964	Peter Bertocci	"Toward a Metaphysics of Creation"
1965	Francis Parker	"The Temporal Being of Western Man"
1966	Robert Brumbaugh	"Applied Metaphysics: Truth and Passing Time"
1967	John Herman Randall, Jr John Herman Randall, Jr. John Herman Randall Jr. was an American philosopher, New Thought author, and educator.-Life:Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan as the son of a Baptist minister, he graduated from Morris High School in New York City and obtained his A.B. from Columbia University in 1918. He obtained an A.M... .	"Metaphysics and Language"
1968	W. Norris Clarke, S.J.	"The Self as Source of Meaning in Metaphysics"
1969	Errol Harris	"The Power of Reason"
1970	Richard Hocking	"Event, Act and Presence"
1971	John E. Smith	"Being, Immediacy and Articulation"
1972	Joseph Owens Joseph Owens (Redemptorist) Reverend Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R. , was a Canadian Roman Catholic priest and a scholar in medieval philosophy.-Life and career:...	"Reality and Metaphysics"
1973	Roderick Chisholm Roderick Chisholm Roderick M. Chisholm was an American philosopher known for his work on epistemology, metaphysics, free will, and the philosophy of perception. He received his Ph.D. at Harvard University under Clarence Irving Lewis and Donald C. Williams, and taught at Brown University...	"Parts as Essential to Their Wholes"
1974	Ernan McMullin Ernan McMullin Ernan McMullin was the O’Hara Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. He was an internationally-respected philosopher of science who has written and lectured extensively on subjects ranging from the relationship between cosmology and theology, to the role of values in...	"Two Faces of Science"
1975	J N Findlay John Niemeyer Findlay John Niemeyer Findlay, known as J. N. Findlay, was a South African philosopher.-Education and Career:...	"The Three Hypostases of Platonism"
1976	Marjorie Grene Marjorie Grene Marjorie Glicksman Grene was an American philosopher.She wrote both on existentialism and the philosophy of science, especially the philosophy of biology. She taught at the University of California at Davis from 1965 to 1978. From 1988 until her death she was Honorary University Distinguished...	"Merleau-Ponty and the Renewal of Ontology"
1977	Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Stalker Sellars was an American philosopher. His father was the Canadian-American philosopher Roy Wood Sellars, a leading American philosophical naturalist in the first half of the twentieth-century...	"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. Doughterty	"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 Stanley Rosen Stanley Rosen is an American philosopher. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he is currently Professor Emeritus at Boston University. His wide range of research includes metaphysics, political philosophy, and history of western philosophy....	"Is Metaphysics Possible"
1992	Mary T. Clark Mary T. Clark Sister Mary T. Clark, RSCJ is an American academic and civil rights advocate. She is best known as a scholar of the history of philosophy, and is associated especially with Augustine of Hippo. Much of her career was spent at Manhattanville College, from which she graduated in 1939 and with which...	"An Inquiry Into Personhood"
1993	Ralph McInerny Ralph McInerny Ralph Matthew McInerny was a Roman Catholic, American, philosopher, University professor, and prolific author, including fiction of which some appeared under the pseudonyms of Harry Austin, Matthew FitzRalph, Ernan Mackey, Edward Mackin, and Monica Quill, and mysteries of which his best known is...	"The Science We Are Seeking"
1994	Donald Sherburne	"Some Reflections on Sartre's Nothingness and Whitehead's Perishing"
1995	William Desmond William Desmond (philosopher) William Desmond is an Irish philosopher who has written on ontology, metaphysics, ethics, and religion. Former president of the Hegel Society of America and the Metaphysical Society of America. Desmond is now professor of philosophy at the Hoger Instituut Voor Wijsbegeerte , also known as the...	"Being, Determination and Dialectic: On The Sources of Metaphysical Thinking"
1996	Sandra Rosenthal	"Self, Community, and Time: A Shared Sociality"
1997	John Lachs John Lachs John Lachs is the Centennial Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, where he has taught since 1967. Lachs received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1961. His primary focus is on American philosophy and German idealism.- Biography :Lachs has been a member of the Vanderbilt faculty since...	"Valuational Species"
1998	Eugene Thomas Long	"Quest for Transcendence"
1999	Oliva Blanchette	"Suarez and the Latent Essentialism of Heidegger's Fundamental Ontology"
2000	George Allan	"Perishable Goods"
2001	Jorge Gracia Jorge J. E. Gracia Jorge J.E. Gracia is the Samuel P. Capen Chair, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Department of Comparative Literature in the State University of New York at Buffalo. Gracia was educated in Cuba, Canada and the United States and received his Ph.D...	"Are Categories Invented or Discovered? A Response to Foucault"
2002	James Felt	"Epochal Time and The Continuity of Experience"
2003	Vincent Colapietro Vincent Colapietro Vincent Colapietro is a Liberal Arts Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University . His education includes a bachelors degree from Saint Anselm College, a masters degree from Marquette University and a Ph.D. from Marquette University...	"Striving to Speak in a Human Voice: A Peircean Contribution to Metaphysical Discourse"
2004	Frederick Ferre Frederick Ferré Frederick Ferré is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at The University of Georgia. He is past president of the Metaphysical Society of America.- Education :* Oberlin College, 1950-51.* Boston University, A.B. summa cum laude, 1954...	"The Practicality of Metaphysics"
2005	Nicholas Rescher Nicholas Rescher Nicholas Rescher is an American philosopher at the University of Pittsburgh. In a productive research career extending over six decades, Rescher has established himself as a systematic philosopher of the old style and author of a system of pragmatic idealism which weaves together threads of...	"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	Tom Flynn

Since the founding of the Metaphysical Society, presidential addresses have been published in the Review of Metaphysics

Review of Metaphysics

The Review of Metaphysics is a peer reviewed academic journal of philosophy. It was founded by Paul Weiss and the first issue was published in September 1947. The journal's primary sponsor is and has been The Catholic University of America, but other major universities help sustain it.The journal...

, which was also founded by Paul Weiss.

External links

• Official website
• Metaphysical Society Listserv