| Metaphysical Society of America | |
| Founder: | Paul Weiss |
| Established: | 1950 |
| Mission: | To advance the study of metaphysics |
| President: | Lawrence Cahoone |
| Location: | United States |
| Website: | http://www.metaphysicalsociety.org/ |
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.
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:
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.
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[1] | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | "The Past: Its Nature and Reality" | ||
| 1953 | Paul Weiss | "The Contemporary World" | |
| 1954 | "The New Empiricism and Human Time" | ||
| 1955 | "Some Empty Though Important Thoughts" | ||
| 1956 | "The Quality of Man" | ||
| 1957 | "The Problem of the Analogy of Being" | ||
| 1958 | "Fact, Field and Destiny: Inductive Elements of Metaphysics" | ||
| 1959 | "The Subjective and the Objective" | ||
| 1960 | "Being, Existence, and That Which Is" | ||
| 1961 | "Matrix, Matter, And Method in Metaphysics" | ||
| 1962 | James Daniel Collins | "The Bond of Natural Being" | |
| 1963 | Donald Cary Williams | "Necessary Facts" | |
| 1964 | "Toward a Metaphysics of Creation" | ||
| 1965 | Francis H. Parker | "The Temporal Being of Western Man" | |
| 1966 | "Applied Metaphysics: Truth and Passing Time" | ||
| 1967 | "Metaphysics and Language" | ||
| 1968 | "The Self as Source of Meaning in Metaphysics" | ||
| 1969 | "The Power of Reason" | ||
| 1970 | "Event, Act and Presence" | ||
| 1971 | "Being, Immediacy and Articulation" | ||
| 1972 | "Reality and Metaphysics" | ||
| 1973 | "Parts as Essential to Their Wholes" | ||
| 1974 | "Two Faces of Science" | ||
| 1975 | "The Three Hypostases of Platonism" | ||
| 1976 | "Merleau-Ponty and the Renewal of Ontology" | ||
| 1977 | "Being as Becoming: Towards a Metaphysics of Pure Reason" | ||
| 1978 | "Being And Substance" | ||
| 1979 | "Reinventing the Philosophy of Nature" | ||
| 1980 | "A Moment of Truth: Present Actuality" | ||
| 1981 | "The Metaphysics of the Good" | ||
| 1982 | "A Strategy for the Pursuit of Truth" | ||
| 1983 | "Social Reality and Social Relations" | ||
| 1984 | "Structure: Substantial and Other" | ||
| 1985 | "The Metaphysical Status of Mathematical Entities" | ||
| 1986 | "Past, Present and Future as Categorical Terms and the Fallacy of the Actual Future" | ||
| 1987 | "On Knowing Directly: The Actualization of First Philosophy" | ||
| 1988 | "Metaphysics, Critique and Utopia" | ||
| 1989 | "Value, Courage and Leadership" | ||
| 1990 | "The Question of Being" | ||
| 1991 | "Is Metaphysics Possible" | ||
| 1992 | "An Inquiry Into Personhood" | ||
| 1993 | "The Science We Are Seeking" | ||
| 1994 | "Some Reflections on Sartre's Nothingness and Whitehead's Perishing" | ||
| 1995 | "Being, Determination and Dialectic: On The Sources of Metaphysical Thinking" | ||
| 1996 | "Self, Community, and Time: A Shared Sociality" | ||
| 1997 | "Valuational Species" | ||
| 1998 | "Quest for Transcendence" | ||
| 1999 | "Suárez and the Latent Essentialism of Heidegger's Fundamental Ontology" | ||
| 2000 | "Perishable Goods" | ||
| 2001 | "Are Categories Invented or Discovered? A Response to Foucault" | ||
| 2002 | "Epochal Time and The Continuity of Experience" | ||
| 2003 | "Striving to Speak in a Human Voice: A Peircean Contribution to Metaphysical Discourse" | ||
| 2004 | "The Practicality of Metaphysics" | ||
| 2005 | "Textuality, Reality and the Limits of Knowledge" | ||
| 2006 | "Thomas Aquinas on the Ultimate Question: Why Is There Anything at All Rather Than Nothing Whatsoever?" | ||
| 2007 | "Value and the Dynamics of Being" | ||
| 2008 | "The Generosity of the Good" | ||
| 2009 | "Metaphysics and the Origin of Culture" | ||
| 2010 | "Being and Negation" | ||
| 2011 | "Whatever Happened to Humanism? Reconciling the Being of Language and the Being of Man" | ||
| 2012 | "Reason and the Rationality of Being" | ||
| 2013 | "Metaphysics and Ethics, East and West" | ||
| 2014 | "Rearticulating Being" | ||
| 2015 | "Self-determination in Logic and Reality" | ||
| 2016 | "Anaximander and the Ordering of Time" | ||
| 2017 | "Consenting to Contingency After Rorty and Nagarjuna" | ||
| 2018 | "The Fate of Human Action: The Agency of 'Reason' in Modern Philosophy" | ||
| 2019 | "Metaphysics, Political Philosophy, and the Process of Liberal Political Justification" | ||
| 2020/2021 | "Towards an Ordinal Naturalism" | ||
| 2022 | "Symbolic Classification and the Emergence of a Metaphysics of Causality" | ||
| 2023 | "Presidential Roundtable with Tim Maudlin and Peter van Inwagen" | ||
| 2024 | "Some Thoughts on the Identity and Difference of Knower and Known, and the Difference It Makes" |