© The contents of this finding aid are the copyright of the University of Chicago Library
© 2006 University of Chicago Library
The Richard Peter McKeon Papers were processed as part of the HEA Title II-C project, "Preserving and Improving Access to Social Science Manuscript Collections at the University of Chicago Library."
The material contained in Series X: Audio-Visual Materials is restricted due to the need for special equipment. The material contained in Series XI: Recommendations and Evaluations is restricted and not open to researchers until the year 2035.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: McKeon, Richard Peter. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
Richard Peter McKeon was born on April 26, 1900, to Peter Thomas McKeon and Mathilda Hirschfeld McKeon of Union Hill, New Jersey. McKeon entered Columbia University as a pre-law student, later switching to a pre-engineering curriculum. His studies were interrupted by World War I when in 1918 he became an apprentice seaman in the U.S. Navy in which he served until the end of the war. Upon his return to Columbia in 1919, he changed his course of study to the humanities and earned both his A.B. and A.M. degrees in 1920. His master's thesis dealt with philosophical approaches to art and literature. McKeon continued his studies, focusing on philosophy, at the University of Paris where he earned the diplôme d'études supérieures and the diplôme d'élève titulaire de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes in 1923 and 1924. His mentors in Paris included Etienne Gilson, Léon Brunschvicq, and Léon Robin.
McKeon returned to Columbia University where he became an instructor in philosophy and Greek while writing his dissertation. The dissertation, a study of the philosophy of Spinoza, written under the direction of Frederick J. E. Woodbridge and John Dewey, was completed in 1928. The following year Columbia appointed McKeon to the post of assistant professor, a position he held until 1935.
McKeon married Muriel Thirer in 1930. They had three children: Peter, Nora, and Michael. Muriel attended the University of Chicago and earned a A.B. degree and membership in Phi Beta Kappa in 1937; later, she worked with her husband as managing editor of Diogenes, an international journal sponsored by UNESCO. Muriel died in 1964. Fifteen years later, McKeon married Zahava Karl Dorinson.
McKeon's career at Columbia was flourishing when he was invited to be a Visiting Professor of History at the University of Chicago in 1934-1935. He had already published his dissertation and a two-volume translation work, Selections from Medieval Philosophers. In the early 1930s McKeon met Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago. McKeon shared Hutchins' ideas for reforming collegiate education -- for grounding undergraduate studies in a general, not specialized, education strongly influenced by philosophical analysis. Mortimer Adler was also instrumental in bringing McKeon to Chicago. After his year as visiting professor, McKeon was appointed Professor of Greek and Dean of the Division of the Humanities. McKeon was heavily involved in the reforms that shaped the College in the 1940s. He later broke with Hutchins, however, over issues of faculty involvement in the governance of the University, and resigned his deanship in 1947. By then he was Professor of both Greek and Philosophy, and that year was named Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy and Greek.
McKeon had called for U.S. aid to Britain early in World War II. Once the United States entered the war, he became Director of Army Specialized Training Programs at the University of Chicago (1943-1946). The specialized training offered at Chicago educated Army personnel in the language and culture of the countries in which they would be serving. By the end of the war, McKeon was an active proponent of the United Nations and UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. He was a member of the U.S. Delegation to UNESCO for the first three general conferences, in 1946, 1947, and 1948, and was strongly committed to the idea of preventing future world wars through the development of cross-cultural understanding. McKeon also worked with the Committee to Frame a World Constitution, although he refused to sign the final document, citing philosophical differences with the decisions the Committee had reached.
In the 1950s McKeon was at the height of his career at the University of Chicago. While professor in the departments of Philosophy and Classical Languages and Literatures, he served as chairman of the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and the Study of Methods and was a member of the interdisciplinary Committee on Medieval Studies. He published five books--Democracy in a World of Tensions (editor, contributor, 1951); Freedom and History: The Semantics of Philosophical Controversies and Ideological Conflicts (1952); Thought, Action and Passion (1954); The Freedom to Read (with Robert K. Merton and Walter Gellhorn, 1957); and The Edicts of Asoka (with N. A. Nikam, 1959)--and over 40 articles. McKeon spent a year in France on a Fulbright grant (1950-1951), another at the University of Arkansas as a visiting professor (1952-1953), and travelled to India as a visiting professor at the University of Baroda (1954-1955). He also served as president of the American Philosophical Association (1952), vice-president of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (1953-1954), and president of the International Institute for Philosophy (1953-1957). The late 1950s saw both the beginning of McKeon's involvement in a major reorganization project for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and his participation in the Rockefeller Brothers Special Studies Project, an investigation into the moral, political, and economic aspects of relations between the United States and the rest of the world.
Highlights of the later years of McKeon's career include his appointment as Carus lecturer for the American Philosophical Association in 1963, and receiving the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago in 1971. He retired in 1974, but continued teaching into the early 1980s. In 1976, a lifelong project finally came to fruition with the publication of his critical edition (with Blanche Boyer) of Peter Abailard's (Abelard) Sic et Non.
McKeon continued writing and publishing until his death on March 31, 1985. Eleven books and over 150 published articles span his 50-year career, and his unpublished work comprises numerous lectures, articles, and at least two partial drafts of books. His significant contributions to philosophy, educational reform, and international understanding were recognized from an early point in his career. He received the Butler Medal in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1942, and honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1942), the University of Aix-Marseille (1947), Washington University at St. Louis (1963), Brown University (1964), Fairfield University (1975), and DePaul University (1976).
The Richard Peter McKeon Papers have been divided into eleven series: (1) Biographical Materials, (2) Correspondence, (3) Subject Files, (4) Writings, (5) Course Materials, (6) Conferences, (7) UNESCO Materials, (8) Encyclopaedia Britannica, (9) Miscellaneous Papers, (10) Audio-Visual Materials, and (11) Recommendations and Evaluations.
The collection includes material such as professional and personal correspondence, research materials, manuscripts of books and articles, course materials, galley proofs, biographical material, sound recordings, microfilm, glass plate negatives, and memorabilia. It also includes papers from McKeons work with UNESCO, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. The collection details McKeons interest in the history of philosophy and philosophical methodology. The materials document the growth and development of education and educational philosophy as well as the continuing development of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.
The following related resources are located in the Department of Special Collections:
Series I has been divided into four subseries: Professional Materials, Personal Papers, Family Documents and Correspondence, and Book Collection. Included in this series is a curriculum vitae, bibliographies of McKeon's published writings, notification of awards and honorary degrees, academic appointment letters, book reviews and other publicity, and a few critical works about McKeon's philosophy. There are also two folders of correspondence regarding attempts to bring McKeon to faculties other than Chicago's very early in his career. In 1928 and 1929, Cornell's Sage School of Philosophy tried to hire McKeon away from Columbia University; and later, after McKeon had made his name at the University of Chicago, both Yale and Columbia attempted to induce him to return to the East Coast.
The majority of the material in Series I, however, is personal, including family correspondence (much of the earliest is addressed to his wife, Muriel, and some pre-dates their marriage) and household bills. There are letters to and from each of his children, from their childhood adventures in summer camp and continuing through college and beyond. There is also a small amount of correspondence from McKeon's sister, Rose.
Richard McKeon maintained two separate sets of alphabetical files. These form the basis for Series II and III. Series II, Correspondence, contains McKeon's professional correspondence and other professional papers, such as documentation for the Visiting Scholars Program, which brought non-Western academics to several schools in the U.S. in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It also contains materials relating to the financial and editorial status of Diogenes, materials concerning McKeon's extensive involvement in the Committee for the Study of Mankind and the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. Correspondence relating to his books and articles, memoranda, and other materials from the various departments at the University of Chicago as well as some UNESCO materials can be found in this series.
Some of the files contain general headings, such as "University of Chicago," but any committee or department with which McKeon was heavily involved has its own folder or folders listed under its own name. Also, there are files relating to specific people associated with the University, including Mortimer Adler, Robert M. Hutchins, Lawrence Kimpton, Edward Levi, and Frank Knight.
Series III, Subject Files, has been arranged alphabetically and contains notes or correspondence related to given topics. Some files contain detailed notes and outlines of a book or essay (see folders on Plato and Aristotle). Like Series II, Series III also contains correspondence. In fact, there is significant overlap of material between the two series. Some significant names and headings that appear in this series are: Mortimer Adler, Scott Buchanan, Kenneth Burke, Morris Cohen, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, University of Chicago Department of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell, Philosophy of Law, and Education.
Series IV, Writings, has been divided into eight subseries. They are: (1) Bibliography, (2) Reprints, (3) Books, (4) Published Articles, (5) Book Reviews, (6) Unpublished Materials, (7) Miscellaneous, and (8) Research Card Files. The arrangement of this series was taken from a bibliography created in 1980 of McKeon's published writings.
Subseries 2, Reprints, contains many of McKeon's articles dating from 1922 to 1986. Subseries 3, Books, has been arranged in the order in which McKeon's books were published. Some of the material included in Sic et Non was produced decades before the book's publication in 1976. Subseries 3 also include a section on William of Ockham which was published as part of McKeon's Selections from Medieval Philosophers. This section contains photostats, transcripts and translations, and an extensive card file of Latin liturgical terms. The Peter Abailard (Abelard) materials also include card files of medieval and earlier philosophers.
Subseries 4, Published Articles, has been arranged chronologically according to the bibliography (even if dates on the manuscript or accompanying papers indicated that the article was composed some time before it was published). There are both typed and handwritten manuscripts, and the typed often include several hand-corrected drafts.
Subseries 5, contains book reviews written by McKeon, which were primarily done in the early part of McKeon's career. Most of the reviews date from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. Subseries 6, Unpublished Manuscripts, has been divided into dated (listed first) and undated materials. Subseries 6 includes McKeon's novel, Little Flowers, which he tried unsuccessfully to publish in the early 1930s. There seem to be several fragments of an unpublished book or books, with one fragment entitled "Philosophy in the Middle Ages," and another concerning issues revolving around methodology ("Method and the Sciences," "Language and Method," "Metaphysics and Method").
Subseries 8 contains several boxes of McKeon's research card files. These are arranged by general histories, then philosophers (chronologically), then by subject area. McKeon's lecture notes (see Series V) are organized similarly.
This material is divided into two primary sections: first, McKeon's lecture notes; and second, syllabi, examinations and handouts. McKeon typed out the text of his lectures on letter-size paper folded in half, and these carefully folded and organized lecture materials fill nine boxes. Some headings indicate a single lecture from a larger course; others indicate a series of lectures on a single topic. Many of the headings are cross-referenced to several different courses. These lecture notes are the heart of the McKeon collection, as they contain the clearest and most extensive exposition of his thought available. Since McKeon never produced a comprehensive work summing up his thought, but instead wrote many essays detailing certain aspects of his scholarship, this collection of notes on all his teaching interests provides the researcher with an overall view of McKeon's philosophy and philosophical methodology.
Series VI is organized chronologically, and the information contained in each folder generally consists of correspondence regarding a particular conference and a few of the papers presented there. McKeon was heavily involved in conferences and long-term projects sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, especially their annual Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion and their Institute on Ethics. Papers from these associations appear throughout the series. Another significant project was the Rockefeller Brothers Special Studies Project, a study of the state of the United States and its domestic and international goals at the height of the Cold War.
Most of the material contained in Series VII consists of the official documents generated at the UNESCO general conferences in 1946, 1947, and 1948. There are also documents from meetings of the United States National Commission for UNESCO, and a large amount of materials related to UNESCO but unassociated with a particular conference or commission. The files contain mostly formal papers and meeting minutes from McKeon's UNESCO days, with very few handwritten notes or additions that indicate his involvement with the formation of the reports.
This series contains materials from meetings of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1957-1966. It also contains correspondence and drafts of articles from a proposed complete rearrangement of the Encyclopaedia through the presentation of "roof articles," a series of articles that were meant to give a broad overview of the state of knowledge in almost every human endeavor. The economic order, religion, education, language, and philosophy were several of the divisions of knowledge identified by the editors.
Series IX contains 4 boxes of miscellaneous materials, which consist primarily of newspaper clippings, partial bibliographies for unidentified papers, assorted notes in McKeon's and others' handwriting, and partial reports by unknown authors.
Series X is restricted due to the need for special equipment. Series X contains reel-to-reel tapes of several of McKeon's lectures and microfilm, most of which record folio pages of medieval manuscripts kept in European libraries. Some of the reel-to-reel tapes have mold on them.
Series XI is arranged alphabetically and contains Richard McKeon's recommendations and evaluations of his students and colleagues. These files are restricted and unavailable for research until the year 2035.