UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Thursday, 25 April 2013 at 4 pm
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR MARIA BAGHRAMIAN, UCD School of Philosophy, University College Dublin on 25 April 2013, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa on JOHN MCDOWELL
President, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Professor John H. McDowell is among the most influential philosophers of our time. The breath-taking scope of his work, ranging across the history of philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and ethics, as well as the depth and originality of his challenging ideas are the reasons for the worldwide recognition and many accolades he has received. The breadth of the topics that Professor McDowell addresses belies a unity of a groundbreaking philosophical vision. What McDowell aims to do, in Richard Holton’s words, is ‘a kind of exorcism’ through which he demonstrates that pervasive and entrenched philosophical assumptions on core topics such as perception, action, meaning and memory, gloss over important, if subtle, differences or disjunctions. Philosophy for McDowell, as he puts it, is the attempt "to overcome various obstacles that stand in the way of a healthy understanding of ourselves and our relation to the world." The approach is therapeutic rather than doctrinal, yet the end result is a body of ideas and insights that are formative of current and future discourses of philosophy.
John Henry McDowell was born in March 1942 in Boksburgh, South Africa. His early university education, from 1960 to 1962, was at the University College of Rhodesia, where he obtained a First Class BA and the Vaccum Kariba Scholarship. In 1963, John McDowell entered New College Oxford, with a Rhodes Scholarship, and obtained a First Class BA in 1965 and an MA in 1969. From 1966 to 1986, he lectured in Oxford and was a Fellow of University College where he still retains an honorary fellowship. He also has held visiting positions at Harvard, Michigan, UCLA, Minnesota, Jadavpur University Calcutta and Princeton, among others. In 1986, Professor McDowell left Oxford for University of Pittsburgh where he currently is Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy in Pittsburg School of Arts and Sciences. He was elected a Fellow of the (opens in a new window)British Academy in 1983 and a Fellow of the (opens in a new window)American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. In 2010, he was a recipient of the prestigious Andrew Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award. The award, valued at 1.5 million dollars, honors scholars who have made uniquely significant contributions to humanistic inquiry and is intended to underscore the decisive role the humanities have in the intellectual life of the United States.
And indeed John McDowell’s contributions to the humanities are unique in their range and significance. His earliest publications were in classical philosophy. His translation of Plato’s Theaetetus, with an extensive set of commentaries, published in 1973, is still regarded as the authoritative work on one of the most important of Plato’s dialogues. In the 1970s’, McDowell with his friend and collaborator Gareth Evans, came under the influence of Donald Davidson, who was visiting Oxford: an encounter that in McDowell’s own words was a ‘transforming experience’ in his career. In the following decade, his research focus began to shift towards philosophy of mind and language where his publications included the posthumously edited and completed The Varieties of Reference (1982) by Gareth Evans.
McDowell established his unique voice in philosophy with the groundbreaking 1994 book, Mind and World, originally delivered as the 1991 John Locke Lectures at Oxford University. His numerous publications since then, including four collections of essays, covering topics from Greek Philosophy to German idealism and contemporary philosophy of perception, have extended and revised the original ideas developed therein and have proven influential among analytic and continental philosophers alike.
UCD School of Philosophy is proud of its close research links with this, one of the finest philosophers of our time. The 2013 Agnes Cuming Lectures were delivered by Professor McDowell over three days, April 23-25. The School of Philosophy also benefited from the generous financial support Professor McDowell provided, through his Mellon Foundation Award, towards the organization of the 2012 international Sellars Centenary conference. But what makes John McDowell’s work central to the research agenda of UCD School of Philosophy is his practice of a philosophy that goes beyond the usual analytic –continental divisions. In Mind and World, as in the numerous publications that followed, McDowell engages with and draws inspiration from both analytic philosophers, such as Frege and Sellars, and continental figures, notably Hegel. In this, as one commentator has pointed out, ‘by showing how central methods of the two philosophical traditions remain deeply entangled and by revealing how philosophers in both camps might still learn from each other, McDowell has taken a decisive step towards healing of a century long division in contemporary philosophy”. The UCD School of Philosophy hopes to continue to play a part in this healing process and we are proud to celebrate the work of a philosopher with a decisive role in this difficult but ultimately rewarding journey.
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Praehonorabilis Pro-Praeses, totaque Universitas, Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in Litteris; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.