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Arthur O. Lovejoy

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born

October 10, 1873 in Berlin, Germany

died

December 30, 1962

gender

male

genre

History, Philosophy

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Arthur Oncken Lovejoy was an influential American philosopher and intellectual historian, who founded the field known as the history of ideas.

Lovejoy was born in Berlin, Germany while his father was doing medical research there. Eighteen months later, his mother committed suicide, whereupon his father gave up medicine and became a clergyman. Lovejoy studied philosophy, first at the University of California, then at Harvard under William James and Josiah Royce. In 1901, he resigned from his first job, at Stanford University, to protest the dismissal of a colleague who had offended a trustee. The President of Harvard then vetoed hiring Lovejoy on the grounds that he was a known troublemaker. Over the subsequent decade, he taught at Washington...more Arthur Oncken Lovejoy was an influential American philosopher and intellectual historian, who founded the field known as the history of ideas.

Lovejoy was born in Berlin, Germany while his father was doing medical research there. Eighteen months later, his mother committed suicide, whereupon his father gave up medicine and became a clergyman. Lovejoy studied philosophy, first at the University of California, then at Harvard under William James and Josiah Royce. In 1901, he resigned from his first job, at Stanford University, to protest the dismissal of a colleague who had offended a trustee. The President of Harvard then vetoed hiring Lovejoy on the grounds that he was a known troublemaker. Over the subsequent decade, he taught at Washington University, Columbia University, and the University of Missouri. He never married.

As a professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University from 1910 to 1938, Lovejoy founded and long presided over that university's History of Ideas Club, where many prominent and budding intellectual and social historians, as well as literary critics, gathered. In 1940, he founded the Journal of the History of Ideas. Lovejoy insisted that the history of ideas should focus on "unit ideas," single concepts (often with a one-word name), and study how unit ideas combine and recombine with each other over time.

In the domain of epistemology, Lovejoy is remembered for an influential critique of the pragmatic movement, especially in the essay The Thirteen Pragmatisms, written in 1908.

Lovejoy was active in the public arena. He helped found the American Association of University Professors and the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. However, he qualified his belief in civil liberties to exclude overriding threats to a free system. At the height of the McCarthy Era (in the February 14, 1952 edition of the Journal of Philosophy) Lovejoy stated that, since it was a "matter of empirical fact" that membership in the Communist Party contributed "to the triumph of a world-wide organization" which was opposed to "freedom of inquiry, of opinion and of teaching," membership in the party constituted grounds for dismissal from academic positions. He also published numerous opinion pieces in the Baltimore press. He died in Baltimore on December 30, 1962.(less)

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Average rating: 3.95 · 88 ratings · 10 reviews · 9 distinct works

	The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea 3.94 avg rating — 85 ratings — published 1936 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Essays In The History Of Ideas 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings	My rating:
	Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity by Arthur O. Lovejoy, George Boas 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1997	My rating:
	The Journal of the History of Ideas, V2, No. 4, October, 1941 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2011 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Revolt Against Dualism: An Inquiry Concerning the Existence of Ideas 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1995 — 7 editions	My rating:
	Reflections on Human Nature 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	My rating:
	The Thirteen Pragmatisms, and Other Essays 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Reason, the Understanding, and Time 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1961	My rating:
	Reflections on Human Nature 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1961	My rating:

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