About the Metaphysical Society

About the Society

Founded in 1950, the Metaphysical Society of America is an organization of professional philosophers that meets once annually to discuss issues of fundamental concern in all of the major areas of philosophical reflection. It is a society committed to the principle that philosophical thought is open to a variety of different traditions and methodologies, and at its annual meeting, it provides a forum for the discussion of the questions that have animated philosophical debate from the start. The Society has no publication of its own, but has from its inception maintained a close informal relation with the Review of Metaphysics. Since 1958, it has been a constituent of the American Council of Learned Societies. More...

Present Officers of the Society

The MSA Council is composed of the President, Vice-President/President Elect, Secretary-Treasurer, and four Councilors. Councilors are nominated by the Council and elected by the Membership to staggered four-year terms and assist the Officers in the governance of the Society, including nomination of candidates for Vice-President, review of papers submitted to the annual meeting, and attending the annual Executive Council Meeting, which is held at the annual meeting of the Society.

President
John J. Stuhr, Emory University

Vice-President/President Elect
Phillip Stambovsky

Secretary
Tyler Tritten, Gonzaga University (2023-2026)

Treasurer
Jessica Wahman, Emory University (2023-2026)

Executive Council
Jeffrey Dirk Wilson, Catholic University of America (2023-2027)
Gregory Moss, Chinese University of Hong Kong (2023-2027)
Lisa Landoe Hedrick, The University of Chicago(2021-2025)
Wesley DeMarco, Clark University (2024-2028)

Delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies
George R. Lucas, Jr. (2022-2026)

Graduate Advisory Board

Lucas Carroll, Boston College
Michael Kolodziej, University of Chicago
Kelly Schoina, Emory University
Kara Slagell, Fordham University

Council of Past Presidents

The following past presidents are recognized for their outstanding and on-going financial support of the Society:
Dan Dombrowski
Richard Velkley
George Allan
Nancy K. Frankenberry
Jorge Gracia
John Lachs
George R. Lucas, Jr.

Past Presidents and Their Addresses

(MSA presidential addresses are published in The Review of Metaphysics. Note, although the Society was
founded in 1950, the first president was elected in 1952.)

Year	President	Address Title
1952	Paul Weiss	The Past: Its Nature and Reality
1953	Paul Weiss	The Contemporary World
1954	John Wild	The New Empiricism and Human Time
1955	Charles Hartshorne	Some Empty Though Important Truths
1956	Newton P. Stallknecht	The Quality of Man
1957	George Klubertanz	The Problem of the Analogy of Being
1958	William Ernest Hocking	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.	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	Reality and Metaphysics
1973	Roderick Chisholm	Parts as Essential to Their Wholes
1974	Ernan McMullin	Two Faces of Science
1975	J N Findlay	The Three Hypostases of Platonism
1976	Marjorie Grene	Merleau-Ponty and the Renewal of Ontology
1977	Wilfrid Sellars	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. Dougherty	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	Is Metaphysics Possible
1992	Mary Clark	An Inquiry Into Personhood
1993	Ralph McInerny	The Science We Are Seeking
1994	Donald Sherburne	Some Reflections on Sartre's Nothingness and Whitehead's Perishing
1995	William Desmond	Being, Determination and Dialectic: On The Sources of Metaphysical Thinking
1996	Sandra Rosenthal	Self, Community, and Time: A Shared Sociality
1997	John Lachs	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	Are Categories Invented or Discovered? A Response to Foucault
2002	James Felt	Epochal Time and The Continuity of Experience
2003	Vincent Colapietro	Striving to Speak in a Human Voice: A Peircean Contribution to Metaphysical Discourse
2004	Frederick Ferre	The Practicality of Metaphysics
2005	Nicholas Rescher	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	Whatever Happened to Humanism? Reconciling the Being of Language and the Being of Man
2012	Edward Halper	Reason and the Rationality of Being
2013	May Sim	Metaphysics and Ethics, East and West
2014	Alan White	Rearticulating Being
2015	Richard Dien Winfield	Self-determination in Logic and Reality
2016	George R. Lucas, Jr.	Anaximander and the Ordering of Time
2017	Nancy K. Frankenberry	Consenting to Contingency After Rorty and Nagarjuna.
2018	Richard Velkley	The Fate of Human Action: The Agency of 'Reason' in Modern Philosophy.
2019	Dan Dombrowski	Metaphysics, Political Philosophy, and the Process of Liberal Political Justification.
2020/2021	Larry Cahoone	Towards an Ordinal Naturalism.
2022	Owen Goldin	Symbolic Classification and the Emergence of a Metaphysics of Causality.
2023	David Weissman	Presidential Roundtable with Tim Maudlin and Peter VanInwagen.
2024	Michael Baur	Some Thoughts on the Identity and Difference of Knower and Known, and the Difference It Makes.

Edited volume on the history of the Society

Being in America: Sixty Years of the Metaphysical Society
Brian G. Henning and David Kovacs (eds.)
(Rodopi, Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies Series)

Publisher website
Amazon.com

Book description
Since its founding in 1950, the Metaphysical Society of America has remained a pluralistic community dedicated to rigorous philosophical inquiry into the most basic metaphysical questions. At each year’s conference, the presidential address offers original insights into metaphysical questions. Both the insights and the questions are as perennial as they are relevant to contemporary philosophers.
This volume collects eighteen of the finest representatives from those presidential addresses, including contributions from George Allan, Richard Bernstein, Norris Clarke, Vincent Colapietro, Frederick Ferré, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Joseph Grange, Marjorie Grene, George Klubertanz, Ivor Leclerc, Ralph McInerny, Ernan McMullin, Joseph Owens, John Herman Randall, Jr., Nicholas Rescher, Stanley Rosen, John E. Smith, and Robert Sokolowski. Also included are Paul Weiss’s inaugural address to the Society, an introduction chronicling the history of the Society, and an original Foreword by William Desmond and Epilogue by Robert Neville.

Contents
Richard T. Hull: Editorial Foreword

Foreword William Desmond Being in America: On Metaphysics and the Metaphysical Society of America

Brian G. Henning and David Kovacs: Introduction

Part One: The Question of Metaphysics
Paul Weiss: The Four-fold Art of Avoiding Questions
George Klubertanz: The Problem of the Analogy of Being
W. Norris Clarke: The Self as Source of Meaning in Metaphysics
Joseph Owens: Reality and Metaphysics
Marjorie Grene: Merleau-Ponty and the Renewal of Ontology
Richard J. Bernstein: Metaphysics, Critique, and Utopia
Robert Sokolowski: The Question of Being
Stanley Rosen: Is Metaphysics Possible?
Ralph McInerny: The Science We are Seeking
Frederick Ferré: The Practicality of Metaphysics

Part Two: The Question of Knowledge
Ernan McMullin: Two faces of Science
Jorge J. E. Gracia: Are Categories Invented or Discovered? A Response to Foucault
Nicholas Rescher: Textuality, Reality, and the Limits of Knowledge

Part Three: The Question of Language
John Herman Randall, Jr.: Metaphysics and Language
John E. Smith: Being, Immediacy and Articulation
Vincent Colapietro: Striving to Speak in a Human Voice: A Peircean Contribution to Metaphysical Discourse

Part Four: The Question of the Good
Ivor Leclerc: The Metaphysics of the Good
George Allan: Perishable Goods
Joseph Grange: The Generosity of the Good

Epilogue Robert C. Neville: The Legacy and Future

Appendix A: Bibliography of Presidential Addresses of the Metaphysical Society of America 1952–2010