Richard J. Bernstein, the Vera List Professor of Philosophy at The New School of New York City and the Beloit College 2013 Selzer Visiting Professor, will give a public lecture based on his 2010 book of the same name, which argues that many philosophical themes from the past 150 years are derived from classical American pragmatists.

This event is free and open to the campus and community.

BIO
Richard J. Bernstein, the 2013 Selzer Visiting Philosopher is an American philosopher, the Vera List Professor of Philosophy and former dean of the graduate faculty at The New School.Bernstein grew up as part of a middle-class Jewish family in Borough Park, Brooklyn; his family moved to Long Island, New York following World War II. He received an A.B (1951) from the University of Chicago, a B.S. summa cum laude (1953) from Columbia University, and his Ph.D. (1958) from Yale University. He took a faculty position at Yale, but in 1965, the university denied him tenure despite the initial unanimous support of his department, leading to student protests and eventually to reforms of the tenure system at Yale. This event, now called the Bernstein Affair, was “one of the most contested cases of tenure in the United States.” Bernstein then moved to a tenured position at Haverford College, where he taught for 23 years and became the T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy before later moving to The New School. At The New School, the Richard J. Bernstein Endowed Prize Fellowship in Philosophy is awarded to distinguished philosophy students in his honor. In 1981, Bernstein became founding co-editor of Praxis International, the revived journal of the Yugoslav Praxis School philosophical movement. In 1988, he served as President of the Metaphysical Society of America.